May integrating my main category page in the index page improve my ranking of main category keyword?
-
90% of our sales are made with products in one of our product categories.
A search for main category keyword returns our root domain index page in google, not the category page.
I was wondering whether integrating the complete main category directly in the index page of the root domain and this way including much more relevant content for this main category keyword may have a positive impact on our google ranking for the main category keyword.Any thoughts?
-
Your homepage is probably more powerful than your category page and that is why it outranks it.
The category page, if it was strong enough to rank in the top ten, would likely be on the first page of the SERPs with your homepage - or instead of your homepage. That tells me that it lacks strength rather than relevance.
The first thing that I would do is make sure that I have taken advantage of all opportunities to build internal links to the category page. These would be links within paragraph text or a breadcrumb system of links throughout the site.
I often add lots of text to category pages. This can be details about the items shown on the page, relevant information at the top of the page, relevant sidebar information, or supplemental information at the bottom of the page. Use these to make links to relevant secondary pages within the category.
That's what I would do. If that isn't good enough then you need links from external sites to obtain enough power to rank higher.
-
EGOL thanks. Interesting point. I could see how it may slightly increase engagement and how this in turn may be a slight positive factor in ranking, even though the focus of our site is quite obvious already on the index page.
Still my main doubt is whether in having much more comprehensive content on the main keyword on the domain index page instead of having the same content in a category page may as such affect positively ranking of the main keyword in google, considering that google currently lists my root domain homepage instead of my category page in SERP for main keyword. -
If you have a site with a very limited product range (such as the items in your main category), then this might be a good idea. Visitors will see the focus of your business when they land on your homepage and they can dig a little to find ancillary and accessory items.
However, if you offer a lot more than this main category, and the "more" are unrelated items, then making such a heavy emphasis on your homepage might not be a good idea.
Bottom line: I would make this decision based more on customer expectations and where you sales are focused, rather than basing it on an SEO strategy.
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
-
Shopify Website Page Indexing issue
Hi, I am working on an eCommerce website on Shopify.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bhisshaun
When I tried Indexing my newly created service pages. The pages are not getting indexed on Google.
I also tried manual indexing of each page and submitted a sitemap but still, the issue doesn't seem to be resolved. Thanks0 -
Deep level category pages not ranking well
Hi Guys, I have pages which are 3 levels deep on this site: **https://tinyurl.com/y7bnwkms ** They are barely ranking even though we have optimised them with category based content. Now it seems it might be a internal linking issue. Also noticed ahrefs has not visited the URL yet. So we are in the processing of installing breadcrumbs, building links from level 2 categories to level 3 (which is that url above) plus building links from blog to these level 3 pages. Also links are all in the sitemap. Besides that do you see anything else we can do? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bridhard80 -
Wrong pages ranking for key terms
Hi, I have a website that was rebuilt and redesigned earlier this year, and it's struggling to rank. The problem is that the wrong pages are ranking for the key terms. For example, there is a page for 'Loft Conversions Essex' but the page that's ranking is actually the FAQ page (which doesn't mention the word 'Essex' at all). I have been through all of the usual items, and none of them seem to apply: The landing pages have been properly optimised (not overly so), while the pages that rank only contain the terms within the menu (the link that goes to the actual landing page) We thought it may be a redirect issue since the site was a bit of a mess before the rebuild, so we removed all of the redirects and resubmitted the htaccess file but that hasn't helped Internal anchor text is relevant There aren't a huge number of external links to the old site pages, and many of these pages didn't exist at all so I don't think that's an issue Most of the pages were built at the same time so there's no real reason why one would have more authority than another There are no canonicals interfering with these pages I can't really canonical these since we do want the pages to rank, it's just that they're all ranking for the wrong thing (so the SERPs are a lot lower than they should be). Most of these pages are pretty new, as I said, so while we have tried smaller content changes I don't think a full refresh will really help. To make it even weirder, the pages that rank for each term change regularly but it's never the right page. Help! EDIT: Thanks for the responses everyone!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innermedia10 -
Indexing Dynamic Pages
http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/search/Wiper+Blade/03300/C0047.oap?make=Honda&model=Accord&year=2005&vi=1430764 How is O'Reilly getting this page indexed? It shows up in organic results for [2005 honda accord windshield wiper size].
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Why would one of our section pages NOT be indexed by Google?
One of our higher traffic section pages is not being indexed by Google. The products that reside on this section page ARE indexed by Google and are on page 1. So why wouldn't the section page be even listed and indexed? The meta title is accurate, meta description is good. I haven't received any notices in Webmaster Tools. Is there a way to check to see if OTHER pages might also not be indexed? What should a small ecom site do to see about getting it listed? SOS in Modesto. Ron
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
Ranking slipped to page 6 from page 1 over the weekend?
My site has been on page one for 2 phrases consistently from May onwards this year. The site has fewer than 100 backlinks and the link profile looks fairly even. On Friday we were on page 1, we even had a position 1, however now we are on page 6. Do you think this is Penguin or some strange Google blip? We have no webmaster tools messages at all. Thanks for any help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onlinechester0 -
Certain Product Pages Not Indexing
Hey All, We discovered an issue where new product pages on our site were not getting indexed because a "noindex" tag was inadvertently being added to section when those pages were created. We removed the noindex tag in late April and some of the pages that had not been previously indexed are now showing up, but others are still not getting indexed and I'd appreciate some help on why this could be. Here is an example of a page that was not in the index but is now showing after removal of noindex: http://www.cloud9living.com/san-diego/gaslamp-quarter-food-tour And here is an example of a page that is still not showing in the index: http://www.cloud9living.com/atlanta/race-a-ferrari UPDATE: The above page is now showing after I manually submitted it in WMT. I had previously submitted another page like a month ago and it was still not indexing so I thought the manual submission was a dead end. However, it just so happens that the above URL just had its Page Title and H1 updated to something more specific and less duplicative so I am currently running a test to see if that's the problem with these pages not indexing. Will update this soon. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GManSEO0 -
What to do if the wrong page is ranking?
What to do if the wrong page of your website is ranking and you cannot 301 it? Apparently an outsourced company the previous manager hired build anchor text links to the homepage, when those links should have been pointing to a deeper page. As a result, the hompage is now ranking for that term. But I think we can convert a lot more of the visitors if the deeper page is there instead. Obviously, I can't 301 the homepage. What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrep0