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.
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?
-
Usually, the reason is because category pages tend to be light on content and thus, not as indexable. And sometimes category pages are noindex due to this. Google is likely looking at your product page and finding it more relevant, based on content, than the category page for people who are looking for "sleeping bags."
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
-
Home Page Disappears From Google - But Rest of Site Still Ranked
As title suggests we are running into a serious issue of the home page disapearing from Google search results whilst the rest of the site still remains. We search for it naturally cannot find a trace, then use a "site:" command in Google and still the home page does not come up. We go into web masters and inspect the home page and even Google states that the page is indexable. We then run the "Request Indexing" and the site comes back on Google. This is having a damaging affect and we would like to understand why this issue is happening. Please note this is not happening on just one of our sites but has happened to three which are all located on the same server. One of our brand which has the issue is: www.henweekends.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JH_OffLimits0 -
Google Indexing Of Pages As HTTPS vs HTTP
We recently updated our site to be mobile optimized. As part of the update, we had also planned on adding SSL security to the site. However, we use an iframe on a lot of our site pages from a third party vendor for real estate listings and that iframe was not SSL friendly and the vendor does not have that solution yet. So, those iframes weren't displaying the content. As a result, we had to shift gears and go back to just being http and not the new https that we were hoping for. However, google seems to have indexed a lot of our pages as https and gives a security error to any visitors. The new site was launched about a week ago and there was code in the htaccess file that was pushing to www and https. I have fixed the htaccess file to no longer have https. My questions is will google "reindex" the site once it recognizes the new htaccess commands in the next couple weeks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vikasnwu1 -
PDF ranking higher than HTML pages, solution?
Hello Moz community I know this question has been asked before but it seems there is no real answer other than putting a summary of the PDF on the HTML page. My problem is other websites are using my PDFs, I have some PDFs with very high authority links and I would like to either pass the link juice on to my product/category page or do rel=canonical somehow. I'm using bigcommerce as my platform. My website is cwwltd.com. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Neverstop1231 -
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 -
How to recover google rank after changing the domain name?
I just started doing SEO for a new client. The case is a bit unique as they build a new website and for some reason lunched in under another domain name. Old name is foodstepsinasia.com and new one is foodstepsinasiatravel.com OLD one is a respected webites with 35 in MOZ page authority and with +15000 incomming link (104 root domains) NEW one is curently on 0 The programmer has just that build the new website has set it up so that when people write or find the old domain name it redirect to the front page of the new website with the new domain name. this caused that my friends lost a lot of their rankings was so I believ it was a very bad solution. But I also think I can get most of the old rankings back, but my question is what to do now to get as much back of the rankings as fast as possible?? A) I believe I must change the domain name back to foodstepsinasia.com on the new website ? O B) Should I on the old website try finding the url of the pages with most page authority and recreate these urls on the new website or should i redict them to a page with related content? Looking forward to feedback from someone who have experience with similar cases. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
Ranking Page - Category vs. Blog Post - What is best for CTR?
Hi, I am not sure wether I shall rank with a category page, or create a new post. Let me explain... If I google for 'Basic SEO' I see an article from Rand with Authorship markup. That's cool so I can go straight to this result because I know there might be some good insight. BUT: 'Basic SEO' is also an category at MOZ an it is not ranking. On the other hand, if I google for 'advanced SEO' then the MOZ category for 'advanced SEO' is ranking. But there is no authorship image, so users are much less likely to click on that result. Now, I want to rank for a very important keyword for me (content keyword, not transactional). Therefor, I have a category called 'yoga exercises'. But shall I rather create an post about them only to increase CTR due to Google Authorship? I read in Google guidelines that Authorship on homepage an category pages are not appreciated. Hope you have some insights that can help me out.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | soralsokal0 -
How to properly link to products from category pages?
Hi All, We have an e-commerce website and the category pages are built so that there is a product image and below it there is the title. Both the image and the title are in a href (each on its own). I encountered the following unfinished discussion here at MOZ:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet
http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-optimize-achor-text-links-on-ecommerce-category-page#post-93758 The discussion states that its improper. The question is - if it is wrong then why? (maybe because Google will give its weight to the image anchor instead of the text anchor since it is higher in the page). The other question is how to resolve the matter?
Should I add nofollow to the image href? Thanks0 -
Should I prevent Google from indexing blog tag and category pages?
I am working on a website that has a regularly updated Wordpress blog and am unsure whether or not the category and tag pages should be indexable. The blog posts are often outranked by the tag and category pages and they are ultimately leaving me with a duplicate content issue. With this in mind, I assumed that the best thing to do would be to remove the tag and category pages from the index, but after speaking to someone else about the issue, I am no longer sure. I have tried researching online, but there isn't anything that provided any further information. Please can anyone with any experience of dealing with issues like this or with any knowledge of the topic help me to resolve this annoying issue. Any input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulRogers0