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.
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-93758The 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
-
Dear Everett,
Can you supply the link to the article?
Thanks
-
Also see this page for more information on using named anchor links (i.e. page.html#image) to avoid the "first link counts" issue. This is what Alan Mosley is recommending. I think it is much safer than using CSS to try and "trick" search engines. You can put the image on product pages in a named anchor like #image.
Resources:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/3-ways-to-avoid-the-first-link-counts-rule
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-first-link-counts-rule-and-the-hash-sign
-
No problem, glad I could help!
-
Works amazing!!!!!
Thanks a lot for all of your help.
-
I would do something like this: http://jsfiddle.net/D7vMG/3/ (do you see the z-indexes? it makes sure the anchor is higher positioned then the paragraph.)
You can of course use only the <a>-tag and not a heading. In that case you can put the position: absolute on the a-tag.</a>
<a>Hope it helps! Good luck!</a>
-
THANKS!!! I've been working on it since your first reply
Last question (I'm a bit rude now) -
I also have price beneath "The New Ipad" anchor. Currently it is not in the href and I'm thinking of keeping it this way (which would mean it will be in the H3 but not in the href).
Also, the href's are simple href's not surrounded by h3's, What do you think? Changing them? (keeping the price outside the href but inside the H3)
It seems correct but changing would mean of a lot of anchors will be changed on the entire website... scarry
-
Yeah of course, you can style the link any way you want. Even hide it
although I wouldn't recommend that hehe.
I made this jsfiddle for you: http://jsfiddle.net/D7vMG/1/
good luck trying it yourself!
-
It is pretty much as if the anchor flows over the entire image.
I did this a while back on a dutch telecom website called typhone dot nl. Check it out, it's on the frontpage (the offer blocks all have it)
The H3 is just there as an example. If I just got an H1 above all products, i use h2's, if there is a h2, i use h3's. and so on.
-
That's what the css code above does, it puts the link beneath the image visually when users look at the site, while keeping the link above the image in the actual code.
-
I should not of said 2 pages, but it has been shown that both links will give link text relevancy.
The javascript link will be followed, it will not help
-
Is there a way to do so and having the link appearing beneath the image?
I don't want to change the design
-
Dear Alan,
If Google will see it as two pages I'm guessing I will need to add a canonical to the # version. Is that the case?
What about having the image with a javascript link? (location.href) or is that suspicious?
-
Dont use no-follow, you will just leak link juice.
One way around this, is to use a anchor # in your url for the image. like page.html#someterm
This will in fact give you link text relevancy for both, google will see this as 2 different pages.
Make sure you have alt text for the image.
This tataic and well as what x-com may in the future be seen as over optimization, so it may be tter to do somthing like this
Your link text
You can just link the whole lot in the one link.
Or move your text to above the image.
-
Thank you for the answer.
I'm not too strong with css besides for the basics,
what you mean is that the anchor will be displayed beneath the image for the user even though the code is placed before the image and also that clicking on the image will actually be like clicking on the anchor since its size includes the image???
Brilliant, it will also give more "engagement credit" to the anchor instead of splitting it (actually ppl usually clicking on the image).
By the way, do you put all of your products on the page as H3?
Thanks
-
Hi Noamflint, we develop a lot of e-commerce websites and I want to fill you in how we tackled this problem several months ago and how.
We deleted the anchor of the image! In our code it looks something like:
The New iPad
As you see at the moment there is no anchor on the image, but our clients do want this. because of usabilty. and people just love clicking images.
We solved this with CSS:
div { position: relative; padding-top: 30px; display: block; }
div h3 { position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; display: block; }
div h3 a { width: 200px; height: 230px; display: block; }
div img { width: 200px; height: 200px; display: block; }
This code above is pseudo of course, but i hope you see what we are trying to accomplish. The anchor tag is positioned absolute in the parent div. With the dimensions on it, the link is above the image, so when people hover the image. they automatically hover the link. Clicking in it, takes them to the detail page.
You should try it! Maybe it will help you out.
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
-
Remove Product & Category from URLS in Wordpress
Does anyone have experience removing /product/ and /product-category/, etc. from URLs in wordpress? I found this link from Wordpress which explains that this shouldn't be done, but I would like some opinions of those who have tried it please. https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/removing-product-product-category-or-shop-from-the-urls/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Best Practices for Title Tags for Product Listing Page
My industry is commercial real estate in New York City. Our site has 300 real estate listings. The format we have been using for Title Tags are below. This probably disastrous from an SEO perspective. Using number is a total waste space. A few questions:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-Should we set listing not no index if they are not content rich?
-If we do choose to index them, should we avoid titles listing Square Footage and dollar amounts?
-Since local SEO is critical, should the titles always list New York, NY or Manhattan, NY?
-I have red that titles should contain some form of branding. But our company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space. That would take up way too much space. Even "Metro Manhattan" is long. DO we need to use the title tag for branding or can we just focus on a brief description of page content incorporating one important phrase? Our site is: w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . c o m <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Turnkey Flatiron Tech Space | 2,850 SF $10,687/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Gallery, Office Rental | Midtown, W. 57 St | 4441SF $24055/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Open Plan Loft |Flatiron, Chelsea | 2414SF $12,874/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Tribeca Corner Loft | Varick Street | 2267SF $11,712/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| 275 Madison, LAW, P7, 3,252SF, $65 - Manhattan, New York |0 -
Links from non-indexed pages
Whilst looking for link opportunities, I have noticed that the website has a few profiles from suppliers or accredited organisations. However, a search form is required to access these pages and when I type cache:"webpage.com" the page is showing up as non-indexed. These are good websites, not spammy directory sites, but is it worth trying to get Google to index the pages? If so, what is the best method to use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxweb0 -
Should I use rel=canonical on similar product pages.
I'm thinking of using rel=canonical for similar products on my site. Say I'm selling pens and they are al very similar. I.e. a big pen in blue, a pack of 5 blue bic pens, a pack of 10, 50, 100 etc. should I rel=canonical them all to the best seller as its almost impossible to make the pages unique. (I realise the best I realise these should be attributes and not products but I'm sure you get my point) It seems sensible to have one master canonical page for bic pens on a site that has a great description video content and good images plus linked articles etc rather than loads of duplicate looking pages. love to hear thoughts from the Moz community.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mark_baird0 -
Outbound link to PDF vs outbound link to page
If you're trying to create a site which is an information hub, obviously linking out to authoritative sites is a good idea. However, does linking to a PDF have the same effect? e.g Linking to Google's SEO starter guide PDF, as opposed to linking to a google article on SEO. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | underscorelive0 -
Cross linking between categories
Is it useful for SEO to cross link between TOP level categories, let's say I have a Home page and then 2 sub categories, one about green widgets one about red widgets
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics
Should i create a link from the green widget to the red widget or should I leave those are separate silos ? I know that within a silo i need to cross link ( from green widget 1 to green widget 2 etc... ) but how about about from the main category to the other main category ?0 -
301 - should I redirect entire domain or page for page?
Hi, We recently enabled a 301 on our domain from our old website to our new website. On the advice of fellow mozzer's we copied the old site exactly to the new domain, then did the 301 so that the sites are identical. Question is, should we be doing the 301 as a whole domain redirect, i.e. www.oldsite.com is now > www.newsite.com, or individually setting each page, i.e. www.oldsite.com/page1 is now www.newsite.com/page1 etc for each page in our site? Remembering that both old and new sites (for now) are identical copies. Also we set the 301 about 5 days ago and have verified its working but haven't seen a single change in rank either from the old site or new - is this because Google hasn't likely re-indexed yet? Thanks, Anthony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Grenadi0 -
Should I prevent Google from indexing blog tag and category pages?
I am working on a website that has a regularly updated Wordpress blog and am unsure whether or not the category and tag pages should be indexable. The blog posts are often outranked by the tag and category pages and they are ultimately leaving me with a duplicate content issue. With this in mind, I assumed that the best thing to do would be to remove the tag and category pages from the index, but after speaking to someone else about the issue, I am no longer sure. I have tried researching online, but there isn't anything that provided any further information. Please can anyone with any experience of dealing with issues like this or with any knowledge of the topic help me to resolve this annoying issue. Any input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulRogers0