Home Page & Most Important Category Page Cannibalizing Each Other
-
OK, so here goes. We have an odd situation on our hands. Our website sells a product technically known as "nail polish strips". We are a small player at the moment, but the reviews we've gotten in "side-by-side" comparisons vs. the big boys have been crazy, and literally always in our favor.
Now the issue.....
The best way to describe our product as mentioned above is they are Nail Polish Strips. Our domain name includes the term "Nail Strips" in it. Of the 200+ bloggers that have done reviews and provided us links, about 80% or so have linked to the home page, most just using our websites name, some have been nice enough to actually use keyword terms like nail polish strips.
Moral of the story, for the term nail polish strips, our link profile would indicate to the google machine that our home page is stronger for this term.
THE BIG ISSUE HOWEVER......
Our main category on the site that shows products is the page we originally intended to optimize for the term Nail Polish Strips. And our aim was going to be to optimize our home page for something else, like maybe plain old Nail Strips.
THE BIGGER ISSUE......
At any given moment, Google is having a hard time figuring it out. Based on our link profile, we should be on page one, but what we're seeing is today, it's our Nail Polish Strips category page that ranks for that term, and tomorrow that listing will be replaced with our home page. Literally, last night the home page was on the top of page two, and today, the category page is on the middle of page two. They keep flip flopping. Sometimes they both appear within the first 3 pages, sometimes only one appears on page two, the other drops out of the top 10 pages.
OUR THINKING IS.......
Our home page obviously has more strength and if the google machine is even implying they like it for that term, we might as well accommodate that. Keyword spy shows this term has a volume of around 18,000 searches. The term isn't hugely competitive, so we planned to 301-redirect the current category page URL that is competing with the home page, to the home page, and re-create and optimize the category page for something different, like Nail Polish Stickers or something to that effect.
THE FINAL ISSUE.......
The term stickers in this industry as it relates to our product has been the victim of a negative PR campaign because the big boys (or girls) are trying to say "Nail Stickers" are garbage as opposed to "Nail Polish Strips". The problem is Nail Stickers gets a lot more traffic. So we figured, we'd optimize the category page for Nail Polish Stickers, and explain in the text, that despite what some of our competitors say, just because we're using the word "stickers" to describe them, doesn't mean they are bad, so on and so forth. I ONLY MENTION THIS SO YOU SEE WHY I'M HESITANT TO PULL THE TRIGGER ON OUR ABOVE FIX.
I know this is long, and I'm not doing a great job of putting it in to words, but any insight will help. I'm supposed to pull the trigger today or tomorrow on this re-direct and new strategy, but don't want to do so until I get some of my fellow ninja's opinions.
-
I think you are missing my point. The Nail Stickers page does not need to be a list of links to products like your other page as that is not the product you are providing.
Make it a page that talks about the differences. You can make it unique. Start a campaign about "Friends Don't Let Friends Wear Nail Stickers". Make it funny even. Why not show pictures of bad "Nail Stickers" and have users submit. Think about it and you will be able to setup a separate but complementary page that is different. Beat your competitors at their own game.
-
Problem being, the nail polish strips and stickers are the same product. It's just that Nail Stickers gets a boat load more traffic than Nail Polish Strips. In the public's eye, they don't really know the difference, but those that do would be alienated because they have a bad association with stickers. It's a conundrum that we're in.
We didn't want to have a whole 2nd page that listed the same exact products, just optimized for a different keyword. Post-Panda that's a bad practice.
But honestly, our competitors that are bashing stickers are just trying to make sure people don't mix up this new type of product with the old more inferior stickers.
-
My gut agrees with you to 301 the Nail Polish Strips category page to the home page. If you could not do that, say you needed the category page for site navigation, then use the canonical link (Google thinks of it as a 301). The 301 would be more solid - also on the home page setup a canonical to self link.
On the other keyword, just setup another page and optimize for that keyword separately. Talk em up! If anything you do a whole post on why you think stickers sucks and so they should look at your ... wait for it .... Nail Polish Strips! I think you can turn that negative into a huge positive and the optimization can be setup separately for those keywords etc. Your sticker page will be on a different URL and with optimization on a different term so it should not be a problem.
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
-
Submitting pages to google to expidite them finding links to my site
Is it a good practice to submit a page linking to my site to expedite google finding the link or is it better to wait for the google spider to find it? Thanks, Ron!
Link Building | | Ron100 -
One page hit with 10K no follow spam links, should we disavow?
Hi everyone, I'd like your opinions on the best way to handle this situation: One particular site page just got hit with 10,000 no follow spammy backlinks over 10 days time. I've read that it's pointless to use the disavow tool on no follow links (since it basically does the same thing) but we want Google to be aware that this WAS NOT US and we don't want to be penalized for these spammy links. Couple of questions: 1. Do we send backlink removal requests to each domain webmaster? 2. Should we skip removal requests and move right to disavow? 3. Should we take other action? As a site we have NEVER used any black hat SEO tactics over a 15 year history and have many HQ do follow and no follow links to the site and this particular page. Thanks for any suggestions in advance!!
Link Building | | geteducated0 -
Having pages in the footer
Hello, I have a website , and some keywords that im targeting i want to create separate pages for, so i can have good quality content on there, but at the same time i dont really want to have those pages in my header menu, its just for the Search Engines to see the quality page, with a keywords im targeting. So can i just have those pages in my footer menu? whats your opinion on this ? Thanks
Link Building | | vlad_mezoz0 -
Should I link from my blog back to my product pages?
Hello... I just installed a blog on my Magento site. My question is whether or not i should be linking within posts on the blog back to the product or category pages that i am talking about...from an SEO perspective. If in my post i am talking about flashlights being important when preparing for a storm, should i link the word flashlights to the flashlight category on my site? I know I can do this, the question is should i, from google's perspective. A) should i link the word (flashlights) to that category on my page B) should i put a line at the bottom of every post that says something like "if you are interested in purchasing flashlights, visit this link" and hyperlink that whole sentence... THANKS!
Link Building | | Prime850 -
Multiple KW's , on-page and anchor text
Hello, For each page on my site, I've targeted one primary keyword and three to four secondary keywords. All of the keywords variants are tightly themed. With some on-page, I've ranked page two or three for all of the keywords and many are starting to convert based on Analytics data. Each page scores an "A" using the SEOmoz KW targeting tool for the "primary keyword only". For secondary keywords, I've only included words but not the complete keyword. For example, if the primary keyword is "blue green widgets" and the secondary keyword is "get blue green widgets", I've included the word "get" throughout the copy to target the secondary keyword. My questions are... Should I include each secondary keyword once in the copy and not just the word "get" for example? Just wondering if there is a better approach to target all of the keywords via on-page. When getting links to each page, how would you vary the anchor text to target all of the keywords, primary and secondary? Thanks!
Link Building | | ShaneO0 -
Link Location: In main page or inner "Link" page?
My question is what´s best of Link Building: have it in main page or in internal Link Pages. I have the problem that have to reduce the number of outgoing links in my mainpage to rank better, but do not want to miss any linkjuice. How Linking in Main Page or Internal Pages affects SERP for your website? And should they be Follow or not Follow? Thanks in advance Maria Jesus
Link Building | | goperformancelabs0 -
Inbound Links from Web Pages Based in Other Countries
I have noticed that some of my competitors have in-bound links to their sites from high PageRanked websites. But when I investigate the websites, they are based overseas, to be mainly used for linking. Does it hurt them that the sites are based overseas despite the high Page Rank?
Link Building | | findachristianjob0
