Category Pages in competition with Homepages
-
I am finding it a real uphill task with a few of our clients with there either product or category pages competing against other sites on main keywords.
The sites either categories or product specific pages are in direct competition with other sites homepages and I am finding it increasingly more difficult to break into positions.
What are other peoples experiences with this ? Do you feel the way the pages are ranked within the xml sitemap with priority could also be a factor.
-
Yeah sorry about that Garry - EGOL helped clarify.
-
thanks EGOL some great replies. On the sites in question it ranks NO1 for its major keyword on google .
Its a very competitive term in the supplements industry.
Whey protein which other competitors target from their homepages. The sites page is the highest ranking non "homepage"
-
alan I am well aware of the complexities (Granny and suck eggs) comes to mind
Not looking for a in depth response just wanted to know if anyone else has experienced this difficulty with category pages.
-
When I read the question I assumed that Garry was talking about the homepages, category pages and product pages of retail sites.
Really hard to get links into those types of pages - especially good links. However, informative pages on the same site can attract links from other websites - and if they are really informative attract enough links to compete.
Search for "hiking boots" and look for the REI page about how to pick a hiking boot.
If I was going to attack "poker" I would do it with an interactive probability game with feedback that every statistics professor on the planet would link to from his .edu webpages. "Don't go along with bets when the odds of drawing your needed card are smaller than the multiple of potential winnings compared to the size of the wager."
-
EGOL,
What did I not read in the question that allowed you the ability to provide a recommendation? We're talking multiple sites. In unknown markets. Without any insight into the quality of the on-site SEO or the off-site signals for these sites, right?
Just checking in because if I missed something and was way off in my response, I need to understand how that happened.
-
I've found that the best way to break in is to produce "information" pages that attract links.
That will get you into the difficult SERPs. Then you either feature a sales item or two on a content page or pull them into your retail pages with seductive ads or links.
A better alternative is an information site with a store.
-
Garry,
With all due respect, you're asking a question that is impossible to answer with anything resembling a valid, helpful answer. SEO is such a complex set of multiple factors, not the least of which is that every site is unique, every specific market is unique and every primary topic within every market has a unique set of circumstances determining why some sites show up higher than others.
Your situation could be due to improper information architecture, topical dilution, lack of off-site authority - or any of a host of other issues, or a combination of all or part of these.
The only way to know is for you to perform a proper audit for each site compared to each competitive landscape. Barring that, any answer you get here would be throwing darts on a wall while wearing a blindfold.
Without any more specific examples, there's just now way to point you in a healthy and wise direction.
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
-
Paginated Pages Page Depth
Hi Everyone, I was wondering how Google counts the page depth on paginated pages. DeepCrawl is showing our primary pages as being 6+ levels deep, but without the blog or with an infinite scroll on the /blog/ page, I believe it would be only 2 or 3 levels deep. Using Moz's blog as an example, is https://moz.com/blog?page=2 treated to be on the same level in terms of page depth as https://moz.com/blog? If so is it the https://site.comcom/blog" /> and https://site.com/blog?page=3" /> code that helps Google recognize this? Or does Google treat the page depth the same way that DeepCrawl is showing it with the blog posts on page 2 being +1 in page depth compared to the ones on page 1, for example? Thanks, Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyRSB0 -
How to Canonicalise all filter pages (URL parameters) to the main category
Hi guys, I am working on an e-commerce site that's running in Shopify. I noticed that the filter pages do not have canonical tags pointing to their respective main categories. I doubt that the action needed is to canonicalise each filter pages to the main category as it would take time (there are a lot of filter URLs involved). Do you know any technical coding to do in Shopify to have all filter pages canonicalise to its main category? Keen to hear from you. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brandonegroup0 -
How long will old pages stay in Google's cache index. We have a new site that is two months old but we are seeing old pages even though we used 301 redirects.
Two months ago we launched a new website (same domain) and implemented 301 re-directs for all of the pages. Two months later we are still seeing old pages in Google's cache index. So how long should I tell the client this should take for them all to be removed in search?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Liamis0 -
My homepage ranks but not my target page.
Hello, I have an issue with one my pages. I have a page about "Bike tours in France+ exclusively that has been existing for almost 8 years. Since day 1 I changed the web address a few times but I have the necessary redirect (actually only 1). I can't find this page (pretty much since day 1) on the keyword "Bike tours France" and I am wondering why ? However, I can find my homepage rank on "Bike tours France" even though it doesn't only talk about "Bike tours in France" instead of my page which is only about "Bike tours in France". I am wondering why only my homepage shows and not the other one. For information, I have about 30 % of my external links that say Bike tours France and that go to my homepage because when I started my website I was only doing "Bike tours in France" Could google say we don't care about your page about "Bike tours in France" because you got so many links to your page with the keywords "Bike tours France" and could it be why I don't see it rank. However, it is index but doesn't show up in search results ? Or could it be the fact that made many content changes over the years on this page and that google is saying I will rank you but it will take years because of so many changes. What can I do to make my page about "Bike tours in France" appear in search results for the keyword "Bike tours in France". Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
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 | | LesleyPaone2 -
Best way to link to 1000 city landing pages from index page in a way that google follows/crawls these links (without building country pages)?
Currently we have direct links to the top 100 country and city landing pages on our index page of the root domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
I would like to add in the index page for each country a link "more cities" which then loads dynamically (without reloading the page and without redirecting to another page) a list with links to all cities in this country.
I do not want to dillute "link juice" to my top 100 country and city landing pages on the index page.
I would still like google to be able to crawl and follow these links to cities that I load dynamically later. In this particular case typical site hiearchy of country pages with links to all cities is not an option. Any recommendations on how best to implement?0 -
Question about optimising an inner pages apposed to the homepage
Hi Everyone, I'm currently looking to optimise the inner page of a website opposed to the homepage itself. I was wondering if I should stick to some kind of link distribution? For instance, say my website is about widgets and the url is http://www.widgets.com, I want to optimise for a much easier "blue widgets" term on an inner page with the url: http://www.widgets.com/blue-widgets. Does google discriminate against a website with a higher number of links pointing to an inner page than the homepage? If so, what would you recommend a safe distribution between the two? Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated, Peter.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RoyalBlueCoffee0 -
Homepage with a lower PR?
Can anybody give me an example of 2-4 sites that have lower PR on the homepage and a higher PR on secondary pages (about us, etc)? And is there a way to search for such sites in Google? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VinceWicks0