How to optimize achor text links on ecommerce category page
-
A category page on an e-commerce sites, containing a list of the products within the category, usually shows the product image above the product text link. If both image and anchor text link to the product page, this would mean that the image is counted as the link in terms of ranking value.
What would be the best way to make the anchor text count in stead of the image? I guess some ways would be:
1. Not making the product image a link
2. Using some kind of link masking / redirecting technique for the image
3. Employing a technical trick to make the anchor text link come first in the code readable by search engines.What would be the easiest way to solve this issue? Or do you believe it's not worth bothering?
-
This pretty much mirrors what I was going to say....
"I can't find an example of how it would be coded (check link above!), but you could look at having a single ahref stemming from the product text, and expand the clickable area to include the image. This would get around your issue, and I've always thought that having multiple links to a single product like that is sub-optimal.
I'm not sure how much added SEO benefit this would have, but all the small things..."
-
Here is a link to an insteresting thread on this topic in the GWT forums: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/1yhb_xcdtZ0
Judging from what top level contributors have said there, linking images and text links pass the same amount of PR, with a very tiny amount of advantage to anchor text for a text link versus anchor text from the image alt text. Ultimately, do what's best for the user. In this case, for e-commerce, I think the image link taking precedence is just fine.
Dana
-
On our category pages we display products like displayed below. It is semantically correct, as all the elements inside the link are inline elements - it would not validate if we had a
in there as that is a block-element. However, in order to be able to style them correctly, we have added "display: block;" in the stylesheet making it easier to work with.
[
Name
Price](link_to_product)
Does anyone know what this setup has of impact on Google picking up anchor text etc.? Technically, we have an image, a name, and a price, where normally only a name is displayed. Is there some way, in which we can specify what should be counted for/valued as the anchor text (in this case )?
Thanks
-
Is this worth the effort or change in design?
Isn't it that google looks at the 1st link on a page?
So if you have 6 products and images this issue would only effect the 1st product seen?
Thanks
Handcrafter
-
You could design your product pages around having the anchored text link appear first, perhaps in an above description or blurb, and once again under the photo.
-
Hi all, i notited this discussion in another question (http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-properly-link-to-products-from-category-page)
I answered there with a technical solution, which i also would like to share here.
I made a fiddle about it, what do you think? Is it over optimization, or is it just a nice trick to get only one link, which is really well optimized?
-
Using a no-follow will loose link juice,
-
Firstly, I wondered if there are any news about this discussion...
Secondly, I wondered why it matters.
Is it because Google will consider only the first link from page A to B?
If that is the case (assuming you can't change the look and feel of the site) won't adding nofollow to the image link will solve the problem?Thanks
-
Perhaps add a no follow to the imageand move the link above the image . Currently you might have
you need to make it something like
<a <strong="">rel="nofollow" href="product.php"></a>
-
Just curious, would no-following the image link work?
-
Hi! We're wondering how your project is going, and if you made a decision and can share any results, or if you're sill looking for advice. Thanks!
-
This is unlkely to have too much of an impact on your rankings. I would recommend looking at the top 3 or 5 for your chosen keyword and look at what they're doing. I certainly wouldn't lose any sleep over this, just make sure your images are optimised too and maybe go with #3 if you're really keen to make the change.
-
Thanks Ryan, that's really helpful. Regarding #3: could you still make the anchor text link appear below the image for users, but have it come first in the source code for search engines? Any suggestion for how that would look like in terms of code?
Could you also do this with a block of text that appears at the bottom of the page, but is placed on top in the code? As having static text on the category page is important for SEO, but you might want to have users seeing the products before the text.
-
A very common issue to encounter!
#1: Absolutely not! People click on images.
#2: Too much effort and possibly risky in Google's eyes.
#3: This isn't really a trick. Just update the template that generates the page and move the linked text ahead of the image. Any developer could handle this for you.
Hidden option #4: Have the link enclose both the image and the product name. It may invalidate your markup, but if #3 isn't an option, consider this.
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 is my inner pages ranking higher than main page?
Hi everyone, for some reason lately i have discovered that Google is ranking my inner pages higher than the main subfolder page. www.domain.com/subfolder --> Target page to be ranked
Technical SEO | | davidboh
www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus ---> page that is currently ranking Also in the SERP most of the time, it is showing both links in this manner. www.domain.com/subfolder/aboutus
-----------www.domain.com/subfolder Thanks in advance.1 -
Trying to find all internal links to a specific page (without index)
Hi guys -- Still waiting on Moz to index a page of mine. We launched a new site over two months ago. In the meantime, I really just need a list of internal links to a specific page because I want to change its URL. Does anybody know how to find that list (of internal links to 1 of my pages) without the Moz index? I appreciate the help!
Technical SEO | | marchexmarketingmcc1 -
Deleteing old page and passing on link strenth?
We are a printing company and thinking over bringing our products down to 2 - 3 rather than the 10+ we currently have, the pages we will be getting rid of will be pages such as flyers, booklets etc and just concentrating on banners and stickers would you suggest 301ing the pages to the home page or picking pages for them to go to? Also could we expect a decent raise for the pages we are left with? Thanks shaun
Technical SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Backlink Profile: Should I disavow these links? Auto-Generated Links etc
Hello Moz Community, At first I wanted to say that I really like the Q&A section and that I read and learned a lot - and today it is time for my first own question 😉 I checked our backlink-profile these days and I found in my opinion a few bad/spammy links, most of them are auto-generated by pickung up some (meta) information from our webpage. Now my question is if I should dasavow these links over webmasters or if these links shouldn't matter as I guess basically every webpage will be picked up from them. Especially from the perspective that our rankings dropped significantly last weeks, but I am not sure if this can be the real reason. Examples are pages like: https://www.askives.com/ -Auto-Generates for example meta descriptions with links http://www.websitesalike.com/ -find similar websites http://mashrom.ir/ -no idea about this, really crazy Or we are at http://www.europages.com/, which makes sense for me and we get some referral traffic as well, but they auto-generated links from all their TLDs like .gr / .it / .cn etc. -just disavow all other TLDs than .com? Another example would be links from OM services like: seoprofiler.com Moreover we have a lot of links from different HR portals (including really many outdated job postings). Can these links “hurt” as well? Thanks a lot for your help! Greez Heiko
Technical SEO | | _Heiko_0 -
Cant find internal links on one of my pages.
When I run open site explorer for www.kingremodeling.com/ss.php?pid=5 it says there are 40 links to it on my site. However, I cannot find these links on any of the pages that open site explorer lists such as my homepage www.KingRemodeling.com. Totally confused!
Technical SEO | | allb830 -
How to structure rich / multi-media on Category pages to pass the link juice?
Fellow SEOs, I'm trying to add videos, blog posts and new fun articles/top 10s/party tips etc to corresponding categories for a costume site. Some of the content I want on these category pages already exists on our blog, the videos are hosted on YouTube and some of the content hasn't been created yet. We're thinking of posting snippets of the articles that link to the full versions vs. displaying the entire pieces on the cat pages.We're also thinking of a 'view all cool content' under the snippets that brings you to a page similar to : www.site.com/pirate-costumes/funideas and it would list everything we have for media for that category - i obviously just want to do what's best for the user but also what will maintain the juice from the media on into the category pages - Another issue would be duplicate content issues arising from posting snippets and/or the same copy that also lives on the blog...**Can someone please help here? Would _really _appreciate it.****Thank you! **Troy
Technical SEO | | Troyville0 -
Help changing category and page titles on established Magento site.
Hi All, This is my first post, I've been a Pro member for a while now, read many posts but have never asked a question here. I have an established Magento site that I need to do a lot of SEO work on. I am a newbie at SEO, so I wanted to ask for advice here. I just changed one of the category names, the url, meta title, and meta description. When making the change I selected the checkbox in the Magento backend that says "Create Permanent Redirect for Old URL" Example:
Technical SEO | | TrulyLuna
Old Category: http://www.domain.com/old-category-name.html
New Category: http://www.domain.com/new-category-name.html Everything worked fine with the exception of one alarming thing... I lost all of the page authority for the category itself and all of the sub categories and pages below it. Now the category and all pages below it show (on the moz toolbar) a PA of 1 and 0 links and 0 domains. I updated the sitemap. I did not do a 301 redirect in the .htaccess, I only chose the option to redirect on the Magento backend when changing the name and url of the category. I need to change a lot of other category and page names and urls but now I'm a bit gun shy, as I do not want to do something that will damage what little page rank I have at the moment. I'm looking for some advice from one of you guys who might be able to help me do this the correct way. I did some research on Google, but I'm still not sure of the correct method to accomplish this. Thanks in advance for any help that you can offer.0 -
Linking out?
First of all, sorry this Q is all in one block, but iPads don't like this site or vc/vs. When using the SEOmoz on-site keyword optimizer tool, it suggests at least one link to be to an off-site page. Would it be considered a link exchange if we linked out to an niche SUPER Authority sit that had a link back to our website? It seems like a naturally good strategy, but I'm afraid google may not agree. If the answer is no, there are many similar sites that mention our company in ver good ways, awards, etc.., but with no links. I would think this is a no-brainer. Personally I would like to eventually harvest all this press coverage to benefit our site. Btw, I was grey before I learned about SEOmoz, just like the rest of our niche. Now I'm shooting to be Snow White! Hopefully it works out. 🙂 I also wrote two landing pages that I tried to SEO the right way. I would love to hear your feedback to know if they are truly effective and if they are actually white. I think they are, but don't know "all" the rules of being white http://jamproa.com/ideology/product-innovation.php http://jamproa.com/industrial-design/what-is.php Thanks!
Technical SEO | | dmac0