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.
Blog is outranking ecommerce store
-
My client has a blog that posts information about products to support its ecommerce store.
The blog's main purpose is to support the products listed on the main website, but it has become so strong that its posts sometimes rank in the SERPS in place of the website product page, which is undesirable.
The blog posts always link to the product that they are supporting. Are there any other methods, other than doing a 301, that could help the product page to rank instead of the blog post?
-
Thanks Doug,
I will perhaps try having the links removed from the product page and see if that helps.
-
Without taking a look at the site and the content you've got it's hard to talk specifics, but you might want to test removing the links from the product pages to the blog. After all, you want people to add the products to their cart - not drift off into the blog.
(Of course. Depends on how well the blog supports people purchasing decisions, and promotes your offerings etc,)
In one of your response to Greg you say: "if there are not many reviews available for a product but my client has reviewed the product and posted it to their blog, Google will prefer that to the product page itself."
This makes me suspect that it's just the weight of relevant copy on the page that's causing Google to view the blog page as more authoritative. I'd also guess (gut feeling) that having links from your product pages to your blog is also going to make is less clear to Google which should be the authoritative page.
-
It's possible that we could add the content to the product pages. Perhaps it could be added to the product page first and then posted to the blog with the website being specified as the canonical link.
-
Thanks for the suggestions about analysing the different traffic once it lands on the product pages, I hadn't thought of that.
The setup is that content is added to the blog and linked back to the relevant product page. The blog content is tagged with the name of the product and then any content with the specified tag appears on the product page via an rss feed for that tag.
You're right about different stages of the buying cycle and this is why the supporting content is posted. We have tested some CTA banners with reasonable success but need to find a successful way to implement this feature in wordpress without adding an image file each time.
-
Nope content is written afresh and not copied at all from manufacturers.
There is the option for customers to leave reviews, although currently no scheme.org markup to add it to the metadata.
What makes you think that a 301 to the product pages will stop them from being indexed. I have 301'd other pages in the past without it casing problems?
-
I'm not sure what's causing the blog posts to outrank - in most cases it is the other way around. I think Google just prefers certain type of content in some instances - e.g if there are not many reviews available for a product but my client has reviewed the product and posted it to their blog, Google will prefer that to the product page itself.
-
This is a nice problem to have.
Think of the blog page as a landing page and as Robert suggested, link to the product so they can buy.
I'm curious how the keywords differ for each page. Whatever is being done on the blog pages successfully - can you do similar things to product pages that are not being blogged?
-
One solution would be to put this supporting information onto the product pages (and 301) but...
This might be more of an opportunity than a problem!
Not everyone searching for a product is actually looking to buy now. Recognising that different people will be in different stages of the buying cycle and creating content to support and more these people towards your sales pages.
Make sure that your blog posts also sell - both the products and also your offering/usp.
As well as just having a link - make sure it's an obvious call to action with a clear proposition too. if they want to go ahead any buy the product - give them a reason why they should buy from you.
Your blog posts might provide you with a great opportunity to communicate the added value, authority and trust in your brand to your prospective customer.
As well as having a link at the bottom - make sure that you've also got a clear and obvious "looking to buy now?" CTA above the fold for those competitive/impulsive people who do want to buy now!
What's happening when people arrive on your blog pages, how long so they spend on them, are they moving on to your product pages?
Is there a difference in the conversion rate for people entering via the blog and going on to your product page vs those that arrive directly on your product pages?
-
If the product descriptions are more or less copied from the manufacturer, then you may need to rewrite them and find ways to add user-generated content there, e.g. ratings and reviews, etc.
If you 301 the blog pages, then there won't be a blog to read and Google won't index the product pages.
-
What's causing the blog posts to rank above the product pages? Better information? More in-depth photos? Reviews? More content in general? If it's any of these, then think about you can apply these positives to the product pages so people start sharing and linking to those more.
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
-
Do Wordpress sites outrank SquareSpace?
I was a big fan of Wordpress. I used it for 10 years. However, because I run a very small business, the constant upkeep needed on WP in the end started to frustrate me in the end, so I moved to SquareSpace. However, I am beginning to question my decision, as one of my sites is struggling really badly, and I mean badly. The other sites are okay. So I started asking around, and most people are saying there shouldn't be a difference. A few people have said their Wordpress sites always outranks their SquareSpace sites. Then I read what Rand Fishkin said in the below Twitter thread, now I am even more confused. I am very reluctant to move to Wordpress, its just so much hassle. But at the same time, if a site doesn't get much traffic then it's useless. https://twitter.com/drew_pickard/status/991659074134556673 https://twitter.com/randfish/status/991974456477278209 Please let me know your thoughts and experience.
Web Design | | RyanUK0 -
Does the blog widget with latest blog-posts at homepage helps in SEO?
Hi all, We are planning to add a widget at our website homepage which displays recent blog-posts with dates. Google favours new and latest content. So will these consistent new posts help in improving website ranking? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Moving to new site. Should I take old blog posts with me?
Our company website has needed a complete overhaul for some time now and the new one is almost ready to go live. We also have a separate "news" site that is houses around 800 blog posts and news items. (That news site will be thrown away because it's on a completely different domain and causes confusion.) So we have a main site with about 100 decent blog posts and a separate news site with 800 poor posts. I plan on bringing all the main site blog posts over to the new site (both WordPress), but my question is whether or not to bring over the news site posts? All, handful, none? Another issue is the news site doesn't have Google Analytics, so I'm not sure if any posts actually generate traffic, but I can from the main site we do get some referrals from it. As far as quality of content goes, it's poor. Not sure who wrote it all, but it's mainly text press releases that aren't very interesting. Is it worth bringing over for SEO purposes or simply delete the site and create a mass redirect so all of those pages will direct to the new website's blog page? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | codyfrew0 -
Multi region stores, one domain
hi all Wondering if I could get some options on the pros and cons of using one domain for two stores targeting different regions. My website is a fashion retailer, targted at the female market. In addition to the stores the site has a number of blogs, articles etc on. At present we have a co.uk domain and a .com which targets the US market. The trouble with this split approach is having seo two sites at once, in addition to adding content to two sites etc. we are considering combining the stores into one domain and the having the U.S. Shop at /us and UK store at /UK - in wmt we will specifiy the directories as targeted to a specific location, the hotel language etc will be showing UK and U.S. English to further help geo targeting. we are thinking that, in theory, managing just one site will mean it's easier to build the authority and brand name. Pretty much all of the blog and article content is non region specific so it is relevant to both markets, it will also reduce the need to generate unique content for two sites at once. Is there any major downside to merging the sites like this. At present the UK site is da 4 and U.S. site da 0 - they are both pretty new and one of the problems we have at the moment is building up two sites at once. i welcome any opinions. thanks. Carl
Web Design | | WonkyDog0 -
Help with Schema.org on Ecommerce Products
I’m looking for ways of using schema.org with products that have pricing options. There appear to be two main problems 1) Whilst colour, width, height and depth are all catered for, size appears to be missing – how can we mark up products that are available in sizes that aren’t necessarily covered by width/height/depth (e.g. shoe size). Also, what if the product is available in different finishes – technically, these could not properly be described as colours so how could we mark them up? 2) There doesn’t seem to be any particularly good way of marking up pricing options that are displayed on the same product detail page. For e.g. if a pricing option table is used like this: | ID | Colour | Price 001-red | Red | £3.99 001-green | Green | £4.49 001-blue | Blue | £4.99 | I can mark up each row as an offer, and give each offer a price and sku or mpn, but then I can’t use itemprop=”color” to describe exactly what the option is. Would I just use itemprop=”name” in this case and abandon color altogether (even though it’s technically supposed to be describing the colour of the product and not the name of the offer)? I suppose another way I could approach it would be to mark up each row as an individual product, and assign each one an offer with the details as described above but then the containing page would effectively look like a separate product – which it isn’t. Any help or advice on this would be very much appreciated
Web Design | | paulbaguley0 -
B2C directory website adding B2B ecommerce sub-domain
Hey fellow Mozzers, Just got back from Mozcon and enjoyed getting to know a handful of you. I do in house SEO for a B2B wholesaler. We have a B2C website directory for homeowners to locate contractors to work on their home. On the site we have a products section which includes tech specs but not pricing. Our contractors have been asking us to add the ability to purchase their items online, so we are wanting to add a B2B sub-domain (store.domain.com) to our website for the contractors to purchase products online. We do not want consumers to be able to purchase the items and will have pricing behind a log in. I have a few questions that I'm hoping you might be able to answer: 1. What would be the best practice to not have duplicate content errors with products that are listed on both sites? Should we rel-canonical items shown on both domains or do something else?
Web Design | | AC_Pro
2. We are not against having the new site be crawled, but will Google be upset/ding rankings because pricing is behind a log-in? Are there certain best-practices for B2B ecommerce sites?
3. Do you know of any other sites that have done this/do you have any recommendations on how to best implement this?0 -
WordPress blog hosted on GoDaddy domain mapping help
We set up a WP blog that's hosted through GoDaddy. For various reasons, we purchased a URL to use to get through the technical build and set up and are trying to map that to a subdomain of our company website. (We can't host it on our own server, unfortunately). My question is: for WP blogs hosted via WP you can buy a domain mapping upgrade and I'm trying to find a similar plugin that could offer the same thing that would apply to our GoDaddy hosting and point to our subdomain (GD apparently doesn't offer the domain mapping). Anyone have any thoughts, please?
Web Design | | josh-riley0 -
Ecommerce Style Wordpress But No Shopping Cart.
Wondering if anyone knows if you can purchase an ecommece style wordpress theme, but not use the shopping cart portion or display pricing. We would like to display our website how an ecommerce is set up, but at this time, we do not sell anything online. We are considering in the near future to sell half of our products. And this would not be very large. Or can ecommerce be added to any wordpress theme. ?
Web Design | | hfranz0