Changing categorisation effect on SEO
-
Hi
I work on an ecommerce shop & we've discussed changing some of out categories.
We have one named cupboards & lockers, but want to split this out, so we have Cupboards then Lockers so customers can browse through our main navigation like this.
For SEO I know initially our rankings will be affected, but long term moving categories up a level will be an improvement & will be more relevant - has anyone does this before and could provide any advice?
Becky
-
Sometimes, you just gotta try.
-
Thanks for the reply.
I can definitely do this, they're both important, which is why we want to split them. In terms of SEO I also think having defined categories and moving them higher up in the site structure is worth doing - I just have no stats to prove this as it hasn't been done before
Thanks!
-
I would look at the bottom line, which one do you sell more? Which one makes more profit on average per months worth of sales? Whichever one that is, use the old category URL for it and 301 redirect to the new URL for the more profitable URL. Then for a temporary period, keep a banner or a little link or something like that on the new URL that clearly directs users who are looking for the less profittable product's new URL to the right location.
That's the best I can think of. I had done this on a car rental company where they lost some of their cars and had to take down the URLs but we instead 301 redirected to the next closest choice and made some changes to "feature" the other related cars as well.
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
-
Domain name change
Here's the scenario... Client has two domain names: domain.com - targeting one country (Australia) otherdomain.com - targeting all other countries Both have identical products, but different currencies (AU$ and US$). The problem (as most of you will know) is that without using a sub-domain or country-code top-level domains, Google has no idea which domain should be served for which domain. Furthermore, because the root domain is different, Google doesn't see any connection between the two - other than the fact they have identical products! My recommendation to the client is to change to: domain.com to domain.com.au otherdomain.com to domain.com Arguably, we could leave the second one alone. But I think it's better for the brand to use the same root domain for each. Obviously this means both will need to be redirected. Since NONE of the pages within the sites will change, do we need to redirect every page, or just the root domain? Any other risks or concerns we should know about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Old Website Build Effecting SEO
So this is a bit of a strange one. My latest website was built on a different domain, then transferred over (as opposed to being built on a subdomain). I was told that the domain which my site was built on wasn't indexed by Google, but looking at the Google Search Console I can see that the old domain name is showing up as the most linked to domain name of my current site - meaning it was indexed. The domain (and all of its pages) does have a 301 redirect to the new website home page (as opposed to their individual pages), but could this be causing me a problem with SEO? Additionally, my website has a sister (UK and US websites), both link to each other on the footer (which appears on every page). Could this be pulling my SEO efforts down if it is a do-follow link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Google Hummingbird Update - Any Changes ?
Google has update with the new alogrithm and did you see any effects and as they are not revelaing the techinicaly how they work ? What's your opinion ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Esaky0 -
Pagination & SEO
I have the WP-Pagination plugin and I am wondering how to handle duplicate content issues and what's best for SEO. My developer initially downloaded the plugin to speed up loading for the home page. Now my home page has 21 pages of paginated content. But the pagination continues with each of my categories as well. Should I be placing a canonical reference to my home page, or category main page? My site name is gracessweetlife (dot) com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gracessweetlife0 -
SEO Feedback Please
Hi, I was hoping to get some feedback on this site's SEO: http://www.chantre.com/ I also have different URLs which can be accessed from the left side of the site under "Quick Search Links" that go to the different offices within this company. Thoughts on how to improve would be great. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gXe0 -
HTML entities and SEO
I recently came across an article on HTML entities that discussed how their appear in search results. The same article also mentioned that their use might be considered spam. Since I know nothing of them (other than what I read in the one article) are they a good or bad idea to make meta descriptions stand out from the crowd?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340 -
Local SEO (Rankings) + UK-wide SEO (national rankings) - achieving both
Hi All, For clients wishing to sell online / generate leads nationally, yet still want to have a local online presence to attract town / county-wide customers, I've often placed Town / County locations within both the Title Tag (or just County if space is limited) and Meta Description, plus within the Hx headings, Alt-text and within the footer of every page. My question is, does adding the location of the client within these fields really infringe their attempts to rank nationally, as some nationally ranked pages have no mention of location while others have their location (Town, County or Both) shown within them? Any help, insight or feedback greatly appreciated 🙂 Happy New Year Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tony-Dimmock0 -
How to Implement Massive SEO Modifications
Hi everyone, I'm implementing some fairly significant changes on a clients website and wanted to know if it was better to implement all the changes at once or if I should implement the changes gradually. The changes are: 1. Amended information architecture 2. Completely new URL's 3. New meta data and some new on page content 4. Meta robots 'no index, follow' approximately 90% of the site Can I make all these changes in one go (that would be my preference), or should I gradually implement? What are the risks? Many thanks James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jamesjackson1