Category pages
-
I am a very basic question on managing categories in WordPress. We have an Android website, and we cover news, rumors, tips and tricks about new devices. We have been creating categories for the new devices or at least for the popular ones which are launched every year, and link to them internally with the hope that it would improve the page authority and ranking.
For example, we have a category page for Moto X, another one for Moto X (2014) and one more for Moto X (2015).
One of the reasons for creating a category was to ensure that it is easier for readers to get information about a particular device rather than going to a category page that has information about all the models.
However, the problem with their strategy we're now realizing is that it means we have to build page authority for the new category page from scratch, which can take time.
So we are thinking of reusing the same category for multiple models. So reuse the Moto X category page for Moto X (2016).
However, we are not sure if it would be right approach as we would be linking to the same category page with different anchor texts. So while it would be good to reuse a page rather than rebuild the page authority from scratch, would we be diluting the authority for the main keyword by using it for different models.
I would love to hear your thoughts on how we should be handling categories and internal links in this case.
-
Yeah, I think we need to mess around with the template files to make it look better.
Btw, the website in question is AndroidBeat.com. I will look into the schema markups, though the structure of the site is quite flat, so not sure if breadcrumbs would be useful.
When your website has to depend on advertising for revenues, page speed is difficult to optimize. I keep getting told that the page load cannot be improved further because of the ads on the website. So it is important to strike the right balance. If you know someone who can help with improving page load times then please let me know. I am happy to get a second opinion.
Thanks again for the suggestions. Any thoughts on this point:
How about internally linking to the same page with multiple anchor text. Wouldn't we end up confusing the bots. We have seen category pages doing well in some cases. So wouldn't this approach affect the ranking for such category pages that are doing well.
-
Thanks Martijn for the suggestions. We are going to try roll it out as soon as possible.
-
Implement AMP if the website has a blog.
Refer to https://www.ampproject.org/ for more information. Martijn is right though AMP took me 2 full days to implement from a cold start on one site. However using the wordpress plug in less than an hour for the second. So need to review in order of priority.On schema the easiest thing to implement would be breadcrumbs on each page. Schema is especially useful for websites with a blog, events, recipes or other dynamic content.
Again I hate to overreach with suggestions when I am not 100% familiar with a site and understand objectives and priorities. 95% of the time I end up starting with page loading speed... it has such a massive impact on every kpi if it is not optimized. tools.pingdom.com - so if page loading speed is on the agenda that is where I nearly always start.
Hope that assists.
-
AMP can be a lot of work when you really want to make sure that the pages look good and support everything that is related to the set-up itself. I recommend using the AMP Plugin that is available for WordPress and creating your own template files to support them afterwards so you can tweak whatever you want.
-
Thanks Clayton for the suggestions and the quick response. Rand's WBF was the one that got me to rethink our current approach. We have also realized that it is not helping with the rankings either. But had a few questions.
How about internally linking to the same page with multiple anchor text. Wouldn't we end up confusing the bots. We have seen category pages doing well in some cases. So wouldn't this approach affect the ranking for such category pages that are doing well.
Can you also point me to a resource for Schema markups?
We are also not able to get a good look and feel for AMP optimized pages. Any recommendations would be welcome.
-
The latter approach you have identified is the approach to adopt. The first approach is old school seo ie 1 keyword query = 1 page. This is no longer recommended. See Rand's WBF on the topic. https://moz.com/blog/8-old-school-seo-practices-not-effective-whiteboard-friday
Schema markups and if on a news post use AMP.
All the best hope that assists.
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
-
Category Pages & Content
Hi Does anyone have any great examples of an ecommerce site which has great content on category pages or product listing pages? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Why does Google rank a product page rather than a category page?
Hi, everybody In the Moz ranking tool for one of our client's (the client sells sport equipment) account, there is a trend where more and more of their landing pages are product pages instead of category pages. The optimal landing page for the term "sleeping bag" is of course the sleeping bag category page, but Google is sending them to a product page for a specific sleeping bag.. What could be the critical factors that makes the product page more relevant than the category page as the landing page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo0 -
How should I deal with this page?
Hey Mozzers, I was looking for a little guidance and advice regarding a couple of pages on my website. I have used 'shoes' for this example. I have the current structure Parent Category - Shoes Sub Categories - Blue Shoes
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATP
Hard Shoes
Soft Shoes
Big Shoes etc Supporting Article - Different Types of Shoe and Their Uses There are about 12 subcategories in total - each one links back to the Parent Category with the keyword "Shoes". Every sub category has gone from ranking 50+ to 10-30th for its main keyword which is a good start and as I release supporting articles im sure each one will climb. I am happy with this. The Article ranks no1 for about 20 longtails terms around "different shoes". This page attracts around 60% of my websites traffic but we know this traffic will not convert as most are people and children looking for information only for educational purposes and are not looking to buy. Many are also looking for a type of product we dont sell. My issue is ranking for the primary category "Shoes" keyword. When i first made the changes we went from ranking nowhere to around 28th on the parent category page targeted at "Shoes". Whilst not fantastic this was good as gave us something to work off. However a few weeks later, the article page ranked 40th for this term and the main page dropped off the scale. Then another week some of the sub category pages ranked for it. And now none of my pages rank in the top 50 for it. I am fairly sure this is due to some cannibalisation - simply because of various pages ranking for it at different times.
I also think that additional content added by products on the sub category pages is giving them more content and making them rank better. The Page Itself
The Shoes page itself contains 400 good unique words, with the keyword mentioned 8 times including headings. There is an image at the top of the page with its title and alt text targeted towards the keyword. The 12 sub categories are linked to on the left navigation bar, and then again below the 400 words of content via a picture and text link. This added the keyword to the page another 18 or so times in the form of links to longtail subcaterogies. This could introduce a spam problem i guess but its in the form of nav bars or navigation tables and i understood this to be a necessary evil on eCommerce websites. There are no actual products linked from this page. - a problem? With all the basic SEO covered. All sub pages linking back to the parent category, the only solution I can think of is to add more content by Adding all shoes products to the shoe page as it currently only links out the the sub categories Merging the "Different Type of Shoe and Their Uses" article into the shoe page to make a super page and make the article pages less like to produce cannibalistic problems. However, by doing solution 2, I remove a page bringing in a lot of traffic. The traffic it brings in however is of very little use and inflates the bounce rate and lowers the conversion rate of my whole site by significant figures. It also distorts other useful reports to track my other progress. I hope i have explained well enough, thanks for sticking with me this far, i havn't posted links due to a reluctance by the company so hopefully my example will suffice. As always thanks for any input.0 -
Big discrepancies between pages in Google's index and pages in sitemap
Hi, I'm noticing a huge difference in the number of pages in Googles index (using 'site:' search) versus the number of pages indexed by Google in Webmaster tools. (ie 20,600 in 'site:' search vs 5,100 submitted via the dynamic sitemap.) Anyone know possible causes for this and how i can fix? It's an ecommerce site but i can't see any issues with duplicate content - they employ a very good canonical tag strategy. Could it be that Google has decided to ignore the canonical tag? Any help appreciated, Karen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Digirank0 -
Home Page or Internal Page
I have a website that deals with personalized jewelry, and our main keyword is "Name Necklace".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
3 mounth ago i added new page: http://www.onecklace.com/name-necklaces/ And from then google index only this page for my main keyword, and not our home page.
Beacuase the page is new, and we didn't have a lot of link to it, our rank is not so well. I'm considering to remove this page (301 to home page), beacause i think that if google index our home page for this keyword it will be better. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but i know that our home page have a lot of good links and maybe our rank will be higher. Another thing, because google index this internal page for this keyword, it looks like our home page have no main keyword at all. BTW, before i add this page, google index our main page with this keyword. Please advise... U5S8gyS.png j50XHl4.png0 -
Page Titles of Blog
Hi, Should all the page titles of our blogs include a Keyword(s) and\or our website name?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
What to do if the wrong page is ranking?
What to do if the wrong page of your website is ranking and you cannot 301 it? Apparently an outsourced company the previous manager hired build anchor text links to the homepage, when those links should have been pointing to a deeper page. As a result, the hompage is now ranking for that term. But I think we can convert a lot more of the visitors if the deeper page is there instead. Obviously, I can't 301 the homepage. What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrep0 -
Pricing Page vs. No Pricing Page
There are many SEO sites out there that have an SEO Pricing page, IMO this is BS. A SEO company cannot give every person the same quote for diffirent keywords. However, this is something we are currently debating. I don't want a pricing page, because it's a page full of lies. My coworker thinks it is a good idea, and that users look for a pricing page. Suggestions? If I had to build one (which I am debating against) is it better to just explain why pricing can be tricky? or to BS them like most sites do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0