ECommerce keyword targeting: Blog post vs Category page
-
I'm targeting short head and chunky middle keywords for generating traffic to an ecommerce website. I guess I have two options both with great content:
- blog posts
- category pages with content (essentially the blog post).
On the basis that it is great content that gets links, I would hope that I could garner links into the heart of the eCommerce website by doing this through option 2: category pages.
Any thoughts on blog vs ecommerce category pages for tageting keywords?
-
Actually, these articles are "posts" on a wordpress blog, but I am not using category pages or monthly pages or other things that would make them look like a blog.
Instead they are linked into my website through the homepage, through category page, and every product that they are about links to these article pages.
Really there is no difference between a blog post and an article. The difference is that a blog usually integrates its content into your site in a way that is both dumb for your visitors and for SEOs. Â So, use the posting ability of wordpress for its convenience, but build those pages into a website using the traditional methods that serve visitors and SEO.
-
Interesting @EGOL. You've decided to do web article pages, not blog posts. I guess this is because you've wanted to make have a long comprehensive page and a category page will just not offer enough space?
And you haven't used a blog post because you don't want comments mucking up the keywords?
-
We do the same approach as Gregory.
Articles about how to do things, how to select things, comparison between products, history of products, etc. These are substantive articles usually over 1000 words, always with several photos and maybe a video. Time consuming to produce.
However, these article pages pull in lots of traffic and almost always outrank our ecommerce pages and category pages.
Gregory seems to be using text links to move traffic to higher value pages. We have house ads in standard formats (300x250, 160x600, etc) to route the traffic to our sales pages. We also run adsense on those pages.  We can tell from analytics that lots of people who make it through our shopping cart enter the site through these pages.
We use Google's DFP on these pages to compete Adsense and an ad netork against our house ads. Our house ads are valued by determining the number of people sent to our sales pages, their conversion rate and average shopping cart value. We also have multiple creatives running and DFP picks the one with the highest performance.
Gregory... think about putting a few eye-catching ads on these pages with value propositions. I bet that a lot more of your visitors will convert.
-
Thanks for your response Gregory. Funny blog post, like the way you use apples.
The phrase "short head" is sometimes called short tail, the left side of the long tail graph with "chunky middle" the middle but not yet the tail.
I guess my question is whether anyone has been successful with getting links to category pages with good content vs blog posts/articles with good content?
-
Hi Bruce,
I have two small ecommerce sites, so your question is very interesting.
I haven't heard before the phrases you used: "short head and chunky middle keywords". I guess keywords are described differently in NZ
We started out adding content by adding "article" or "guide" or "how to" pages to the site. These pages do not contain any Buy buttons, but do contain image and text links to our store pages. You can see an example here: http://www.bestdryingrack.com/How_to_dry_flowers.html
These article pages (on both sites) tend to be some of our most active landing pages, though they don't feed people into the store pages at a high rate. But even at a low rate, they are a super cheap way of letting potential customers know about our stores.
But we have since switched to adding content in a blog format. The blog is of course hosted on the site in a /blog/ folder so it helps are total link count. We made this switch because it made it much simpler to write about a broader range of topics. Before we spent weeks planning and writing a 3 page "guide" and connecting it into the site. Now we can do a single page blog post in a day anytime we come across something interesting or amusing. And it doesn't even have to closely relate to the products on the ecommerce site. Here is an example: http://www.easydigging.com/blog/apple-peeler.html
We have not been running the blog long enough to know at what rate the pages will feed people into the store, but I assume it will be similar to the article pages.My hope is that we can post weekly and therefore create more blog pages than we ever used to create article pages. Doing so would feed more people into the store and also keep increasing our link count.
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
-
Google spending majority of time on NAV bar vs. most important pages
Google is spending 37% of its time crawling the NAV bar which is on every page. Google is spending very little time 1% on the most important pages -- product pages (https://www.skinsafeproducts.com/tatcha-violet-c-brightening-serum-20-vitamin-c-10-aha) on www.skinsafeproducts.com . Does anyone know what is going on and how I can change the behavior?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | akih0 -
Important category pages that can and should be found in SERP but can not be reached by navigating on the webshop itself
Hi, On a webshop we are optimizing, the main navigation consists of the 5 main categories to which all of the products can be assigned. However, the main tabs in the navigation just activate a drop down with all of the subcategories. For example: the tab in the navigation is 'Garden equipment' and when you click on this tab, the drop down is shown with subcategories like 'Lawn mowers', 'Leaf blowers' and so on. Now, the page 'Garden equipment' is one of the main category pages and we want this page to rank of course. This shouldn't be a problem, since there is a separate URL for this page that can be indexed and that can be reached through internal links on the website. However, this page can not be reached when a visitor initially comes on the homepage of the webshop, since the tab in the navigation isn't clickable. This page will only be reached when a subcategory is selected, and then when the visitor goes back to the category page through the breadcrumb or through an internal link. Is it a problem that these important overview category pages can not be reached immediately? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
Ranking Sub Categories on Ecommerce Site
Hi, I haven't tested this yet, so before I do I wanted to see if anyone had some experience with this. I have lower level categories I want to rank for SEO for example: Say I want to rank 'Standard Metal Lockers' - with the way our site is set up, I have to work within a classification, which isn't always easy. So it would be categorised as follows: Cupboards & Lockers > Lockers > Standard Lockers > Standard Metal Lockers The URL structure would remain /standard-metal-lockers & I would link this from the 'Lockers' page. Is this too deep in the site structure to rank? I think if it's linked properly & promoted it will be fine, but I'd like to see if anyone else has had this issue. Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Manage category pages and duplicate content issues
Hi everybody, I am now auditing this website www.disfracessimon.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
this website has some issues with canonicals and other things. But right now I have found something that I would like to know your opinion. When I was checking parts of the content in google to find duplicate content issues I found this: I google I searched: "Chaleco de streck decorado con botones"Â and found First result: "Hombre trovador" is the one I was checking -> Correct
The following results are category pages where the product is listed in. I was wondering if this could cause any problem related with duplicated content. Should I no index category pages or should I keep it?
The first result in google was the product page. And category pages I think are good for link juice transfer and to capture some searchs from Google. Any advice? Thank you0 -
Should I use selected Keywords in Meta Title of non important pages
Hi All, I have identified 2 main keywords that I want a website to be found for 1: Alarm Systems 2: Security Systems I have two relevant  landing pages set up and optimised for these terms and I have also optimised the home page for these terms I have countless other pages on the website that I don't really need to optimise such as Distributor Benefits or Supplier Benefits, About Us etc My question is should I use my selected keywords (alarm systems, security systems) in the Meta Title on these non important pages or should I just use them on the selected landing pages and home page? Historically I have used my primary keywords on all non important pages but not sure if Google looks down on this now. Thanks Robbie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daracreative0 -
How many words in the same page creates keyword stuffing?
In the on page report indicates that the maximum is 15. What are the best? It includes keywords on title, description and images names?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Naghirniac0 -
How to Target Keyword Variations?
I have a list of keywords I'm trying to target and they are essentially different variations of each other: Example: blue yankees baseball hat yankees blue baseball hat yankees baseball hat in blue Should I be targeting all these on the same page, or should I be making a new page for each one? Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Do pages with irrelevant keywords hurt the domain overall for ranking for relevant keywords?
I have been doing SEO for the University I work at. We are optimizing our degree pages on a page-by-page basis. So hypothetically we have a page optimized for "online accounting degree" and another for "online marketing degree", etc. Although our focus is on specific page optimization, we hope the by-product is that the whole domain will  start to rank better for "online degree". First of all, is this a reasonable expectation? Second, if this IS the case, will pages full of irrelevant keywords hurt the overall strategy? For example, our registrar and financial aid PDFs that are full of legal/financial mumbo-jumbo. Are these lowering our keyword density of relevant keywords across the domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SNHU0