E-Commerce Website Architecture - Cannibalization between Product Categories and Blog Categories?

[BeytzNet]

Hi,

I have an e-commerce site that sells laptops.

My main landing pages and category pages are as follows:
"Toshiba Laptops", "Samsung Laptops", etc.

We also run a WP blog with industry news.
The posts are divided into categories which are basically as our landing pages.
The posts themselves usually link to the appropriate e-commerce landing page.
For example: a post about a new Samsung Laptop which is categorized in the blog under "Samsung Laptops" will naturally link somewhere inside to the "samsung laptops" ecommerce landing page.

Is that good or do the categories on the blog cannibalize my more important e-commerce section landing pages?

Thanks

[MikeRoberts]

I do often agree with your assessment and perhaps I should have worded it as "you might want to consider" instead of "make sure".

Its because in certain circumstances, having a blog post about something like "5 Reasons the New Toshiba Laptop is Awesome" with a link to your ecommerce page selling the product could be considered a paid link or the post may be seen as an advertorial. Because you sell laptops and you're writing a blog post about laptops that includes a link to the sale of laptops on your own site, there is concern it _migh_t be devalued especially after all the news concerning press release links and advertorials in recent months.

Of course, much of this is conjecture and the more I think about it the more it would seem that the people I've seen concerned about being hit for something like that are people that have been doing other, more sketchy things.

[matbennett]

No problem.  This isn't the clearest example of what I am talking about, but it was the one that I had open in a tab when I got the email notification of your question!

http://www.backcountry.com/3-season-tents

The top of that page has three guides.  There are three more at the bottom.  Those guides are in a place where customers are more likely to see/use them. That makes sense as they are also great sales tools. Those that open in a modal window for that page also mean that the category page becomes the page that attracts links rather than the blog page.

[BeytzNet]

Thanks Mat for the reply.

I didn't quite understand what you meant... Can you provide an example of an e-commerce site you feel that implements it well? (doesn't need to be one related to you).

Thanks

[BeytzNet]

Your ending was hilarious:

"hurt you depending on Google guidelines for the given month/week/day"

About nofollow and violating Google:
I think that having a call to action at the end of every post is legit and obvious (for example at the end of "Toshiba Laptops" post having a "Looking for a Toshiba Laptop?" button). It doesn't make sense to me nofollowing it. Doing so will only waste the juice I'm nofollowing - Google stated that no following links that not pass over more juice on the others, it simply wastes it.

Look at Hubspot's blog for example, at the end of each post they offer an ebook or something. All of the links are followed.

What do you think?

[MikeRoberts]

I've always been more of an "if they cannibalized then cross-link" type of person, followed up with a hint of "tweak accordingly". If our blogs are ranking well for something and drawing in more people than the actual product page, it could be that more people are just looking for information and not necessarily purchasing... of course there's the AIDA conversion funnel to consider as well. Why not make sure there is a prominent link/call to action that users can follow once they're done digesting the info so then they can look at the product page and (hopefully) convert? And make sure the link is NoFollow or it could be seen as unnatural and/or inadvertently hurt you depending on Google guidelines for the given month/week/day.

[matbennett]

Your structure is probably the most common.  As you say though, you do risk cannibalising your own results.  You could no-index the blog categories.

My preferred approach is to have blog and store more closely integrated.  This can allow you to do away with blog category pages entirely, and have those as part of the e-commerce category. Bringing the content closer to the products brings a number of benefits in terms of both SEO and Conversions.  It also results in much richer category pages which can be another big win.