Duplicate content or an update ???

[KimX]

Buying Guide and Product Category page competing for the same keyword ?

Got a “nuts and bold website” selling basic stuff.  Imagine selling simple nuts, bolts and washers (the little ring that goes in between) in different metals.  Imagine a website with a very wide and deep line of these simple products.

For long tail keywords we rank well (Example: 0.25 inch bolts).

For the keyword:  “Nuts bolts” our main category page use to rank well  low 1^st page to second page up against the big guys (Amazon, Walmart, Target, Costco, some drug store who may have a mix pack of nuts and bolts, but still Google don’t see the difference and list 2 pages each for these guys). But then in mid-February there were an update and suddenly our “Buying guide for nuts and bolts” rank higher and started to compete with our own product category page. That was never our intention. These two pages now compete for the ranking on page 4^th. Clearly there were more words on the buying guide page but no changes had been made to it for well months or years.

To make up for it some more words were added to the category page, but of cause there is only so many way you can fraise words about “nuts and bolts” without sounding a bit duplicate/re-writing.

So what do I do now ??  Clearly the product category page is the one we like to rank highest with the guide a close 2nd. Most customer don’t need the buying guide but it is good to have and great support as we got lot of good comments from customer who read it.

Made a link to the buying guide from the category page and wise verses. The category page got an embedded video. Moz list the page authority for the category page to 16 and 1 for the buying guide but clearly G see it differently. Already tried to change the Meta Tag Title and Description a little but it is hard to do if the word “Nuts Bolts” is to appear in the description or people don’t know what to expect.

Could just insert a “do not index” for the buying guide but not a good long term solution. Unfortunately I am out of imagination at this point. Any good suggestions ??

Thanks,

Kim

Any good suggestions ???

[KimX]

Hello Andy,

Thanks for taking the time.

The product guide is a separate text only page with info-graphics and related text. There is only that one page. I don't see there is a canonical issue with this page, compared to the product pages as where items can be added to the shopping cart. I think this is what you refer to when mentioning the canonical issues with e-commerce sites. This part should be covered.

Kim

[KimX]

Hello Ria,

Thanks for taking an interest.

There are outside incoming links to the category page with good keyword anchor text (the preferred to ranking page). However the product guide don't really have any incoming links. In fact MOZ don't index the page in their weekly indexing. It is listed in the sitemap. No idea why. Asked MOZ before and they say wait for next weeks indexing but no results week after week   but google finds the page.

As you mention it is real hard to get incoming links and I would say especially for a commercial site as people often feel "you make use of them". Have to say I have stopped asking for links even when I see a good match as most of the time people don't answer back.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Kim,

It's very difficult to imagine so many possible scenarios of why this could be happening, Have you looked into any canonical issues? This if often a problem with e-commerce sites.

You would want to make sure that if there is a worry of duplication, that this is being handled correctly.

-Andy

[Ria_]

If you've tried all the on-site optimisation strategies, the only solution I can think of would be to focus on off-site optimisation of the category pages you would rather have ranking for the search terms, in order to increase their page authority in relation to those keywords. It's a bit of an old-school solution when link building is so frowned upon these days, but it works. Do you have any inbound links to the category page with anchor text containing the search term you want to rank for?