Ecommerce SEO: Is it bad to link to product/category pages directly from content pages?
-
Hi !
In Moz' Whiteboard friday video Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World, Rand is talking about (among other things) best practices related to linking between search, clickbait and conversion pages.
For a client of ours, a cosmetics and make-up retailer, we are planning to build content pages around related keywords, for example video, pictures and text about make-up and fashion in order to best target and capture search traffic related to make-up that is prevalent earlier in the costumer journey. Among other things, we plan to use these content pages to link directly to some of the products. For example a content piece about how to achieve full lashes will to link to particular mascaras and/or the mascara category)
Things is, in the Whiteboard video Rand Says:
_"..So your click-bait piece, a lot of times with click-bait pieces they're going to perform worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page, because it looks like you're trying to sell people something. That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general. What plays is, "Hey, this is just entertainment, and I can just visit this piece and it's fun and funny and interesting." _Does this mean linking directly to products pages (or category pages) from content pages is bad? Will Google think that, since we are also trying to sell something with the same piece of content, we do not deserve to rank that well on the content, and won't be considered that relevant for a search query where people are looking for make-up tips and make-up guides?
Also.. is there any difference between linking from content to categories vs. products? ..I mean, a category page is not a conversion page the same way a products page is.
Looking forward to your answers
-
Where would you rather buy... Amazon where you can't get a phone number, Walmart where the people working know nothing about specialty products, Joe Schmoe who is only trying to sell discount and will not reply to email because he knows nothing about what he sells. Lots of people buy from us because we have more helpful information on our site than all of our retail competitors and the manufacturers combined. We know that because we hear it * Every Day * in our customer reviews.
The ads that we run do not say buy from us. We never even use the world "buy" or "purchase" or "we sell" on the website. At the same time that we run our own ads on our website, we are running adsense ads that go to other businesses. Our ads look like theirs but have our domain in obvious font at the bottom of the ad. Its obvious who they are buying from. That's on our tiny niche retails site.
The other site where we sell is a large authority info site with a small store. We have a link to the "store" in our persistent navigation and it gets clicked a lot. Our product descriptions are 10x as long as our competitors and our informative articles are much more detailed. We link to informative articles from product pages and to product pages to informative articles. We can lose customers to information and we can gain customers from information. It's OK if we lose customers to information because that reduces returned products. They can also click an ad to our competitors. But we have no problem making sales and have never heard from anyone anything displeasing that we provide information and sales.
-
If by "content pages" you mean blog posts on your site, I'd suggest not doing this at all. It's not great for your SEO but it won't directly hurt your rankings.
What EGOL said is correct in that providing helpful links in your articles is an excellent idea and something you should definitely be doing, but there's a very big difference between helpful links and self-promotion. Blog posts are meant to be informative and that's why the good ones get shared but dropping a sales pitch in there changes the tone from "here is helpful information you're looking for, share it around" to "here's my product, you should buy it". A link to your products is usually going to feel like a sales pitch, no matter what anchor text you use.
To put yourself in your readers' shoes, imagine if I started dropping links to my product pages here - suddenly my entire comment would feel pretty shady, right?
Linking to your other posts and external sources is a great idea but in most instances, linking to your own products is reason enough for me to stop reading. Of course, there are exceptions to this - the question to ask if whether or not that link is genuinely helpful.
-
** Is it bad to link to product/category pages directly from content pages?**
Bad? No way. It is the smartest thing that you can do.
I spend a lot of my time writing content that explains how to use, repair and select products. These are posted on my site and they always have links or standard-size banner ads pointing to the page in our on-site store where the item can be purchased.
If you have an article on how to repair a product, and offer links to where the tools, replacement parts and supplies can be purchased then that is a genuine benefit to the reader. It is actually useful content. And, the reader will feel good about buying these things from you because they just learned something from reading your article. And, because you demonstrated your expertise the buyer should be comfortable buying your recommendations rather than going to another site, searching, and questioning... "is this what I really need?".
I am spending a lot of time this month and spent a lot of time last month writing content for the purpose of driving sales.
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
-
Review Microdata if the product does not have a review
We have many products that do not have reviews and are causing warnings in googles microdata. Is there anything you can do for products without a review so you don't get errors for aggregate review or review??
Algorithm Updates | | jforthofer0 -
Have AMP pages on Chrome disappeared?
Hi, We amplified our site the other day and Google was quick to find our AMP pages. Today, we can´t seem to find any AMP pages on Chrome and it looks like we can´t find any other pages from sites like Wapo and so forth. They´re still visible on Safari. We are searching from Iceland. Is anyone experiencing this and if so, could you please share a link to the news? Thanks and have a nice day!
Algorithm Updates | | guidetoiceland0 -
Who else is noticing a shift in deeper pages ranking?
Without mentioning names, we're noticing a shift in many of our clients ranking pages. Previously many of them held page 1 positions with their home page. We've been building brand only anchor text to these pages for some time now and there's a noticeable change in visibility to the domain as a whole displayed in GWT and there's an uplift in organic traffic too. It just happens that some of our clients already had pages in the root directory that were very optimised for the clients' head terms, but all of a sudden, these sub pages with very few inbound links have started ranking in the place of the home pages. I've attached a screenshot of the landing page organic traffic. The pages in question have been there for at least 8-10 months. These inner pages would not normally have been able to hold their ground in this position and I'm concerned that this is a temporary change. I can see this going one of two ways; (i) home page beings to out rank sub page as before, (i) sub page loses ranking ability and home page rank does not come back. My questions to the community are therefore; **Has anyone else noticed this shift in ranking behaviour? ** What are everyone's thoughts on this? - Will it remain this way? From this query I can easily ask another wider question; Good advice across the internet says we should be building strong brand links and citations to our clients' domains. Typically brand links go to the homepage, which should provide the homepage and (to a lesser extent the domain) with a ranking/traffic/visibility uplift. However, as I'm noticing other pages now picking up ranking boosts as a result of this; **Should we still be trying to gain links to these more commercial landing pages? ** How are others building high quality links to pages full of commercial copy? I hope this can spark a little bit of a debate. I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts. Thanks yPOEjVA.png
Algorithm Updates | | tomcraig860 -
Local Vs National SEO Rankings
Hi Guys, I just had a quick question, is it truly possible to rank number one worldwide/nationally for a keyword phrase these days such as, Computer repair services. I'm not too concerned with the local serps that come up above the fold. I'm just more concerned, if Google is looking to serve more local results into the regular serps listing? I hope that makes sense thanks. Best, Peter
Algorithm Updates | | PeterRota0 -
Google and Content at Top of Page Change?
We always hear about how Google made this change or that change this month to their algorithm. Sometimes it's true and other times it's just a rumor. So this week I was speaking with someone in the SEO field who said that this week a change occurred at Google and is going to become more prevalent where content placed at the "top of the fold" on merchant sites with products are going to get better placement, rather than if you have your products at top with some content beneath them at the bottom of the page. Any comments on this?
Algorithm Updates | | applesofgold0 -
Test contet/pages indexed by search engines
During the web development stages of our Joomla CMS website, we have managed to get our site indexed for totally irrelevant test pages mainly to do with Joomla and some other equally irrelevant test content. How damaging is this to our domain from an SEO prospective and is there something we can do about it? When we do a site:domain.com search we see hundreds of testpages with test/irrelevant meta tags etc.
Algorithm Updates | | Fuad_YK0 -
Home page replaced by subpage in google SERP (good or bad)
SInce Panda, We have seen our home page drop from #2 in google.ie serp to page 3 but it has been replaced in the same position @#2 by our relevent sub page for the keyword that we ranked#2 for. Is this a good or bad thing from and seo point of view and is it better to have deep pages show in serp rather than the homepage of a site and what is the best line of action from here in relation to seo. Is it best to work on subpage or home page for that keyword and should link building for that phrase be directed towards the subpage or the homepage as the subpage is obviously more relevent in googles eyes for the search term. It is clear that all areas of the site should be looked at in relation to link building and deep links etc but now that google is obviously looking at relevancy very closely should all campaigns be sectioned into relevent content managed sections and the site likewise and treated on an individual basis. Any help that you may have would be very welcome. Paul
Algorithm Updates | | mcintyr0 -
Why is a link considered active, but is no longer on the page?
How come links sometimes show up in OSE or Yahoo Site Explorer and then when you go to the page, they're not there anymore? Why is a link indexed or considered active but is no longer on the page?
Algorithm Updates | | MichaelWeisbaum0