Which is better? One dynamically optimised page, or lots of optimised pages?
-
For the purpose of simplicity, we have 5 main categories in the site - let's call them A, B, C, D, E.
Each of these categories have sub-category pages e.g. A1, A2, A3.
The main area of the site consists of these category and sub-category pages.
But as each product comes in different woods, it's useful for customers to see all the product that come in a particular wood, e.g. walnut. So many years ago we created 'woods' pages. These pages replicate the categories & sub-categories but only show what is available in that particular wood. And of course - they're optimised much better for that wood.
All well and good, until recently, these specialist page seem to have dropped through the floor in Google. Could be temporary, I don't know, and it's only a fortnight - but I'm worried.
Now, because the site is dynamic, we could do things differently.
We could still have landing pages for each wood, but of spinning off to their own optimised specific wood sub-category page, they could instead link to the primary sub-category page with a ?search filter in the URL. This way, the customer is still getting to see what they want.
Which is better?
One page per sub-category? Dynamically filtered by search.
Or lots of specific sub-category pages?
I guess at the heart of this question is? Does having lots of specific sub-category pages lead to a large overlap of duplicate content, and is it better keeping that authority juice on a single page? Even if the URL changes (with a query in the URL) to enable whatever filtering we need to do.
-
Hi Jonathan, Thanks for your question!
The answer depends on:
- The demand: With the search behavior of your users: Do they search for your product using the type of wood in their queries? For example: "Product + Wood Type"? If your users use those terms and queries to search for your products then it would compensate to enable them specifically to be indexable instead of using just a filter that could be non-indexable in many ways (to avoid the crawling of pages that are not meant to be ranked anyway and control your crawl budget).
- The supply: The availability of products and content that you have to match those queries: Do you have enough unique products to feature for each type of wood (or whatever criteria or subcategory) that you have identified that your users search for? Would it be considered a "low quality content" page with little value and offer by the users? With no unique description? Would they end-up penalized by Panda if you decide to index them?
If you identify that there's a demand for those specific type of products that would compensate that you specifically enable these pages to be indexable and rank for them and at the same time you have enough supply, with products and descriptive content to feature in them and satisfy your users, then yes, the best would be to create a static structure for these sub-types or sub-categories, instead of just non-indexable filters. If it's not the case, then the best would be to allow your products to be browsed using them, but without indexing these pages specifically.
Would this answer your question? If you can give me more specific examples of the category levels or more specific scenario (without giving specific brand or company names if you don't want or can't) I would be able to give you a more specific answer.
Thanks!
-
Thank you for your answer. I'm more looking for what the latest view is on best SEO architecture...
To concentrate it all onto a single dominant page (which has dynamically controlled content via search)...
or spread it widely on lots of specifically optimised pages - with the concern that the SEO 'love' may be spread too thinly. -
Hi Jonathan,
I am also in the Woodbusiness and my set-up is as follows:
Firstly I focus on the main category pages: www.company.com/categoryA etc..
Than I made for every wood specie pages aswell: company.com/woodA etc.. This generates good traffic from people who are looking for specific products in a specific type of wood
Now I am mainly focussing on product pages for my experience is that how more specific the traffic is the better the conversion rates become:
company.com/category1/woodA-productA-size
My product names all begin with the sort of wood than the product (door, table, etc...) and last the exact measurements.
This works better for me than the subcategories.
Hope it helps. Good luck!
Tymen
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
-
2 Similar Pages
Hello, I have two very similar pages. The first page is an apartment rental page with a map, rental listings and some neighborhood data below. The neighborhood data includes useful info about the area with photos, text about the area, crime rates, avg. rental rates, etc. The second page is a neighbourhood guide that includes virtually the same data as the rental page, but in longer form ie. more photos, more text, etc. I want the rental page to rank, while ranking the neighborhood page is not important as it would be used more for link bait. But since the information on the two pages is the same, I don't want them to compete with each other. I'm thinking of putting a cannonical tag on the neighborhood page pointing back to the rental page. Is that the correct thing to do in this instance? Thanks for your help. J
On-Page Optimization | | torontojon0 -
On-page Optimisation for Keywords That Are Not Natural Language
I would like to know your thoughts on optimising a page for a keyword phrase that is not how you would normally write it. When someone searches they tend to use the (no pun intended) key words relating to their query rather than natural language. Using these keywords leads to copy that doesn't read well but not doing so gets you a poor mark on On-page graders like Moz. My clients target an international market but are region specific so, for example, I might want to optimise for 'safari lodge zambia' or variations of that. Alternatively it might be optimising for a specific tour so the keyword might include a region highlight and the 'safari' or 'tour' qualifier which again can sometimes be problematic. In the title, I would normally use the name of the tour | company name but that may not match an exact likely keyword search and in the main copy/description it would be unnatural to incorporate the keyword phrase.
On-Page Optimization | | intergise0 -
We have 5 postions on page 2 in a google search, but none on page 1\. How can we fix this?
For one of our most important key phrases we have 5 listings on page 2 but none on page 1. We are an ecommerce company, the key phrase we're trying for is a Top Level Category name for us, so the 5 links we have on googles second page for the key phrase (in order) are the appropriate top level category page, the sites home page and than three sub categories of that top level category. So while that all makes sense, can't we convince google to concentrate all that link power/juice into just the top level category page? Hopefully bumping it to first page rank? The 5 ranks are 11-15
On-Page Optimization | | absoauto0 -
Product page optimalisation
Throughout the years our website kept on growing this has led to product pages that have so much sub-pages that nobody is able to really get a good idea of the product. We are working on a new website where the visitor is central. Together with a usability partner we have down sized the preferred data to fit on one page with a tabular system with a maximum of 4 taps. My question will this affect our find ability if we go from 10 to 15 sub-pages to one main page
On-Page Optimization | | TiasNimbas0 -
Faq page
We are redoing our faq page and we were trying to decide on the best format. 1. Create each question on a separate page 2. Create one page with all the question and have the questions expand 3. Create different faq category pages (like 4) and divide the questions between them From my perspective #1 seems the best ---. you can create hyper relevant content for the user and optimize each question really well Any experience with this?
On-Page Optimization | | Morris770 -
301 redirects from several sub-pages to one sub-page
Hi! I have 14 sub-pages i deleted earlier today. But ofcourse Google can still find them, and gives everyone that gives them a go a 404 error. I have come to the understading that this wil hurt the rest of my site, at least as long as Google have them indexed. These sub-pages lies in 3 different folders, and i want to redirect them to a sub-page in a folder number 4. I have already an htaccess file, but i just simply cant get it to work! It is the same file as i use for redirecting trafic from mydomain.no to www.mydomain.no, and i have tried every kind of variation i can think of with the sub-pages. Has anyone perhaps had the same problem before, or for any other reason has the solution, and can help me with how to compose the htaccess file? 🙂 You have to excuse me if i'm using the wrong terms, missing something i should have seen under water while wearing a blindfold, or i am misspelling anything. I am neither very experienced with anything surrounding seo or anything else that has with internet to do, nor am i from an englishspeaking country. Hope someone here can light up my path 🙂 Thats at least something you can say in norwegian...
On-Page Optimization | | MarieA1 -
Why is this page ranking highest?
I've just used Open Site Explorer to compare some sites whose (unpaid) Google ranking I aspire to. They all have higher authority than my site, but the top ranking site out of the 3 I've looked at has the lowest Page Authority, hardly and links (when the others have hundreds), lowest page rank and lowest page trust. In fact, when you look at the top ranking page (ranks #1), it does not even have the search term in it as a complete phrase. One thing I do notice is that it does have 100,000s of linking root domains from one linking root domain. So how can it rank number one on Google?
On-Page Optimization | | Beemer0 -
Page titles and descriptions
A website has several wigets to show Each wiget with its own page The wigets mostly just vary in size How would you suggest titles be done? Example: Wiget 1ft Wiget 2ft Wiget 3 ft an so on........ Would this trigger a duplicate content issue given “Wiget” leads in the page title?
On-Page Optimization | | APICDA0