Woo Commerce Technical Developer and Coder

We are looking for a Technical SEO engineer and coder with crawl-budget expertise to fix a Googlebot over-crawling issue caused by faceted navigation and JS-based filters.

You must understand how Google discovers URLs, evaluates canonicals, respects noindex, handles sitemaps, and crawls JavaScript-driven sites.

If you have previously fixed crawl explosions, filter URL chaos, or Googlebot overload issues on ecommerce sites, this project is for you.

This is a short project and not a permanent or temporary role, but potential for long term contractual work on othe rsite upon successful completion of this.

Issue

Our ecommerce site is experiencing excessive Googlebot crawling caused by:

• Filtered URLs generated via JavaScript / History API

• Faceted navigation creating thousands of parameterized URLs

• Googlebot discovering and crawling junk filter combinations

• Crawl budget waste and performance degradation

We need a clean, durable, Google-compliant fix — not a temporary block.

Scope of Work

You will be responsible for implementing and/or validating the following end-to-end crawl control solution:

1. Filtered URL Control

• Ensure all filtered URLs are noindex,follow

• Ensure all filtered URLs canonicalize to the base category

• Prevent filtered URLs from becoming indexable or crawl-prioritized

2. Faceted Navigation & JS Filters

• Audit how filters generate URLs (History API / pushState / replaceState)

• Ensure filter interactions do NOT expose crawlable links

• Use JS event handling / non-crawlable UI patterns where appropriate

3. Sitemap Discipline

• Ensure NO filtered or parameterized URLs appear in XML sitemaps

• Sitemaps must include only canonical category and product URLs

4. robots.txt (Minimal & Surgical)

• robots.txt must only block non-SEO parameters (e.g. sort/view)

• No blanket blocking of or filter URLs

• No Googlebot IP blocking or firewall rules

5. Verification & Validation

• Provide proof via:

o Live page source validation (meta + canonical)

o Clean sitemap output

o robots.txt review

• Optional but preferred: guidance on Google Search Console validation

Required Skills & Experience

You must have proven experience with:

• Technical SEO at scale (crawl budget, index control)

• Faceted navigation & filter URL management

• noindex,follow vs canonical behavior

• Googlebot crawling mechanics

• XML sitemap hygiene

• JavaScript-rendered sites (History API, SPA-style filtering)

• Ecommerce platforms (Shopify / custom themes / headless is a plus)

Strongly Preferred

• Past work fixing Google crawl explosions

• Experience auditing Search Console crawl stats

• Understanding when Google ignores canonicals

• Ability to explain why a solution works, not just implement it