Note: This analysis is intended exclusively for educational and informational purposes. All observations are based on publicly available information and do not involve access to any internal data. For more details, please refer to our Disclaimer page.
Table of Contents
In this article I’ll be analyzing the technical SEO side of dedeman.ro.
Analysing a business from a different industry compared to my previous SEO Audits, I expect to find some more unique SEO issues.
Note: I later understood why those long dynamic URLs with the ‘srsltid’ parameter show up in organic results – something I criticize in the video. It’s a parameter automatically applied in Google Merchant settings and isn’t directly influenced by the site itself.
1. Four homepage variants (2 indexed)
A problem that suggests a lack of attention to detail – and one that can negatively affect SEO performance – is the presence of duplicate homepage variants.
I found 4 in total, of which 3 are indexable and 2 are actually indexed:
- https://www.dedeman.ro/ – indexable, and this is the variant Google has chosen as the canonical homepage.
- https://www.dedeman.ro/ro/ – indexable and canonicalized to the version without the subfolder – but the logo links to the /ro version without a trailing slash 🥴.
- https://www.dedeman.ro/ro/index2.html – indexable, an old homepage variant from a previous CMS that was simply left behind.
- https://www.dedeman.ro/ro/index.html – similar to the one above, except someone did “take care of it” by making it a 404 page – which still has backlinks pointing to it.
Don’t worry if you’re confused – I’m confused too.
The first head-scratcher: why does the logo link to the /ro version if /ro is canonicalized to the version without /ro?
If that wasn’t enough – not only does the logo link to the canonicalized variant, it first goes through a 301 redirect to that variant, caused by the trailing slash at the end of the URL (/ro/).
The second head-scratcher: why is the index.html homepage variant a blank 404 page instead of simply redirecting to the current homepage? It’s clear this variant was once used as the main page, since there are backlinks pointing to /index.html.
- SEO Tip: To inspect 301 redirect and 404 details across multiple URLs at once, use httpstatus.io.
Things got complicated somewhere along the way – most likely during a CMS migration – as we can see in the backlinks screenshot above: there’s an additional redirect from /index.html to /ro/index.html, which is itself a 404 page.
The 2 indexed homepages
Fortunately, of the 4 homepage variants, only 2 are actually indexed by Google – the clean version (dedeman.ro) and the incorrect /index2.html variant.
site:dedeman.ro/ro/index2.html
- SEO Tip: To display full URLs in Google search results, use the Chrome extension Remove Breadcrumbs.
Conclusion on this issue
I’m not sure how much damage this confusion is causing, but if I can’t make full sense of what’s happening with all these homepage variants, Google is almost certainly confused too – and the fact that it indexed the incorrect /index2.html variant is proof of that.
Here’s how I would simplify and fix things:
- Set up a 301 redirect from /index2.html to dedeman.ro.
- Replace the canonical tag with a 301 redirect – dedeman.ro/ro redirects to dedeman.ro (or explore whether the /ro version can be made the primary homepage, since all other site pages use /ro/).
- Set up proper redirects for the 404 pages that have backlinks (Link Reclamation).
- Fix the logo link to point correctly to what appears to be the preferred homepage – dedeman.ro/ro/.
2. Non-https pages indexed
An issue found on other sites in this series as well – indexed URLs using the old non-secure http:// version. I can’t tell exactly how these are generated since they appear to be dynamic search pages.
It’s not a major issue, and most importantly, they automatically redirect to the https:// version.
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.dedeman.ro+-inurl:https//&sca_esv=14a1435c53c98b02&sxsrf=ADLYWIKRCnCk5gbNHVrEDZ495Hol5h-NYA:1731253381465&filter=0&biw=1698&bih=791&dpr=1.13&num=100
3. Multiple subdomains serving the same purpose
It’s common practice to host files on a subdomain of the main domain. In Dedeman’s case, however, I found 2 subdomains that appear to serve the same purpose – the same types of files are hosted on both. For example, pages with ‘user manuals’ are uploaded to two different subdomains: ‘cdn.dedeman.ro’ and ‘i.dedeman.ro‘.
site:*.dedeman.ro -inurl:www. intitle:manual de utilizare
Two subdomains for recruitment
I don’t see a meaningful difference between ‘dedetech.dedeman.ro‘ and ‘recrutare.dedeman.ro‘ – while they have different content, both appear to serve the same purpose: recruitment and job listings.
On top of that, the dedetech subdomain has the exact same title and meta description across multiple pages. The recrutare.dedeman.ro subdomain has the same issue.
site:dedetech.dedeman.ro OR site:recrutare.dedeman.ro
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adedetech.dedeman.ro+intitle%3AFii+parte+din+genera%C8%9Bia+tehnologic%C4%83+din+Dedeman&oq=site%3Adedetech.dedeman.ro+intitle%3AFii+parte+din+genera%C8%9Bia+tehnologic%C4%83+din+Dedeman&gs_lcrp=EgRlZGdlKgYIABBFGDkyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQRRg60gEHMjE4ajBqMagCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&sei=F4iPZ86fMIirwPAPtanUuAc
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Adedeman.ro+intitle%3A%22Angajari%2C+Cariere%2C+Locuri+de+munca%22&sca_esv=0362892ef7fa3c39&sxsrf=ADLYWIIuVaT2Dqipa5lTjsKSkebKgH4_mg%3A1737458920366&filter=0&biw=2124&bih=1031&dpr=0.9&num=100
4. Backlinks pointing to 3xx and dead pages
Due to the homepage URL changes over time, there are now backlinks pointing to non-existent 404 pages.
This could have been handled effectively by redirecting to the new pages – in the homepage case, there are backlinks pointing to /index.html, which performs a 302 redirect to /ro/index.html – which is itself a 404 page.
The homepage isn’t the only case. There are other pages that could have benefited from a proper redirect to a live equivalent – for example, the 404 page at /revista/ could have been redirected to /catalog/. There are several such cases where a 404 page has a clearly relevant live equivalent.
5. 301 and 404 links in the footer and header
Of all sites I’ve audited at the time of writing this article, not a single one was free of 301 or 404 links in the footer.
Dedeman is no exception – and unfortunately it leads the pack with a total of 9 x 301 redirects and 2 x 404 links on the homepage across both the footer and header. (Excluding the 301 in the logo.)
I verified this using two Chrome extensions and got similar results for the number of link errors on the dedeman.ro homepage.
- SEO Tip: To quickly find broken links on any site, use the Chrome extension Atomseo Broken & Redirect Links Checker.
6. Lack of internal linking
According to ahrefs, there are just 89 internal links pointing to pages containing /tutorial/, and 2,324 links from /tutorial/ pages to the rest of the site.
Comparing this to DrMax’s Audit, that site has 43,000 internal links pointing to pages containing /articole/, and 168,563 internal links from /articole/ pages to the rest of the site.
7. An abandoned articles section
The entire articles section appears to have been abandoned – old articles haven’t been updated and no new ones are being published.
It’s not just the content – the design of the article pages looks extremely dated, with large text-heavy pages spanning the full width of the screen.
https://www.dedeman.ro/ro/tutorial/ghid-de-cumparare-polistiren-expandat.html
Articles doing more harm than good
Some articles are in even worse shape – either very thin on content or with unoptimized images. In the video version of this audit I found one article where a single image fills the entire screen.
A large volume of low-value articles that offer nothing to users and consume Google’s crawl budget can drag down the performance of the good pages on the site.
https://www.dedeman.ro/ro/tutorial/ghid-de-cumparare-motoferastraie.html
https://www.dedeman.ro/ro/tutorial/cum-realizam-incalzirea-eficienta-si-ieftina-a-locuintei.html
8. Incorrectly indexed search pages
Another common issue – pages that are blocked in robots.txt yet still appear indexed in Google. Dedeman is no exception, with dynamic search pages indexed in Google.
The likely reason is that the robots.txt directive was added after these pages had already been indexed.
site:http://www.dedeman.ro/ inurl:/catalogsearch/
9. Redundant or ambiguous pages
What does a page titled ‘Order Online‘ mean to you? For me it’s a generic title that says nothing.
Looking at the page content, I still can’t figure out its purpose. A more descriptive title might be: ‘How to Order Online at Dedeman‘, or ‘The Online Ordering Process at Dedeman‘.
Even then, it doesn’t seem like a page users would actually search for. I don’t see a reason for it to be indexed in Google – I doubt anyone searches for ‘how to order online at Dedeman‘.
https://www.dedeman.ro/ro/comenzi-online
Or, what does the title ‘The Company‘ tell you? Not much, probably.
It’s actually the ‘About‘ page, though you wouldn’t immediately guess that. Digging into the page, I also take issue with the fact that content I would personally put on a single page has been split across multiple pages – for example, there are separate pages for ‘Our Story‘ and ‘Values‘, both linked from this ‘Company‘ page.
I would have consolidated those into one page. There’s no reason for 3 separate pages: 1. About; 2. Our Story; 3. Values.
https://www.dedeman.ro/ro/compania
https://www.dedeman.ro/ro/compania/povestea-noastra
10. 404 pages automatically redirect
Visiting any 404 page on dedeman.ro triggers an automatic delayed redirect to the homepage after a few seconds.
I understand the logic – if a user lands on a 404 you want to send them somewhere useful. But from a technical SEO standpoint, this is bad practice.
A 301 redirect is appropriate when there’s a relevant relationship between two pages. What’s the relevance between an empty 404 page and the homepage? None. That’s why a 404 should stay a 404.
Is this behavior intended to preserve link equity from 404 pages? Even if so, checking these URLs in any status code tool shows they still return a 404 – meaning backlinks to those pages likely aren’t passing any equity anyway because of the delayed redirect.
Conclusion
I was a bit more critical than usual in this audit – probably because I came in with higher expectations. I picked apart every small thing, even those that aren’t necessarily causing direct harm.
That said, the multiple homepage variants were a genuine disappointment.
If I had to guess, I’d say the team at Dedeman doesn’t treat SEO as a serious part of their overall marketing strategy – the abandoned articles section being further evidence of that.
If they’ve concluded that on-site content doesn’t deliver results for them, then the right move would be to remove it entirely.
What’s your take on Dedeman’s SEO quality? Do you think they could be doing better? What would you change if you could?
Personally, I’d start by fixing the duplicate homepage issue, then decide what to do with the abandoned articles section, set up proper redirects for the 404 pages with backlinks, and finally clean up the 301 and 404 links in the footer and header.
With that said – what did you think of this technical SEO audit of dedeman.ro? What do you think I could do better in these articles? If anything caught your attention or you have something to add, leave me a message in the comments section below.
If you’re interested in SEO services, visit my Technical SEO Audit page.
My name is Andrei and in 2014 I made my first money online through websites and SEO. I currently offer SEO services for Romanian and English-language websites. Learn more about my SEO approach on my YouTube channel with SEO tutorials. For more SEO education, check my SEO blog or my SEO case studies.
Case Studies & SEO Guides
Your SEO Success Is One Click Away
Looking for SEO that's based on data, not guesswork? Get in touch and let's see how I can help.