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
-
My compatitors destroy my website with huge spammy links!
Hi
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | amirooo.sh123
My competitors destroy my website with huge spam links! Its more than 400 high spam (80-100% spam score) unique domain, link to us sitewide!!! I disavow on search console. But its not enough! All pages ranks down and we lost everything we had....
What should we do now? If you can, please help me
Darookhaneonline.com Capture.jpg0 -
Do dead/inactive links matter?
In cleaning up the backlink profile for my parent's website, I've come across quite a few dead links. For instance, the links in the comments here: http://www.islanddefjam.com/artist/news_single.aspx?nid=4726&artistID=7290 Do I need to worry about these links? I assume if the links are no longer active, and hence not showing up in webmaster or moz reports, I can probably ignore them, but I'm wondering if I should try and get them removed regardless? I've read that google is increasingly taking into account references (i.e. website mentions that are not links) and I don't know if inactive spam links might leave a bad impression of a website. Am I being overly paranoid? I imagine disavowing them would be pointless as you can't attach a nofollow tag to an inactive link.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mgane0 -
Link profile heavy with press release syndication links caused drop at Penguin 2.0
I'm wrestling with something that I'm hoping members of the community can provide input on.... I've working with an enterprise level client that is in the business of data capture and distribution. I've diagnosed a clear drop of traffic on May 22nd, i.e a loss of search visibility post Penguin 2.0. Their link profile is big! Discussions with internal stakeholders who have been with the company 10's of years confirm that no "link building" service providers have ever been hired and no over-zealous employee is ever likely to have tried to "do" link building internally. They are just one of those lucky companies that by their nature publish information that people want to link to and share. As a first port of call I've grouped links by anchor text and can see groups of hundreds of matching anchors based on their brand URL and specific page titles. The matching anchors have resulted from big take up of interesting data that they have marketed via press releases. NOT for link purposes. My question is this.... Does the community think or have evidence (or can point me toward any case studies) that show that Press release syndication alone could result in: a) a penguin penalty or...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | QubaSEO
b) a devaluing of press release type links during Penguin 2.0 that could have resulted in a loss of search visibility and give the impression of a penalty Your thoughts are much appreciated!0 -
[linkbuilding] link partner page on webshop, is it working?
Hello Mozzers, I am wondering about the effect of link building by swapping links between websites and adding a link partner page to the web shop containing hundreds of links. I have this new competitor coming in to the SERP of Google competing on the keywords I am targeting. The competitor has way more links than our web shop. The competitor has a page with hundreds of links to other web shops witch on there turn has a link to there web shop. (not all off them link back btw) I always thought it is no use sharing links with other websites this way in creating a huge page with hundreds of links. it is of no benefit for neighter website to do this. Still it does seems to work (?) and tis strategy is used by a lot of web shops in the Netherlands. How are you guys looking at this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | auke1810
Witch of you guy's are using strategy like this?
Should I pick up this strategy myself?0 -
Many Regional Pages: Bad for SEO?
Hello Moz-folks We are relatively well listed for "Edmonton web design." - the city we work out of. As an effort to reach out new clients, we created about 15 new pages targeting other cites in Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan. Although we began to show up quite well in some of these regions, we have recently seen our rankings in Edmonton drop by a few spots. I'm wondering if setting up regional pages that have lots of keywords for that region can be detrimental to our overall rankings.Here is one example of a regional page: http://www.web3.ca/red-deer-web-design Thanks, Anton TWeb3 Marketing Inc.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Web3Marketing870 -
Spammy Links (from .ru) pointing to my domain! How to deal with it?
Hi all, We run an e-commerce store - I am just looking at the apache logs and I am finding a lot of spammy links that have been referrers to our pages - when I check the links, I cannot find our URL in an HREF on their page so I presume they may be using some country based cloaking? These are the domains that are targeting specific pages on our site:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs2010
http://3xru.ru/
http://saldoconsult.ru/
http://euro-casino.ru/casino/
http://delaymoney.maroderi.ru/
http://intimhot.ru/ How to deal with this? Our site is about cookware and they seem to be pointing these links to very specific products and categories. Never seen anything like this before, help would be appreciated. Thanks, B0 -
Auto-link inside your own site to the same domain is white-hat?
Hi, I am using a plugin in wordpress that make auto link for some certain keywords in my site suppose: My site is example.com My important keyword is: sample and across the domain example.com through out the content if there is the word: sample it is linked automatically to example.com I like your opinion about this practice, if it may carry any kind of punishment by SEs? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Pooria0 -
Influence of users' comments on a page (on-page SEO)
Do you think when Google crawls your page, it "monitors" comments updates to use this as a ranking factor? If Google is looking for social signs, looking for comments updates might be a social sign as well (ok a lot easier to manipulate, but still social). thx
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gt30