Product Pages Outranking Category Pages
-
Hi,
We are noticing an issue where some product pages are outranking our relevant category pages for certain keywords. For a made up example, a "heavy duty widgets" product page might rank for the keyword phrase Heavy Duty Widgets, instead of our Heavy Duty Widgets category page appearing in the SERPs.
We've noticed this happening primarily in cases where the name of the product page contains an at least partial match for the desired keyword phrase we want the category page to rank for. However, we've also found isolated cases where the specified keyword points to a completely irrelevent pages instead of the relevant category page.
Has anyone encountered a similar issue before, or have any ideas as to what may cause this to happen? Let me know if more clarification of the question is needed.
Thanks!
-
No problems, happy to help out!
-
Thanks for the quick answer. That would support Michael's second point up above as well.
-
That is a good question, but the reason is because we might have several different products in one category and we want visitors searching for a generic product type to see our entire selection of that type of product, rather than just one. For example, Widgets might be a category page with 10 different widgets on it, but Awesome XL Blue Widgets might be a specific product. If someone just searches "widgets," then we want them directed to our widgets page, whereas if someone searched for a specific product name, we'd want them going to the Awesome Company XL Blue Widgets page, or another specific product they might search for.
That is definitely helpful though, thanks!
-
There was a time when I used to face this problem on regular basis as I had lots of clients all from the eCommerce sites.
This usually happens when your internal linking strategy is not satisfactory. The idea is to reconsider your internal linking strategy and fix the problems and you will see categories will started rank for their key phrases.
Hope this helps!
-
Hi Shawn,
It is most likely going to be one of two things:
- The On-Page optimisation for the Category pages is not direct enough to rank for all product pages and therefore you would need to re-focus the on page optimization and messaging to the products you are directly aiming to rank for.
- You have built backlinks or internal links to the product pages so they hold more authority (you can check the PR and PA/DA of your pages vs. category pages for an idea)
Possible solutions are:
- Re-optimise the category pages to be relevant for the products you want to rank
- Build more powerful backlinks and authority to the category pages
- Make category pages canonical page for product pages (probably not the ideal solution but just a thought).
I guess the real question is why wouldn't you want clients seeing the exact product they are trying to search for? If they are searching XL Blue Widgets and you would prefer they go to the Widgets page, then it doesn't make too much sense?
Hope this offers some insight.
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
-
ECommerce Category Page H2
Hello, I have a dental eCommerce and I think to make products names in the category page as H2 is that good practice for SEO? and how is the situation as they are clickable elements drive to the product page? here an example: https://souq.dental/bonding-agents
Technical SEO | | Anass110 -
Any idea why pages are not being indexed?
Hi Everyone, One section on our website is not being indexed. The product pages are, but not some of the subcategories. These are very old pages, so thought it was strange. Here is an example one one: https://www.moregems.com/loose-cut-gemstones/prasiolite-loose-gemstones.html If you take a chunk of text, it is not found in Google. No issues in Bing/Yahoo, only Google. You think it takes a submission to Search Console? Jeff
Technical SEO | | vetofunk1 -
Page Speed or Size?
Hi everyone. I have a client who really wants to add a 1min html5 video to the background of their homepage. I have managed to reduce the size of the video to 20MB and I have tested the page in pingdom. The results are 1.85 s to load, and weighed in at 21.2 MB. My question is does Google factor page load speed or size in it's ranking factors? I am also mindful of the negative effect this could have on bounce rate. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | WillWatrous0 -
Page disappeared from Google index. Google cache shows page is being redirected.
My URL is: http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/converse Hi. The week before last, my top Converse page went missing from the Google index. When I "fetch as Googlebot" I am able to get the page and "submit" it to the index. I have done this several times and still cannot get the page to show up. When I look at the Google cache of the page, it comes up with a different page. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/converse shows: http://shop.nordstrom.com/c/pop-in-olivia-kim Back story: As far as I know we have never redirected the Converse page to the Pop-In page. However the reverse may be true. We ran a Converse based Pop-In campaign but that used the Converse page and not the regular Pop-In page. Though the page comes back with a 200 status, it looks like Google thinks the page is being redirected. We were ranking #4 for "converse" - monthly searches = 550,000. My SEO traffic for the page has tanked since it has gone missing. Any help would be much appreciated. Stephan
Technical SEO | | shop.nordstrom0 -
Two of Pages Have Been SendBoxed
Hello, I was number 1-2 for my local keyword term, but now im nowhere, those two urls dont even show up in Google search results, my other pages DO, so that is obvious Google sendboxed them, i dont remember doing aggressive non quality link building, and its not a competitive term, since i was number 1 in Google for over 3 months or so i checked this tool and found that two of my urls are in sendbox http://www.searchenginegenie.com/sandbox-checker.htm I was never sendboxed before, can you help me how can i get out of this, since its my client's website, and i have to get those pages up as soon as possible Thank You
Technical SEO | | tonyklu0 -
What to do when you want the category page and landing page to be the same thing?
I'm working on structuring some of my content better and I have a dilemma. I'm using wordpress and I have a main category called "Therapy." Under therapy I want to have a few sub categories such as "physical therapy" "speech therapy" "occupational therapy" to separate the content. The url would end up being mysite/speech-therapy. However, those are also phrases I want to create a landing page for. So I'd like to have a page like mysite.com/speech-therapy that I could optimize and help people looking for those terms find some of the most helpful content on our site for those certain words. I know I can't have 2 urls that are the same, but I'm hoping someone can give me some feedback on the best way to about this. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | NoahsDad0 -
301 by category rather than page?
Hi Guys It is possible (and best practice) to 301 a category as a whole rather than every page within the category. I was asked this by a developer the other day, and it was something I'd not considered before as I've always done it by page. It seems there's some wordpress plugins out there that do it. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | PerchDigital0 -
What is the proper way to deal with multiple product pages?
If an e-commerce site selling backpacks has 200 items and they only show 30 per page, what is the proper way to deal with page 2, page 3, etc? Do you let each page rank separately? even though they are competing on the same keywords? Do you use canonical tags on pages after the first page?
Technical SEO | | youngsgarden1