Why does my ecommerce category page have such low PA?
-
I'm a bit of a newbie to the game and I've learnt a lot over the past couple of days with a Moz subscription. I'm starting to put together a strategy to improve our SEO performance and get our site ranking higher for some specific terms.
We have a low domain authority at 25. The page I am concerned about is one of our main product categories, link here.
About a year and half a go we changed our domain name and did a 301 redirect on all our category, products and content pages. Would this have affected anything? These redirects are still in place. I also notice OSE shows now inbound links. I'm almost certain there are a few around though.
Most recently we've been investing in unique descriptions for all products in this category at around 60 words per product, this excludes the product features in a tabular format. I appreciate this isn't many words.
I have also read a lot about faceted navigation and this category suffers from a very flat product structure were facet navigation is used heavily by the user to find a product that matches their requirements.
Does anybody have any ideas about this?
-
Hi Joe,
On one hand, DA and PA are metrics that are calculated primarily with the links that point to that page/domain.
Take a look at these resources:Domain Authority & Page Authority Metrics - Whiteboard Friday
What is Domain Authority? - Moz
What is Page Authority? - MozOn the other hand, a certain PA/DA doesn't assure nothing in Google SERPs. A PA of 25 may or may not be a "low" PA. There are lots of cases that have fewer PA/DA than their competitors and have better rankings.
In your case, I wouldn't worry much at all.Regarding the other matters:
- Domain change and 301 redirects. Yeap, it could affect some rankings, it was done too long ago to analyze its impact now.
- Links in OSE. Remember that Moz updates once a moth or so its link index and doesnt crawl the entire web, it may miss some of your links. My opinion: use other tools too (such as ahrefs.com, majestic.com or other).
- Words in descriptions. (Im asuming that you are referring to meta descriptions) There is no exact amout of words. Take a look at these resrouces:
New Title & Description Lengths for Google SEO in Search Results - Moz
Title Tag Length Guidelines: 2016 Edition - The SEMPOST Significant Change to SERPs: Google Extends Length of Titles and Descriptions - SEJ
Hope I've helped.
Best luck.
GR.
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
-
How to Canonicalise all filter pages (URL parameters) to the main category
Hi guys, I am working on an e-commerce site that's running in Shopify. I noticed that the filter pages do not have canonical tags pointing to their respective main categories. I doubt that the action needed is to canonicalise each filter pages to the main category as it would take time (there are a lot of filter URLs involved). Do you know any technical coding to do in Shopify to have all filter pages canonicalise to its main category? Keen to hear from you. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brandonegroup0 -
Ecommerce category pages & improving rankings
Hi Moz 🙂 I work on an ecommerce site & am getting stuck with how to improve rankings on category pages. I have a competitor who writes loads of content for their category pages under tabs & they perform very well. The content isn't particularly helpful, more about their range and what they offer. I have tested adding similar content under a tab to some of our category pages - with some performing well & others not as well. I know this isn't ideal, and I'd like some help with an alternative. Does anyone have tips on improving rankings on category pages? I don't have much control on the layout, this is controlled by our parent company which restricts us. I am researching writing user guides, but these will be on other pages not directly on the category page & the way we have to add them is a lot of manual work for our webmaster, so I can't get them up as quickly as I'd like. I have seen REI have a small bit of content at the top of their pages that link to guides e.g - https://www.rei.com/c/static-and-rescue-ropes But obviously their domain authority is so high already, that they don't need as much help as me 🙂 At the moment I have some new Chair pages I need to rank, these are competitive and any ideas would be great 🙂 Here are some examples: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/ergonomic-office-chairs http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/executive-office-chairs Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Google Panda question Category Pages on e-commerce site
Dear Mates, Could you check this category page of our e-commerce site: http://tinyurl.com/zqjalng and give me your opinion about, this is a Panda safe page or not? Actually I have this as NOINDEX preventing any Panda hit, but I'm in doubt. My Question is "Can I index this page again in peace?" Thank you Clay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ClayRey0 -
Why is my XML sitemap ranking on the first page of google for 100s of key words versus the actual relevant page?
I still need this question answerd and I know it's something I must have changed. But google is ranking my sitemap for 100s of key terms versus the actual page. It's great to be on the first page but not my site map...... Geeeez.....
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ursalesguru0 -
Duplicate Page Title problems with Product Catalogues (Categories, Subcategories etc.)
Hey guys, I've done a fair bit of Googling and "mozzing" and can't seem to find a definitive solution. In our product catalogue on our site we have multiple ways to access the product for navigation purposes, and SeoMoz is throwing up hundreds of duplicate page title errors which are basically just different ways to get to the same product yet it sees it as a "separate page" and thus duplicating itself. Is this just SeoMoz confusing itself or does Google actually see it this way too? For example, a product might be: www.example.com/region/category/subcategory/ www.example.com/region2/category/subcategory/ www.example.com/region/category/subcategory2/ etc. Is the only solution to have the product ONLY listed in one combination? This kind of kills our ability to have easy refinement for customers browsing the catalogue, i.e: something that falls under the "Gifts for Men" might also be a match for "Father's Day Gifts" or "Gifts for Dad" etc. Any solution or advice is greatly appreciated, cheers 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ExperienceOz0 -
SEO for eCommerce?
I'm working on a game plan for the on-page optimization for a growing e-commerce site (https://www.boutine.com) and I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with similar projects. Specifically, how to get the most SEO value out of product and category pages. Thanks in advance! -Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boutine0 -
What to do with WordPress generated pages?
I'm an SEOmoz Newbie and have a very specific question about the auto generated WordPress Pages. SEOmoz caught and labeled the auto generated WP pages as Crawl Warnings like: Long URL - 302 - Title Element to Long - Missing Meta Description Tag - Too Many On-Page Links So I have learned the lesson and have now made those pages "no follow" / "no idex." HOWEVER, WHAT DO I DO WITH THE ONES THAT HAVE ALREADY BEEN INDEXED? Do I... 1. Just leave them as is a hope they don't hurt me from an SEO perspective? 2. Redirect them all to a relevant page? I'm sure many people have had this issue. What do you think? Thanks Dominic
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amorbis0 -
Should I use the main keyword in the title tag for the site on all category pages?
I am pretty excited about changing all my title tags (for the most important 7 pages) since I have seen my rankings jump up in the SERP just by adding the main keyword for my website in the title tag. To make it easier I will explain my business. Simply, I run an online jewelry shop, so basically the keywords I want to use is "Jewelry online" and for the main categories "Necklace", "Rings" and "Bracelets". What I am unsure about is whether to use all the keywords in the main pages title tag or should I just use the main keyword "Jewelry online". I don’t want to create competition between my own pages of course. Jewelry Online - Trendy Fashion Jewelry | Homepage Or Jewelry Online - Necklace, Rings, Bracelets | Homepage And the same goes for the main categories, should I include "jewelry online" or not, like: Bracelets - Fashion Jewelry Online | Homepage Or Bracelets - Trendy_ Bangles_ and Arm Cuffs | Homepage Any suggestions what is the best practice for the title tag on main page and the main categories? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ikomorin0