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
-
Why rankings dropped from 2 page to 8th page and no penalization?
Dear Sirs, a client of mine for more than 7 years used to have his home page (www.egrecia.es) between 1st and 2nd page in the Google Serps and suddenly went down to 8 page. The keyword in question is "Viajes a Grecia". It has a good link profile as we have built links in good newspapers from Spain, and according to Moz it has a 99% on-page optimization for that keyword, why why why ??? What could I do to solve this? PD: It has more than 20 other keywords in 1st position, so why this one went so far down? Thank you in advance !
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tintanus0 -
One Page Design / Single Product Page
I have been working in a project. Create a framework for multi pages that I have So here is the case
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Roman-Delcarmen
Most of them are single page product / one page design wich means that I dont have many pages to optimize. All this sites/ pages follow the rules of a landing page optimization because my main goals is convert as many users as I can. At this point I need to optimize the SEO, the basic stuff such as header, descriptions, tittles ect. But most of my traffic is generated by affiliates, which is good beacuse I dont have to worrie to generate traffic but if the affiliate network banned my product, then I lose all my traffic. Put all my eggs in the same basket is not a good idea. Im not an seo guru so that is the reason Im asking whic strategies and tactics can give me results. All kind of ideas are welcome1 -
No designated 404 page, but any made-up URL path displays homepage Good / Bad?
I have a custom website where if you type in companyxyz.com/_any-made-up-url _it displays the homepage. So then you will see the homepage and in the URL bar the made up URL path remains visible "companyxyz.com/any-made-up-url" Is this good or bad or not an issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Sitemaps and dynamic pages
Hi all, I have a gigantic website and they are adding another subdirectory to it. My question is regarding html sitemaps for better optimisation. 1. Should a keyword focussed front end (html) sitemap be made for all the dynamic URLs or 2. Should a category focussed front end (html) sitemap be made for all the dynamic URLs what would be your approach to doing a sitemap with thousands of pages with a structure like Directory > Sub directory > Subdirectory > Files
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
Schema for Product Categories
We have an E commerce site and we have started to implement Schema's. I've looked around quite a bit but could not find any schema's for product categories. Would there be any schema's to add besides an image, description, & occasional PDF?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mike.Bean0 -
SEO and Internal Pages
Howdy Moz Fans (quoting Rand), I have a weird issue. I have a site dedicated to criminal defense. When you Google some crimes, the homepage comes up INSTEAD of the internal page directly related to that type of crime. However, on other crimes, the more relevant internal page appears. Obviously, I want the internal page to appear when a particular crime is Googled and NOT the homepage. Does anyone have an explanation why this happens? FYI: I recently moved to WP and used a site map plugin that values the internal pages at 60% (instead of Weebly, which has an auto site map that didn't do that). Could that be it? I have repeatedly submitted the internal pages via GWT, but nothing happens. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
High number of items per page or low number with more category pages?
In SEO terms, what would be the best method: High number of items per page or low number with more pages? For example, this category listing here: http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/90/fsx-civil-aircraft/ It has 10 items per page. Would there be any benefit of changing a listing like that to 20 items in order to decrease the number of pages in the category? Also, what other ways could you increase the SEO of category listings like that?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640 -
Static index page or not?
Are there any advantages of dis-advantages to running a static homepage as opposed to a blog style homepage. I have be running a static page on my site with the latest posts displayed as links after the homepage content. I would like to remove the static page and move to a more visually appealing homepage that includes graphics for each post and the posts droppping down the page like normal blogs do. How will this effect my site if I move from a static page to a more dynamic blog style page layout? Could I still hold the spot I currently rank for with the optimized index content if I turn to a more traditional blog format? cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoCoGuru0