Wordpress SEO: Category page + Product page or only category page?
-
Trying to improving my website's ranks on google for a specific keyword (e.g. Samsung S6), I'm thinking about doing some experiments. I've a wordpress based blog. Now, I've the category "Samsung S6" (url: example.com/samsung-s6), with only the latest 6 news (with excerpts) + pagination. This ranks good, but it's a bit ugly as a landing page and I want a better rank. I could improve this page by customizing the template and adding some static text, but it could be a time-consuming solution considering that I'm using a third party theme and I should check this every update. Also, it's harder to customize this page then the next solution:
I'm thinking about creating a new page Samsung S6 (url: example.com/samsungs6). This page will contain a product overlay (e.g. RAM, HD, screen size etc.), + product description with features and a small review of it's elements (e.g. camera description with results, suggested applications etc.) + some images/youtube videos + latest 6 news (without excerpts) + some links to other relevant pages in my website for that product, including a link to the category page.
What will happen in terms of SEO? Any idea if the new page could rank better than the category page, considering that it has more static elements? Not sure if google could detects duplicates, or two page comepting for the same keyword on the same website is a bad thing. Which are your ideas? Is it ok to have two pages competing for the same keyword on the same website?
-
If you wanna take it safe, promote both pages and apply the canonical in few weeks if you see that the product page has not managed to over rank the category page. Also note that internal penalisation is only to the newly added page and not to all the website.
-
Ok, thanks for your help. Canonical seems to be the way!
Just the final question: from what I knew, canoncial should be used for duplicate page content. Fact is, page content will be quite different. Is this a problem?
I'm also thinking that, being in wordpress, every article will have a link to the Samsung S6 category (wordpress shows a link to the category that an article belong to). I can't remove it, neither change this with the page url. Mmh. Best solution should be to be able to rank both pages, but I'm afraid a lot about penalization. I'll add a link to this new page in the menu.
-
Yes if you apply the canonical, it will not appear in the SERPs.
By changing the category page to Samsung S6 News you could have the following results:
- The rankings will remain for the same category page.
- There will be a change towards the new product change but only if you allocate many links from the website but from other websites.
- Or, it could destroy even the current rankings as none of the two pages maybe fit to rank high for the given keywords.
Every change requires taking a risk. My action plan would be:
- to have many links from all the websites to this newly designed product page.
- ensure you have checked that technically the new page is optimised accordingly.
- issue a canonical tag from the category page to be the same as the product page.
- monitor and apply changes according to rankings
Hope you are successful at your task!
-
Ok, this is an option in the Yoast plugin so this can be done. Just one thing: in this way, the category page won't rank high, right?
What if I change the title of the category page to Samsung S6 News?
So:
Category page: title (Samsung S6 News), url (example.com/samsung-s6)
Product page: Title (Samsung S6), url (example.com/samsungs6)Couldn't this work?
-
I am now thinking the possibility of using a canonical tag, so for Google there is only one page, the new one that you are trying to promote. So both pages should have as a canonical the URL of the newly designed page! hope this helps
-
First of all, thanks for the reply. There's a problem: from an user point of view, the two pages would have a different utility. Users who know the product are only interested in the latest news, and would prefer the simple news list like it's in the category page. They don't want to read the specifications pf the product every time. On the other side, users that don't know the product would be more than happy to find a full description of it, with highlights on the features.
So, for the users, the two pages approach should be preferable. Mixing all the content in just one page could be bad for the user experience, with too many informations in just one page. Do you agree?
About wasting time/moneys: moneys aren't a problem, I'll do the edits by myself. Time, it is, but the quickest solution is the two page approach: I just need to do this once forever, while editing the category template in wordpress means to be forced to check it at every theme update.
-
To atart with the anwser, not recommended. Is best to have one single page ranking for such an important keyword. I would not worry so much about duplicate content, but more towards wasting your time and money.
Another solution is to develop this page, but force the page to take the roll of the category page. Maybe by issuing a 301 or just replacing the page. Am sure there is an easy way your developer could do this.
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
-
If my product trending country is Australia while i am based in US .so for analyzing SERP should i change my search setting to Australia or go with US?
I selected an affiliate keyword .now the next step is to analyze the SERP and look for competitor .if my current search setting is US and google trends show that my product is trending in Australia ,so should now i change my search setting to Australia or go with US?
Keyword Research | | Niu843jr0 -
What Should I Do With My Home Page?
Hello, I own a fitness and sports performance facility called BIM Fitness & Performance in Fort Myers, FL. We have a simple site structure with 3 key pages; however, I'm not exactly what type of keywords I should rank for on each page and I think that they're actually conflicting to one another. That said, I'd like some insight as far as what I should do with these pages and what you would recommend that I do with the keywords and the meta descriptions. Any help is greatly appreciated! https://bimfitnessandperformance.com/athletic-sports-performance-training-fort-myers/ https://bimfitnessandperformance.com/adult-personal-training-fort-myers/ https://bimfitnessandperformance.com/
Keyword Research | | scottgray06200 -
SEO'd Title Tag for Product Pricing Page with Little to No SV for Product Pricing Related Terminology
Hello, What should one do about a title tag for product pricing page (of a SaaS company)? The only keywords/phrases that have SV are "Acme Pricing" "Acme Product Pricing" and "Acme Solutions Pricing", but obviously I don't want to use all three since "Acme" and "Pricing" repeat in all three. Should the title tag just be "Acme Pricing"? In past experiences, a title tag that short typically gets changed by Google in SERPs. Should one not optimize the title tag at all? Any thoughts, suggestions, would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Keyword Research | | Scratch_MM0 -
How to determine if you have same site pages competing for rankings?
One of my client's sells career assessment tests / personality tests. The site includes a shop with detailed product pages for the tests and also has lengthy informational pages describing the science behind the different tests, etc as they are pretty indepth and hard to understand for someone who is new to them. The site also includes a blog that has 500 or more posts, all career related... some of them referencing products. My concern is: We'd like the product or information pages to rank for SERPs. Some of the blog posts are ranking instead for their top target keywords. My question is: Is there an easy way to determine which pages on a site are competing for the same keyword? And what is the best way to correct this issue and ensure the correct page gets targeted? I was thinking adding a noindex to the pages would be the best way. Advice is greatly appreciated!
Keyword Research | | dogstarweb0 -
Page not ranking despite indicators showing should easily be mid-1st page?
I have many years old website selling a service. The main keyword is 47% competitive, and we used to be #1 page 2, occasionally page 1 couple years back. Domain authority is double of any of the competitors on 1st page, followed root domain links is many times that of 1st page competitors, infact against some of them almost 10 times as much, MozRank and MozTrust higher too. Infact, every metric is higher than competition. Only metric which isn't as good is Followed vs NoFollowed links metric, 95% of our links are NoFollowed, but we are still #1 in external followed links. Yet we are stuck on 4th page, and on some localizations we are not even in Top 50. This has happened slowly over time, not a overnight thing. Page we are trying to rank for gets grade A for optimizations, yet we have less significant pages ranking higher for that keyword. Further, newer pages tend to rank better than old ones. The whole site actually ranks quite low and we are not even getting search traffic for long tail keywords.
Keyword Research | | PulsedMedia
No problems reported on GWT, Analytics etc. Is this a google penalization or something of the sort? How can i troubleshoot this and get past this?0 -
Narrowing keywords or build more pages - Startup
I provide local services to a number of small cities and am trying to decide the best way to attack local keywords. I need to decide if I should target all 4 cities or narrow it down to 1 or 2. I used the google keyword tool and none of my keywords have enough results to show data so I am left guessing by using the nearest major city and population sizes. Anyway, I have read over and over about how keywords in the title / description are imperative. Well, thats tough to accomplish without being spammy when you offer two services for four cities. I don't think lakeville snow removal, apple valley snow removal, eagan snow removal makes for a good title of a page. Also, it's not an easy task to get any kind of keyword density in the content as well. So how do you recommend I attack this? I have seen sites that create a page for each keyword with basically the same content excpet replacing city x with city y and they do well. I find this spammy and hope that eventually they get penalized for it. I guess I would be willing to do it, but would prefer a more natural solution. One more question, if I do keyword a single city, say Lakeville, what is the prefered way to keyword the home page compared to the service pages. Example, I have a snow removal page that the keywords would be lakeville snow removal and a lawn care page with the same.. So what is the target for the home page? Here is the results of my keyword research. ** Monthy Google Searches** Minneapolis lawn care - 880 Minneapolis lawn service - 590 Minneapolis lawn mowing - 260 Minneapolis Snow Removal - 590 Minneapolis Snow Plowing - 320 Minneapolis Snow Removal services - 58 Service Area Data (Minni has Pop of 385K) Lakeville - Pop;56K Income;86K Apple Valley - Pop;49K Income;74K Burnsville - Pop;60K Income;60K Eagan - Pop;64K Income;74K Northfield - Pop;20K Income;62K
Keyword Research | | dwallner0 -
What is the relationship/difference between categories and keywords in terms of google local seo?
I know that they are very similar as search signals, but I would like to understand the exact relationship. My company is in the process of adding local seo services to our seo offerings, and we are trying to hammer out a process for determining optimal categories for businesses based on keywords we are already using for optimizing their sites. Any insights or suggestions on how best to do this would be much appreciated.
Keyword Research | | CustomCreatives0 -
How Many Keywords Should You Target Per Page?
What do you think is the most appropriate/efficient amount of keywords to target per page for a website? Obviously, it may depend on the type/size of the site, but I've noticed different results with different clients. Early on, I targeted way too many keywords per page, then scaled them back as I learned more. I'm almost starting to think that you should just target 1-2 keywords per page to be efficient and more natural. Thoughts?
Keyword Research | | MichaelWeisbaum0