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 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
-
What’s the best tool to visualize internal link structure and relationships between pages on a single site?
I‘d like to review the internal linking structure on my site. Is there a tool that can visualize the relationships between all of the pages within my site?
Web Design | | QBSEO0 -
Internal Linking: What is the best practice for pages not included in Nav bar?
I never quite understood why internal linking was such a big deal for SEO, but now I'm having second thoughts and perhaps understanding it more. I always thought since most websites have a navigation feature--usually the menu bar located at the top and often another one in the footer--that internal navigation was usually already built in to most websites and therefore, a silly topic to make a fuss over; however, I may be the silly one after all. I am now creating pages that are not included in the navigation so.... What is the best practice for this? If I am creating say, pages for certain locations and those location pages begin to number in the hundreds, it makes my navigation bar a little too cumbersome to have all those pages in a drop down menu. So I made a Locations page and just link to all those pages from that page (and from nowhere else). But now I'm wondering if this could be a bad internal linking practice and perhaps hurt my online visibility as an SEO ranking factor. Is this a crawl problem? And if so, is there a better option that provides a good visitor experience while appeasing the search engines.
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Body of text on category pages
Hello everyone, wonder if I can pick your brains about our company's website. We are a tea company - Canton Tea Co. We have been advised that it is really important to get more text onto the category pages on our website, as otherwise the page just consists of a list of products, and therefore provides Google with a ton of headers, tiny descriptions, and not enough text to allow the page to being easily indexed, therefore hurting our Google ranking for key search terms like 'Green Tea' which should lead to the Green Tea category page. So we decided to add some text to the category page. The only place for this text to go was laid over the category header image. However, it looks pretty awful and unsophisticated having this text on top of the image - please see an example, our Green Tea category page, via this link: http://www.cantonteaco.com/loose-leaf-tea-1/type/green-tea.html So I have three questions: How significant is the text on a category page such as this to that page's Google ranking? If we moved the text to an area that was hidden until clicked on, for example the 'Filter by' section that opens up when you click on it (see via URL above), would that negate the SEO benefit? Do you have any other ideas or opinions on how to resolve this? Thank you! Louise, Canton Tea Co.
Web Design | | Cantonteaco0 -
Multiple Local Schemas Per Page
I am working on a mid size restaurant groups site. The new site (in development) has a drop down of each of the locations. When you hover over a location in the drop down it shows the businesses info (NAP). Each of the location in the Nav list are using schema.org markup. I think this would be confusing for search robots. Every page has 15 address schemas and individual restaurants pages NAP is at the below all the locations' schema/NAP in the DOM. Have any of you dealt with multiple schemas per page or similar structure?
Web Design | | JoshAM0 -
What seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page?
what seo benefit does setting up a photo gallery where each photo is a separate web page? My old SEO guy set up my photo gallery like that claiming that because each photo was a separate page, it added a big seo benefit and i never understood what he was talking about. Maybe alt text on the photo with key phrases in it pointing to my other pages to give my site a theme for google? I'm not really sure. He has since moved away and i am considering redoing the photo gallery to multiple images on one page to be more user friendly to my users. This photo gallery is 3 years old and the photos might have some page rank to them helping my site so i don't want to remove this gallery if there really is a benefit to it and it will hurt my site. I once removed four static page rank 3 pages from my site that weren't used for my site anymore and my rankings dropped 5 positions. Thoughts anyone? Thanks! Ron
Web Design | | Ron100 -
What is the best tool to view your page as Googlebot?
Our site was done with asp.net and a lot of scripting. I want to see what Google can see and what it can't. What is the best tool that duplicates Googlebot? I have found several but they seem old or inaccurate.
Web Design | | EcommerceSite0 -
Best layout pages for SEO
Dear all, what would be the ideal layout of a webpage for SEO? How would a homepage and landingspage look like? Thanks in advance! Best regards, Ben
Web Design | | HMK-NL0 -
Mobile Site Pages: Word Count Help
Hi there I am doing a mobile website for a client and they asked me what the dieal word count would be per page. They are SEO conciosu but we are not doing SEO on this site. I would just like to know a general rule of thumb. Regards Stef
Web Design | | stefanok0