How to make sure category pages rank higher than product pages?
-
Hi,
This question is E-Commerce related. We have product categories dividing products by color. Let's say we have the category 'blue toy cars' and a product called 'blue toy car racer', both of these could rank for the keyword 'blue toy car'.
How do we make sure the category 'blue toy cars' ranks above the product 'blue toy car racer'? Or is the category page automatically ranked higher because of the higher page authority of that page?
Alex
-
One of us is having a senior moment.
You wrote: "If this was my site we would get rid of the product pages and display all of the color choices on one page."
You sent a link to a product page. I was expecting a link to a psychedelic category page saturated with pictures, colors, content and "buy now" buttons with no links to products.
The Target bread crumbs show a hierarchy and presentation as proposed by Allen.
I get it. And agree. With both of you.
-
See how Target gives you all of the colors of this Rachel Ray cook set on one page...
http://www.target.com/p/rachael-ray-10-piece-porcelain-cook-set/-/A-14595398#prodSlot=medium_1_2
I would improve on this by listing the colors in text outside of the JavaScript and adding the most popular colors in the title tag.
Rachel Ray Cook Set | Red Blue Green Orange
-
I'd like to see this in action. Can you share a link EGOL?
-
Thank you. In my view this would make sense to the users as well.
-
Actually have recommended products on page, or other products in the same category. You could have it pop up a fancy / color/ thickbox when people add to the cart and recommend other products, something like this http://module-presta.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/thumbnail/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/m/imgforuserguide_popup_cart_02.jpg
There are all kinds of different things that you can do to cross sell. Look at what amazon does and how they operate, they optimize the product pages. On them they have lots of different product offers.
-
If this was my site we would get rid of the product pages and display all of the color choices on one page. Then you have a product page AND a category page in one.
-
Good point. From a conversion standpoint it be much better if people would land on a product page immediately. Although it's almost impossible for people to see our other products when they never land on a category page, and this would mean a decrease in order value...
-
Alex,
I would make the category page Toy cars with the separate product links: Blue toy cars, Red toy cars, Racer cars, etc. By linking one higher category page to a lower product page you are establishing your own page ranking "Score" that is read by the search engines as higher or lower in authority.
Your meta descriptions will further reinforce this higher archery by having the category pages describe most of the terms used in the lower level pages. Then be very specific on the separate product pages.
Now if someone searches for toy cars your category page is a higher result offering an entire selection of toy cars. But if your customer wants to type a longer search term "Blue racer toy cars" they will be directed to your specific product page.
-
Most category pages are pretty content shallow. They usually just have basic product info that links to the product pages. Make sure you have category pages built out with plenty unique content that would be valuable to your customers and the bots. It seems that people like to link directly to the product page so do your best to acquire links to the category level.
-
Honestly in my opinion you are going to have a hard time making the category rank higher than the product. Especially since things like rich data only supports one offer per page. I have no proof, but I would off the hip say that search engine want to put people on a product page, not a category page.
One thing to take into account to is conversion rate, just about every study says you convert more with a product as a landing page vs any other page in a site.
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
-
Making html table as 'seofriendly' as possible
Hi, On my website I have a table with a list of products, on every row I have a different product and a different property on each column. The table is made with css so the html code is clean. The problem is (I guess) that google doesn't 'understand' what its inside on the table. So if I do a google search that page appears on the page 87, there is any way to improve my SEO without changing the table? Or to improve my SEO I must change the format of my content? In resume, I want to improve the SEO page of a page that contains information organized inside a table. I don't know if there is a specific answer to this question. Any help is welcome. Regards
Web Design | | jcobo0 -
Mobile tab for page speed insight
I am getting mobile error occurred problem.Can somebody help me about this issue? https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?hl=en&utm_source=wmx&utm_campaign=wmx_otherlinks&url=www.printez.com&tab=mobile Morris
Web Design | | PrintEZ0 -
How to create this image effect for my home page
How do I make a wide, somewhat fast loading image effect like this home page has: 3dcart.com work on my website bobweikel.com I'm asking for how to create the effect (with small enough image kb to load) and what the image should be of in your opinion. Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
Why aren't Images in G+ product page posts showing up in SERPs for brand searches?
Before 1-2 weeks ago, our G+ posts containing links to our product pages would show up in in SERPs (when searching for our brand name) with a thumbnail of the product image. Now, they do not (see image below for visual). Our tech team confirmed there hasn't been any coding change that might be to blame and I see that this isn't happening to other sites. Any idea what may be the problem here? tcnhLgy
Web Design | | znotes0 -
Will changing content managment systems affect rankings?
We're considering changing our content management system. This would probably change our url structure (keep root domain name, but specific product pages and what not would have different full urls). Will our rankings be affected if we use different urls for current pages? I know we can do 401 redirects, but anything else I should consider? Thanks, Dan
Web Design | | dcostigan0 -
Duplicate page title caused by Shopify CMS
Hi, We have an ecommerce site set up at devlinsonline.com.au using Shopify and the MOZ crawl is returning a huge number (hundreds!) of Duplicate Page Title errors. The issue seems to be the way that Shopify uses tagging to sort products. So, using the 'Riedel' collection as an example, the urls devlinsonline.com.au/collections/riedel-glasses/ devlinsonline.com.au/collections/riedel-glasses/decanters devlinsonline.com.au/collections/riedel-glasses/vinum all have the exact same page title. We are also having the same issue with the blog and other sections of our site. Is this something that is actually a serious issue or, perhaps, is Google's algorithm intelligent enough to recognise that this is part of Shopify's layout so it will not negatively affect our rankings and can, essentially, be ignored? Thanks.
Web Design | | SimonDevlin0 -
Site down for more than a month - lost rankings
Hello, We have run into a situtation where we had multiple pages setup for different keywords but didn't realize that we had a name server issue that has caused the pages to be down for the last month or so (2-3 weeks on the low side.) The rank finder was still working fine, but the offline page was never reported. We realized the situation recently and have since gotten the sites back online under the new nameservers. Most of these sites were ranking 1 and 2 spots in their keywords, and now are no where to be found in the Google Index. Should I do anything differently, or just put the sites back online and wait it out? I have seen in different places that it may only take 2 weeks to come back, but it's possible that Google has marked the sites as 'not quality' because of their downtime and it will be even harder to get them to rank again. Can anyone shed any light on this situation? Any information is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Web Design | | EQ-Richie0 -
SEO tricks for a one page site with commented html content
Hi, I am building a website that is very similar to madebysofa.com : means it is one page site with entire content loaded (however are commented in html) and by clicking on sections it modify the DOM to make specific section visible. It is very interesting from UX point of view but as far as I know, since this way most of my content is always commented and hidden from crawlers, I will loose points regarding SEO. Is there any workaround you can recommend or you think sites like madebysofa.com are doomed to loose SEO points by nature? Best regards,
Web Design | | Ashkan10