Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to properly link to products from category pages?
-
Hi All,
We have an e-commerce website and the category pages are built so that there is a product image and below it there is the title. Both the image and the title are in a href (each on its own).
I encountered the following unfinished discussion here at MOZ:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-optimize-achor-text-links-on-ecommerce-category-page#post-93758The discussion states that its improper.
The question is - if it is wrong then why? (maybe because Google will give its weight to the image anchor instead of the text anchor since it is higher in the page).
The other question is how to resolve the matter?
Should I add nofollow to the image href?Thanks
-
Dear Everett,
Can you supply the link to the article?
Thanks
-
Also see this page for more information on using named anchor links (i.e. page.html#image) to avoid the "first link counts" issue. This is what Alan Mosley is recommending. I think it is much safer than using CSS to try and "trick" search engines. You can put the image on product pages in a named anchor like #image.
Resources:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/3-ways-to-avoid-the-first-link-counts-rule
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-first-link-counts-rule-and-the-hash-sign
-
No problem, glad I could help!
-
Works amazing!!!!!
Thanks a lot for all of your help.
-
I would do something like this: http://jsfiddle.net/D7vMG/3/ (do you see the z-indexes? it makes sure the anchor is higher positioned then the paragraph.)
You can of course use only the <a>-tag and not a heading. In that case you can put the position: absolute on the a-tag.</a>
<a>Hope it helps! Good luck!</a>
-
THANKS!!! I've been working on it since your first reply
Last question (I'm a bit rude now) -
I also have price beneath "The New Ipad" anchor. Currently it is not in the href and I'm thinking of keeping it this way (which would mean it will be in the H3 but not in the href).
Also, the href's are simple href's not surrounded by h3's, What do you think? Changing them? (keeping the price outside the href but inside the H3)
It seems correct but changing would mean of a lot of anchors will be changed on the entire website... scarry
-
Yeah of course, you can style the link any way you want. Even hide it
although I wouldn't recommend that hehe.
I made this jsfiddle for you: http://jsfiddle.net/D7vMG/1/
good luck trying it yourself!
-
It is pretty much as if the anchor flows over the entire image.
I did this a while back on a dutch telecom website called typhone dot nl. Check it out, it's on the frontpage (the offer blocks all have it)
The H3 is just there as an example. If I just got an H1 above all products, i use h2's, if there is a h2, i use h3's. and so on.
-
That's what the css code above does, it puts the link beneath the image visually when users look at the site, while keeping the link above the image in the actual code.
-
I should not of said 2 pages, but it has been shown that both links will give link text relevancy.
The javascript link will be followed, it will not help
-
Is there a way to do so and having the link appearing beneath the image?
I don't want to change the design
-
Dear Alan,
If Google will see it as two pages I'm guessing I will need to add a canonical to the # version. Is that the case?
What about having the image with a javascript link? (location.href) or is that suspicious?
-
Dont use no-follow, you will just leak link juice.
One way around this, is to use a anchor # in your url for the image. like page.html#someterm
This will in fact give you link text relevancy for both, google will see this as 2 different pages.
Make sure you have alt text for the image.
This tataic and well as what x-com may in the future be seen as over optimization, so it may be tter to do somthing like this
Your link text
You can just link the whole lot in the one link.
Or move your text to above the image.
-
Thank you for the answer.
I'm not too strong with css besides for the basics,
what you mean is that the anchor will be displayed beneath the image for the user even though the code is placed before the image and also that clicking on the image will actually be like clicking on the anchor since its size includes the image???
Brilliant, it will also give more "engagement credit" to the anchor instead of splitting it (actually ppl usually clicking on the image).
By the way, do you put all of your products on the page as H3?
Thanks
-
Hi Noamflint, we develop a lot of e-commerce websites and I want to fill you in how we tackled this problem several months ago and how.
We deleted the anchor of the image! In our code it looks something like:
The New iPad
As you see at the moment there is no anchor on the image, but our clients do want this. because of usabilty. and people just love clicking images.
We solved this with CSS:
div { position: relative; padding-top: 30px; display: block; }
div h3 { position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; display: block; }
div h3 a { width: 200px; height: 230px; display: block; }
div img { width: 200px; height: 200px; display: block; }
This code above is pseudo of course, but i hope you see what we are trying to accomplish. The anchor tag is positioned absolute in the parent div. With the dimensions on it, the link is above the image, so when people hover the image. they automatically hover the link. Clicking in it, takes them to the detail page.
You should try it! Maybe it will help you out.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I apply Canonical Links from my Landing Pages to Core Website Pages?
I am working on an SEO project for the website: https://wave.com.au/ There are some core website pages, which we want to target for organic traffic, like this one: https://wave.com.au/doctors/medical-specialties/anaesthetist-jobs/ Then we have basically have another version that is set up as a landing page and used for CPC campaigns. https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ Essentially, my question is should I apply canonical links from the landing page versions to the core website pages (especially if I know they are only utilising them for CPC campaigns) so as to push link equity/juice across? Here is the GA data from January 1 - April 30, 2019 (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International0 -
JSON-LD schema markup for a category landing page
I'm working on some schema for a client and have a question regarding the use of schema for a high-level category page. This page is merely the main lander for Categories. For example: https://www.examples.com/pages/categories And all it does is list links to the three main categories (Men's, Women's, Kid's) - it's a clothing store. This is the code I have right now. In short, simply using type @Itemlist and an array that uses @ListItem. Structured Data Testing Tool returns no errors with it, but my main question is this: Is this the _correct _way to do a page like this, or are there better options? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alces0 -
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Ecommerce Site - Duplicate product descriptions & SKU pages
Hi I have a couple of questions regarding the best way to optimise SKU pages on a large ecommerce site. At the moment we have 2 landing pages per product - one is the primary landing page with no SKU, the other includes the SKU in the URL so our sales people & customers can find it when using the search facility on the site. The SKU landing page has a canonical pointing to the primary page as they're duplicates. Is this the best way? Or is it better to have the one page with the SKU in the URL? Also, we have loads of products with the very similar product descriptions, I am working on trying to include a unique paragraph or few sentences on these to improve the content - how dangerous is the duplicate content within your own site? I know its best to have totally unique content, but it won't be possible on a site with thousands of products and a small team. At the moment I am trying to prioritise the products to update. Thank you 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Google Rich Snippets in E-commerce Category Pages
Hello Best Practice for rich snippets / structured data in ecommerce category pages? I put structured markup in the category pages and it seems to have negatively impacted SEO. Webmaster tools is showing about 2.5:1 products to pages ratio. Should I be putting structured data in category Pages at all? Thanks for your time 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Location Pages On Website vs Landing pages
We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations. I have Places set up and all, but we decided to create location pages on our sites for each location - brief description and content optimized for our main service. The path would be something like .com/location/example. One option that has came up in question is to create landing pages / "mini websites" that would probably be location-example.url.com. I believe that the latter option, mini sites for each location, would be a bad idea as those kinds of tactics were once spammy in the past. What are are your thoughts and and resources so I can convince my team on the best practice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers0 -
Date of page first indexed or age of a page?
Hi does anyone know any ways, tools to find when a page was first indexed/cached by Google? I remember a while back, around 2009 i had a firefox plugin which could check this, and gave you a exact date. Maybe this has changed since. I don't remember the plugin. Or any recommendations on finding the age of a page (not domain) for a website? This is for competitor research not my own website. Cheers, Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MBASydney0 -
De-indexing product "quick view" pages
Hi there, The e-commerce website I am working on seems to index all of the "quick view" pages (which normally occur as iframes on the category page) as their own unique pages, creating thousands of duplicate pages / overly-dynamic URLs. Each indexed "quick view" page has the following URL structure: www.mydomain.com/catalog/includes/inc_productquickview.jsp?prodId=89514&catgId=cat140142&KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=475&width=700 where the only thing that changes is the product ID and category number. Would using "disallow" in Robots.txt be the best way to de-indexing all of these URLs? If so, could someone help me identify how to best structure this disallow statement? Would it be: Disallow: /catalog/includes/inc_productquickview.jsp?prodID=* Thanks for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0