Informational pages, not product pages, are ranking for product-related keywords

[mof3kz]

My site sells products (+1000s) and we have a few pages about how-to's, tips, etc. But when you search for keywords that are relevant to the products, the guides show up as search results.

For example, if we search for "red widgets", the page for "how to make widgets" shows in the SERP and not the "red widgets" product page.

This doesn't make sense when most of the search results go to our guides and not to the product pages. How can I change this? Do I permanent remove these guides? Or rename the title, description? My guess is that other sites have linked to these guides so they are making our site more of a "guide" site as opposed to the products we sell.

Any advice/recommended would be appreciated.

[mof3kz]

We do have original content on each of the products. Just thinking this is more of external linking than anything else....

Thanks for the feedback.

[mof3kz]

Thanks Highland. Re:

1. Yes, the guide pages do have links to the product pages but looking at the stats, users go in, grab the info they need and leave. We have product images and links throughout the guides.

2. Each of our products do have good original long description.

3. This may be the solution - getting more links to the main product page.

Thanks for the input! Much appreciated!

[DougRoberts]

It sounds as if the guides are getting search traffic so I wouldn't advise that you remove these pages. The reason your guides are getting this traffic is that they are out ranking your product pages (which are more than likely a lot lighter on content). They're probably out ranking your competitors project pages too.

My advice would be to understand the intent of the searches that are arriving on your guides etc. What are the search queries being used.

Once you understand what people are looking for then think about how you can improve your guides to entice people into your product content. They should form part of your conversion funnel. Make it clear that these are products you offer and are only a click away!

Then you need to track the conversion rate of people landing on your supporting content.

Remember that many of these people won't be interesting in buying (not immediately) but may come return in the future once they've finished their research. By making your content more memorable / helpful you'll stand a better chance of getting some of this longer-term custom.

Don't just strip out these pages - you're likely just to lose traffic...

Hope this helps.

[Highland]

Bots are to websites like ants are to sugar. They pick up content and gravitate towards it.

Gutting your site content is NOT a good idea. In fact, you'll find that removing your content pages will also remove the traffic! It sounds like you have a lot of naturally popular content but not a lot of conversions. So how do you capitalize?

1. Add links to your product pages within the content. I mean, if you make AND sell the product, let people know that you sell the product to make money. Good internal linking structure is a necessity for the functioning of a website, let alone SEO. Don't just link either. Get a small block embedded in your content that shows a picture of the product, its price, and maybe an "Add to Cart" button.
2. Beef up the content in your product pages. Naturally, product pages are anemic in content. Fix it!
3. Get some links to your product pages. Use Open Site Explorer and find out where your links are now, and see if you can get the natural linkers to maybe plug your product page as well.

[Keszi]

Hi there,

I have a question for you:  what content do you have on the products pages?

I am asking this, because I have seen some websites which produced very cool "how to" articles and focused less on the product pages. I would focus more on creating better content on the product pages, then focusing how to draw back the existing rankings.

I hope that will help in some way!

Good luck,

Istvan