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.
Internal Links to Ecommerce Category Pages
-
Hello,
I read a while back, and I can't find it now, that you want to add internal links to your main category pages. Does that still apply? If so, for a small site (100 products) what is recommended?
Thanks
-
H have a general question about internal linking, I ask my question by one example:
home page---->category (toaster)---->products
In product pages I have linked the anchor texts like " Bosch toaster model XXXX " to Toaster category.
It is my question: is it right strategy. should I use only "Bosch toaster" to link to the category.
I should say I have breadcrumb for internal linking but I need help to have a good strategy to help the categories to be in SERP
please help me
-
The existence of categorization facilitates structure/hierarchy and aids visitors in finding like or wanted things. Because people tend to search for keywords that are categorical, it turns out that optimizing category pages helps to bring additional visits in from search engines. Category-type keywords also tend to be more competitive and thus require greater effort to attain visibility.
So the trick is to create logical structure/hierarchy in the most optimized way possible, i.e., around the least competitive terms that will bring in the maximum amount of traffic for the strength of the domain/category page. At the same time, they should strive to demonstrate features and benefits to the visitor, be creative, and provide a point of view that contributes to the overall brand message. I find that sites with unique, imaginative categories are far more likely to engage me than those that are run of the mill.
So, in answer to your question, internal links and their anchor text contribute to the conceptual structure your site presents to search engines and visitors and, as such, are an important part of a well-made site. If your categories have a well thought out purpose and strategy and are well integrated into the fabric of your brand, you'll find yourself linking to them from other places in your site more often than you will to individual product pages. Not only does that make sense for the visitor, but search engines pick up on it too and tend to lend greater weight/strength to those pages.
-
Hey Bob
In this kind of instance we can almost defer to common sense.
- what are our important pages?
- how will people arrive at these pages?
- how will people browse to these pages?
If you sell 100 products and have 5 categories those categories are likely important pages - important for a user on your site and important for users in search. Having a consistent internal navigation helps indicate to the search engines that these pages are important enough to link to on every page. It also ensures site users can jump from category A to category B. Good for people, good for search engines - win win.
In an ideal world we want a nice consistent hierarchy with your persistent navigation and URLs all being well aligned.
Nav
- Home
- Products
- -> Category A
- -> Category B
- -> Category C
- Contact
URL Structure
/
/products/
/products/category-a/
/products/category-b/
/products/category-c/
/contact/Then any other elements can also line up - page titles, meta descriptions, breadcrumbs, h tags etc.
Ultimately, this is not any kind of SEO voodoo but rather the nuts and bolts of a user friendly and search friendly site.
Hope that helps!
Marcus -
Sure, not only still apply but internal link architecture is one of the main important on page optimization for a site.
The idea is that by internal links you are telling google which pages are the most important in your site. You can even check your most internal linked pages in WBT.
It is recommended to create links to your category pages in a natural way that increases UX.
I hope it helps!
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
-
What to do with internal spam url's google indexed?
I am in SEO for years but never met this problem. I have client who's web page was hacked and there was posted many, hundreds of links, These links has been indexed by google. Actually these links are not in comments but normal external urls's. See picture. What is the best way to remove them? use google disavow tool or just redirect them to some page? The web page is new, but ranks good on google and has domain authority 24. I think that these spam url's improved rankings too 🙂 What would be the best strategy to solve this. Thanks. k9Bviox
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AndrisZigurs0 -
Do I lose link juice if I have a https site and someone links to me using http instead?
We have recently launched a https site which is getting some organic links some of which are using https and some are using http. Am I losing link juice on the ones linked using http even though I am redirecting or does Google view them the same way? As most people still use http naturally will it look strange to google if I contact anyone who has given us a link and ask them to change to https?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Lisa-Devins0 -
How to 301 redirect from old domain and their pages to new domain and pages?
Hi i am a real newbie to this and i hope for a guide on how to do this. I seen a few moz post and is quiet confusing hopefully somebody able to explain it in layman terms to me. I would like to 301 redirect this way, both website contain the same niche. oldwebsite.com > newwebsite.com and also its pages..... oldwebsite.com/test >newwebsite.com/test So my question here is i would like to host my old domain and its pages in my new website hosting in order to redirect to my new domain and its pages how do i do that? would my previous page link overwrite my new page link? or it add on the juice link? Do i need to host the whole old domain website into my new hosting in order to redirect the old pages? really confusing here, thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
How does Google determine if a link is paid or not?
We are currently doing some outreach to bloggers to review our products and provide us with backlinks (preferably followed). The bloggers get to keep the products (usually about $30 worth). According to Google's link schemes, this is a no-no. But my question is, how would Google ever know if the blogger was paid or given freebies for their content? This is the "best" article I could find related to the subject: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2332787/Matt-Cutts-Shares-4-Ways-Google-Evaluates-Paid-Links The article tells us what qualifies as a paid link, but it doesn't tell us how Google identifies if links were paid or not. It also says that "loans" or okay, but "gifts" are not. How would Google know the difference? For all Google knows (maybe everything?), the blogger returned the products to us after reviewing them. Does anyone have any ideas on this? Maybe Google watches over terms like, "this is a sponsored post" or "materials provided by 'x'". Even so, I hope that wouldn't be enough to warrant a penalty.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jampaper0 -
How do you change the 6 links under your website in Google?
Hello everyone, I have no idea how to ask this question, so I'm going to give it a shot and hopefully someone can help me!! My company is called Eteach, so when you type in Eteach into Google, we come in the top position (phew!) but there are 6 links that appear underneath it (I've added a picture to show what I mean). How do you change these links?? I don't even know what to call them, so if there is a particular name for these then please let me know! They seem to be an organic rank rather than PPC...but if I'm wrong then do correct me! Thanks! zorIsxH.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eteach_Marketing0 -
Hiding content or links in responsive design
Hi, I found a lot of information about responsive design and SEO, mostly theories no real experiment and I'd like to find a clear answer if someone tested that. Google says:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | NurunMTL
Sites that use responsive web design, i.e. sites that serve all devices on the same set of URLs, with each URL serving the same HTML to all devices and using just CSS to change how the page is rendered on the device
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details For usability reasons sometimes you need to hide content or links completely (not accessible at all by the visitor) on your page for small resolutions (mobile) using CSS ("visibility:hidden" or "display:none") Is this counted as hidden content and could penalize your site or not? What do you guys do when you create responsive design websites? Thanks! GaB0 -
Should I Do a Social Bookmarking Campaign and a Tier 2 Linking?
I don't see anything bad in manually creating links on different (about 50) social bookmarking services. Is this method labeled as White Hat? I was wondering if it would be fine to create Tier 2 linking (probably blog comments) for indexing of the social bookmarking links? Please share your thoughts on the topic.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zorsto0 -
How to transfer posts from a specific category into a subdomain
Hi Guys, Is there a way in Wordpress to transfer or redirect a category and all posts under it into a sub-domain? Thanks in advance..
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Trigun0