Wordpress SEO: Category page + Product page or only category page?
-
Trying to improving my website's ranks on google for a specific keyword (e.g. Samsung S6), I'm thinking about doing some experiments. I've a wordpress based blog. Now, I've the category "Samsung S6" (url: example.com/samsung-s6), with only the latest 6 news (with excerpts) + pagination. This ranks good, but it's a bit ugly as a landing page and I want a better rank. I could improve this page by customizing the template and adding some static text, but it could be a time-consuming solution considering that I'm using a third party theme and I should check this every update. Also, it's harder to customize this page then the next solution:
I'm thinking about creating a new page Samsung S6 (url: example.com/samsungs6). This page will contain a product overlay (e.g. RAM, HD, screen size etc.), + product description with features and a small review of it's elements (e.g. camera description with results, suggested applications etc.) + some images/youtube videos + latest 6 news (without excerpts) + some links to other relevant pages in my website for that product, including a link to the category page.
What will happen in terms of SEO? Any idea if the new page could rank better than the category page, considering that it has more static elements? Not sure if google could detects duplicates, or two page comepting for the same keyword on the same website is a bad thing. Which are your ideas? Is it ok to have two pages competing for the same keyword on the same website?
-
If you wanna take it safe, promote both pages and apply the canonical in few weeks if you see that the product page has not managed to over rank the category page. Also note that internal penalisation is only to the newly added page and not to all the website.
-
Ok, thanks for your help. Canonical seems to be the way!
Just the final question: from what I knew, canoncial should be used for duplicate page content. Fact is, page content will be quite different. Is this a problem?
I'm also thinking that, being in wordpress, every article will have a link to the Samsung S6 category (wordpress shows a link to the category that an article belong to). I can't remove it, neither change this with the page url. Mmh. Best solution should be to be able to rank both pages, but I'm afraid a lot about penalization. I'll add a link to this new page in the menu.
-
Yes if you apply the canonical, it will not appear in the SERPs.
By changing the category page to Samsung S6 News you could have the following results:
- The rankings will remain for the same category page.
- There will be a change towards the new product change but only if you allocate many links from the website but from other websites.
- Or, it could destroy even the current rankings as none of the two pages maybe fit to rank high for the given keywords.
Every change requires taking a risk. My action plan would be:
- to have many links from all the websites to this newly designed product page.
- ensure you have checked that technically the new page is optimised accordingly.
- issue a canonical tag from the category page to be the same as the product page.
- monitor and apply changes according to rankings
Hope you are successful at your task!
-
Ok, this is an option in the Yoast plugin so this can be done. Just one thing: in this way, the category page won't rank high, right?
What if I change the title of the category page to Samsung S6 News?
So:
Category page: title (Samsung S6 News), url (example.com/samsung-s6)
Product page: Title (Samsung S6), url (example.com/samsungs6)Couldn't this work?
-
I am now thinking the possibility of using a canonical tag, so for Google there is only one page, the new one that you are trying to promote. So both pages should have as a canonical the URL of the newly designed page! hope this helps
-
First of all, thanks for the reply. There's a problem: from an user point of view, the two pages would have a different utility. Users who know the product are only interested in the latest news, and would prefer the simple news list like it's in the category page. They don't want to read the specifications pf the product every time. On the other side, users that don't know the product would be more than happy to find a full description of it, with highlights on the features.
So, for the users, the two pages approach should be preferable. Mixing all the content in just one page could be bad for the user experience, with too many informations in just one page. Do you agree?
About wasting time/moneys: moneys aren't a problem, I'll do the edits by myself. Time, it is, but the quickest solution is the two page approach: I just need to do this once forever, while editing the category template in wordpress means to be forced to check it at every theme update.
-
To atart with the anwser, not recommended. Is best to have one single page ranking for such an important keyword. I would not worry so much about duplicate content, but more towards wasting your time and money.
Another solution is to develop this page, but force the page to take the roll of the category page. Maybe by issuing a 301 or just replacing the page. Am sure there is an easy way your developer could do this.
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
-
Is there a tool that can alert me whenever the first page of search results change for a certain search term in a specific region?
Is there a tool that can alert me whenever the first page of search results change for a certain search term in a specific region?
Keyword Research | | Amanda_Palmary0 -
Strategy for product content page development.
I have a project to work on product and landing pages for a website with 5000+ SKU's. I am looking to hire a content writer to do this but I want a strategy in place to develop these pages. I have googled a bit and they mostly talk about the body of the page. I am looking for best practices for the entire page, Title, H1, Meta and body. Any good tutorials for this type of project anyone can recommend? Anyone with experience doing this type of project? Thanks, Mark
Keyword Research | | mcg11030 -
Does "Using a dash in keyword name" affect SEO?
I sell machinery branded Co-matic. Most people search Comatic so I was wondering if I should change my keywords from Co-matic to Comatic. Would the change have a significant impact on SEO? Thanks!
Keyword Research | | kysizzle60 -
Creating a new page versus adding to existing page (for targeting a keyword phrase)
What are your considerations when deciding whether to create a brand new page versus adding content to an existing page when targeting a new keyword phrase on your site? My thought is that if it is mildly competitive, a new page would make more sense since you can optimize the title tags and URL. But if it is long tail and low competition, you would be better off to add a paragraph to an existing page to minimize diluting your website by adding more pages.
Keyword Research | | ProjectLabs0 -
Penalty for on-page optimizing too many pages?
Hey in the process of building a new site in the fitness niche - targeting keywords such as: <colgroup><col width="387"></colgroup>
Keyword Research | | monster99
| how to get a flat stomach |
| how to get rid of belly fat fast |
| how to get rid of belly fat for women |
| how to get rid of love handles fast |
| how to get skinny |
| how to have more energy |
| how to loose weight fast |
| how to lose love handles |
| how to lose love handles fast |
| how to lose lower belly fat | All these keywords get decent search volume. My question, alot of the content for these keywords would be similar for example - "how to get a flat stomach", "how to lose love handles" and "how to get skinny" would pretty much have similar content. I could build a single page for all these keywords but i loose all the ranking benefits from doing on-page optimization such as creating a page for each of these keywords and optimizing it for each of these keywords (e.g. putting the keyword in the URL and Title) But if i build individual pages, to me it doesn't look natural optimizing multiple pages for the keyword terms, plus i loose the benefits of building a single page (e.g. less costly, not as much outreach activity required, etc) You could argue however that if you create individual pages for each of these keywords you are addressing the query directly as theres a slight difference between "how to lose love handles and how to get a flat stomach. But i guess thats up to google to decide. So how would you approach this? Cheers, Chris0 -
SEO Strategy for a Small Budget
Hi Everyone, I have a considerable amount of clients that have a relatively small budget for SEO and was formulating a new strategy for them. Generally their sites are small < 10 pages, so to get them ranking I was thinking of doing the following: work with the client to choose up to 3 key phrases to target check the competition level of those phrases if they are fairly easy to rank for, pound those phrases to get them ranked. I would still include some variations of the text to get the long-tail phrases or plurals of words, but I was wondering if this would harm their overall rankings. Thanks Eric
Keyword Research | | MLTGroup0 -
Is using "-" in the title of a page to seperate targeted keywords bad for seo purposes?
For example "Dog-Leashes" Is that bad if I'm targeting dog leashes as my keywords.
Keyword Research | | ibex0 -
Start to SEO
I'm just starting out in SEO and would like some pointers as to where to start with things. I have a few sites that I've been passed to do some SEO stuff on and was wondering where people find the right keywords to optimise for.
Keyword Research | | Tinderbox0