E-commerce site structure & link juice: Bouncing off an idea
-
Hi guys,
Question from a new-comer in SEO. Summary of the situation:
- potential customers are searching for a generic product category (buy mountainbike) more often than a brand in that category (Specialized MTB).
- And the latter is searched more often than a specific product ('some specific product from Specialized brand').
- Both the brand pages and product pages are not ranking good
Then would it be a good idea to have the category pages only link to the brand pages? They may show the products, but the links wouldn't pass link juice. I'm not even sure if that is technically possible, but I wanted to figure out the merit first.
I'm hoping this would support the brand pages to rank better as they take in more volume. Please do feel free to teach me!
-
I'm still a little confused. Perhaps because we are thinking of different things when we say "category page"?
I think of "category page" as a special page in the flow a customer goes thru when they start on your home page. Like this: Home page (has links to all the categories) >>> Category page (has links to all the products in that category) >>> Product page (has complete description and the Buy button)
So in my view, it is perfectly normal for the Category page to have a link going out to each Product page it serves. That might be 5 products or it might be 50 products.
If you feel there are too many products showing on the Category page, then you can use Sub-Categories to decrease the number of links. Like this: Home page >>> Category page (has links to all the sub-category pages) >>> Sub-Category page (split logically, like Men's bikes and Women's Bikes, or Under $200 and $200 to $400 and Over $400, etc) >>> Product page
You may also want to check with your e-commerce system provider. If they don't have an arrangement that you like, there are lots of other e-commerce systems out there...
-
Thanks a lot Dana. And thank you for going beyond the question.
We offer vouchers for writing a review, but there's only a handfull of reviewed products per category.
Where could I find inspiration to make our brand & product pages more compelling? I can't make the question more specific atm as there is still a lot in the "I don't know that I don't know" quadrant
-
Thanks for your answers.
It's definitely a normal situation. However, in the current situation the category page shows the product, each product box contains a link to the product page.
So a category page with 50 products will have 50 links plus links to other categories in the menu and so on.
-
To clarify, my comment was not a suggestion, just a description of what is technically possible given Peter's original post. Hence my warning about using nofollow extensively for internal links.
Regards,
Chris
-
I agree with Gregory that this is a very typical ecommerce scenario. It's also very common to see the search volume greater for the generic terms and then less and less as things become more specific (down to specific models of bikes, for example). I disagree with Chris' suggestion regarding the use of the "nofollow" attribute, here's a Matt Cutts video explaining why: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022462.html - Matt Cutts reiterates, point blank, "I would not 'nofollow' internal links." [Period]
I would take a long hard look at the brand and product pages and try to figure out how to make them more compelling. Do you have customer reviews? Are they being cultivated (i.e. collected, posted, requested...regularly)? Are your product pages getting social shares? If not, spend some time cultivating that. Without seeing one of the pages, my best guess is that there are 5-10 things that you could do right away to make those pages stickier and more compelling. Do that. Don't waste your time trying to sculpt PageRank.
Just my 2 cents! Hope it's a little helpful.
Dana
-
Hi Peter,
Like Gregory said, this is a fairly standard arrangement for large ecommerce sites. Regarding the passing of link juice, you can use NoFollow links to cut off the flow of link juice and concentrate the flow towards a few pages that you want to rank. However, be careful about using too much NoFollow linking internally because you want to make sure your site gets crawled properly.
Hope this helps,
Chris
-
Hi Peter. Maybe I'm reading your description wrong, but it sounds like a pretty standard ecommerce arrangement.
Is the following true?
Search Volume (ranked highest to lowest):
- Generic Products (mountainbike, commuter bike, racing bike, etc)
- Product Brands (Schwinn mountainbike, Trek mountainbike, Hurley mountainbike, etc)
- Brand Models (Scwhinn 851, Schwinn 3400, Schwinn 4xtc, etc)
Page linking plan in question: ( >>> means links going to a collection of pages)
Generic Product page >>> Product Brand pages
Product Brand page >>> Brand Model pages
Although this is a pretty typical ecommerce arrangement, I personally think it is not the best plan for sites only selling a few products. When there are only a few products I think it is better to go straight from the Home page to the specific product pages.
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
-
Is there any set benefit in using a URL tracking engine on a domain for passing link juice?
Is there any set benefit in using a URL tracking engine on a domain for passing link juice? I.E. xxxx.com?$id=1111 to then redirect to shareasale? The client has an affiliate program and is thinking of running one in-house as well. Is there a benefit to a “redirect engine” that uses the website root domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KellyBrady1 -
Reasonable to Ask URL of Link from SEO Providing New Links before Link Activation?
My firm has hired an SEO to create links to our site. We asked the SEO to provide a list of domains that they are targeting for potential links. The SEO did not agree to this request on the grounds that the list is their unique intellectual property. Alternatively I asked the SEO to provide the URL that will be linking to our site before the link is activated. The SEO did not agree to this. However, they did say we could provide comments afterwards so they could tweak their efforts when the next 4-5 links are obtained next month. The SEO is adamant that the links will not be spam. For whatever it is worth the SEO was highly recommended. I am an end user; the owner and operator of a commercial real estate site, not an SEO or marketing professional. Is this protectiveness over process and data typical of link building providers? I want to be fair with the provider and hope I will be working with them a long time, however I want to ensure I receive high quality links. Should I be concerned? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
OSE link report showing links to 404 pages on my site
I did a link analysis on this site mormonwiki.com. And many of the pages shown to be linked to were pages like these http://www.mormonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Planning_a_trip_to_Rome_By_using_Movie_theatre_-_Your_five_Fun_Shows2052752 There happens to be thousands of them and these pages actually no longer exist but the links to them obviously still do. I am planning to proceed by disavowing these links to the pages that don't exist. Does anyone see any reason to not do this, or that doing this would be unnecessary? Another issue is that Google is not really crawling this site, in WMT they are reporting to have not crawled a single URL on the site. Does anyone think the above issue would have something to do with this? And/or would you have any insight on how to remedy it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThridHour0 -
Best solution for facets in ecommerce store for optimum link juice distribution?
Now I have facets setup with ajax and ajax just adding parameter #facet1... at end of URL and I have setup canonical so that domain.com/category/#facet1 refers to
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
domain.com/category/ Would you make the facet links no-follow or better better not to add no-follow for better link juice distribution?
Would you hide the whole facet block from google and if so how? Any thoughts?0 -
Easy way to get some do-follow links for a new site
I am launching a new website and when I search for "list of do-follow websites" I find lots of people posting their list. Rather than individually sign up for hundreds of sites for one link at a time, is there a tool that can automate this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
SEO Link on Clients Site
Hey SEOMozzers, Quick question. In light of the possible 'over-optimisation' penalties pending from Google should we be looking to remove the SEO links to our site from our Clients websites? I appreciate that including a link to our site from an anchor text that includes 'SEO' in it may be like waving a flag to Search Engines saying we are carrying out SEO on our Clients sites. Obviously we would sooner risk a drop in our SEO keyword rankings than risk a penalty of any kind for our Clients. What is the recommended practice here?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiroAsh0 -
Link Acquisition - link building
When using Site Explorer to find out my competiters links so I can do some link aquisition SEO do I look for the "inbound" links or or "linking domains"? Also, what filters should I choose? I want to make a spreadsheet as Rand suggested in his video and start to prioritize my link building.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | musicforkids0 -
Migrating a site from a standalone site to a subdivision of large .gov.uk site
The scenario We’ve been asked by a client, a Non-Government Organisation who are being absorbed by a larger government ministry, for help with the SEO of their site. They will be going from a reasonably large standalone site to a small sub-directory on a high authority government site and they want some input on how best to maintain their rankings. They will be going from the Number 1 ranked site in their niche (current site domainRank 59) to being a sub directory on a domainRank 100 site). The current site will remain, but as a members only resource, behind a paywall. I’ve been checking to see the impact that it had on a related site, but that one has put a catch all 302 redirect on it’s pages so is losing the benefit of a it’s historical authority. My thoughts Robust 301 redirect set up to pass as much benefit as possible to the new pages. Focus on rewriting content to promote most effective keywords – would suggest testing of titles, meta descriptions etc but not sure how often they will be able to edit the new site. ‘We have moved’ messaging going out to webmasters of existing linking sites to try to encourage as much revision of linking as possible. Development of link-bait to try and get the new pages seen. Am I going about this the right way? Thanks in advance. Phil
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smrs-digital0