Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. What would cause the wrong category page to come up?

    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.

    What would cause the wrong category page to come up?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    6
    12
    1432
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • EcommerceSite
      EcommerceSite last edited by

      I am trying to figure out why the wrong thing is coming up in the serps. For example, we are trying to rank for used widgets. But when you type in used widgets in google the primary widget page doesn't come up, one of the secondary categories under used widgets comes up. What would cause this? What are things I should check?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Tom-Anthony
        Tom-Anthony last edited by

        Is it possible for you to give a clearer description of the categories? You say they are different products but that one is a second category of the other

        Does the page you want to rank show up for any other searches? In your analytics are you getting any traffic from Google to that page?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • EcommerceSite
          EcommerceSite @Alick300 last edited by

          I did the site search that you suggest- site:www.site.com widgets and it was in the correct order.

          When I added the word used to the search it came up in the wrong order. They both have the word used, used the same amount of time. It makes no sense to me.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • EcommerceSite
            EcommerceSite @MonicaOConnor last edited by

            They actually are two separate types of items so I don't think I can canonical because I still want people to find the other category if that is what they are looking for. The names are so similar it is a problem.

            I have an x category, y category, and xy category. Even though the names are the same, they are very different products.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Alick300
              Alick300 last edited by

              Hi,

              The best way I find to see what the search engines thinks is the best page from your site for a term is to do a site search with the term you are checking.

              E.g.

              site:yousite.com + Term

              In your case : yousite.com + used widgets

              This shows you the pages in order that Googles ranks them. Also its a good way to identify duplicated title tags.

              Now there is an article published by Rand Fishkin on this issue to know what could be the possible reason to showing wrong category pages and how you can correct them  .Please check once below article

              http://moz.com/blog/wrong-page-ranking-in-the-results-6-common-causes-5-solutions

              I hope it helps

              Thanks

              EcommerceSite 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • MonicaOConnor
                MonicaOConnor @EcommerceSite last edited by

                You could use a canonical tag to tell google which page is the desired page. Unless the other page also had targeted key terms on it. Then I would avoid the canonical tag and try to find a better way to optimize the other page for key terms not so closely related.

                EcommerceSite 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • EcommerceSite
                  EcommerceSite @EGOL last edited by

                  It is unfortunate, but they have almost the exact same name. I don't know how to differentiate them.

                  MonicaOConnor 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • EGOL
                    EGOL @EcommerceSite last edited by

                    These titles are so close that google is probably flipping a coin.

                    EcommerceSite 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                    • EcommerceSite
                      EcommerceSite @EGOL last edited by

                      For the term "used widget" ,the title for the page I want to rank is "used widget for sale". For the page I do not want it to rank for this term it is "used widget - type for sale".

                      EGOL 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • EcommerceSite
                        EcommerceSite @ofw12387 last edited by

                        It It has breadcrumbs and it shows the category in the level up mechanism for the category sort.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • EGOL
                          EGOL last edited by

                          What are things I should check?

                          Proofread the title tags.   Be sure that the one that you want to rank is the best optimized.

                          EcommerceSite 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • ofw12387
                            ofw12387 last edited by

                            it can be that both pages are semantically similar and the robot is not sure which one from both should it rank

                            You could try to create an internal link in secondary category "url" to the url you want to rank, using the keyword as anchor. It may helps 😉

                            EcommerceSite 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • 1 / 1
                            • First post
                              Last post

                            Got a burning SEO question?

                            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                            Start my free trial


                            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.

                            • See all categories

                            Related Questions

                            • ParisChildress

                              If a page ranks in the wrong country and is redirected, does that problem pass to the new page?

                              Hi guys, I'm having a weird problem: A new multilingual site was launched about 2 months ago. It has correct hreflang tags and Geo targetting in GSC for every language version. We redirected some relevant pages (with good PA) from another website of our client's. It turned out that the pages were not ranking in the correct country markets (for example, the en-gb page ranking in the USA). The pages from our site seem to have the same problem. Do you think they inherited it due to the redirects? Is it possible that Google will sort things out over some time, given the fact that the new pages have correct hreflangs? Is there stuff we could do to help ranking in the correct country markets?

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ParisChildress
                              1
                            • LesleyPaone

                              Schema markup concerning category pages on an ecommerce site

                              We are adding json+ld data to an ecommerce site and myself and one of the other people working on the site are having a minor disagreement on things. What it comes down to is how to mark up the category page. One of us says it needs to be marked up with as an Itempage, https://schema.org/ItemPage  The other says it needs to be marked up as products, with multiple product instances in the schema, https://schema.org/Product The main sticking point on the Itemlist is that Itemlist is a child of intangible, so there is a feeling that should be used for things like track listings or other arbitrary data.

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LesleyPaone
                              2
                            • viatrading1

                              Merging Pages and SEO

                              Hi, We are redesigning our website the following way: Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
                              e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
                              Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
                              e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other So we are merging multiples pages into one.
                              What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible) e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
                              Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change? Thank you,

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
                              0
                            • BeckyKey

                              Too many on page links

                              Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey
                              1
                            • jagdecat

                              I have a lot of spammy links coming to my 404 page (the URLs have been removed now). Should i re-direct to Home?

                              I have a lot of spammy links pointing at my website according to MOZ. Thankfully all of them were for some URLs that we've long since removed so they're hitting my 404. Should i change the 404 with a 301 and Re-Direct that Juice to my home page or some other page or will that hurt my ranking?

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jagdecat
                              0
                            • Sika22

                              PDF or HTML Page?

                              One of our sales team members has created a 25 page word document as a topical page.  The plan was to make this into an html page with a table of contents.  My thoughts were why not make it a pdf?  Is there any con to using a PDF vs an html page?  If the PDF was properly optimized would it perform just as well?  The goal is to have folks click back to our products and hopefully by after reading about how they work.

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sika22
                              0
                            • BeytzNet

                              How to properly link to products from category pages?

                              Hi All, We have an e-commerce website and the category pages are built so that there is a product image and below it there is the title. Both the image and the title are in a href (each on its own). I encountered the following unfinished discussion here at MOZ:
                              http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-optimize-achor-text-links-on-ecommerce-category-page#post-93758 The discussion states that its improper. The question is - if it is wrong then why? (maybe because Google will give its weight to the image anchor instead of the text anchor since it is higher in the page). The other question is how to resolve the matter?
                              Should I add nofollow to the image href? Thanks

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
                              0
                            • Visually

                              Are there any negative effects to using a 301 redirect from a page to another internal page?

                              For example, from http://www.dog.com/toys to http://www.dog.com/chew-toys. In my situation, the main purpose of the 301 redirect is to replace the page with a new internal page that has a better optimized URL. This will be executed across multiple pages (about 20). None of these pages hold any search rankings but do carry a decent amount of page authority.

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Visually
                              0

                            Get started with Moz Pro!

                            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                            Start my free trial
                            Products
                            • Moz Pro
                            • Moz Local
                            • Moz API
                            • Moz Data
                            • STAT
                            • Product Updates
                            Moz Solutions
                            • SMB Solutions
                            • Agency Solutions
                            • Enterprise Solutions
                            • Digital Marketers
                            Free SEO Tools
                            • Domain Authority Checker
                            • Link Explorer
                            • Keyword Explorer
                            • Competitive Research
                            • Brand Authority Checker
                            • Local Citation Checker
                            • MozBar Extension
                            • MozCast
                            Resources
                            • Blog
                            • SEO Learning Center
                            • Help Hub
                            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                            • How-to Guides
                            • Moz Academy
                            • API Docs
                            About Moz
                            • About
                            • Team
                            • Careers
                            • Contact
                            Why Moz
                            • Case Studies
                            • Testimonials
                            Get Involved
                            • Become an Affiliate
                            • MozCon
                            • Webinars
                            • Practical Marketer Series
                            • MozPod
                            Connect with us

                            Contact the Help team

                            Join our newsletter
                            Moz logo
                            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                            • Accessibility
                            • Terms of Use
                            • Privacy

                            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.