Is it better to optimise for several keywords/keyword variations on one page, or create sub categories for those specific terms?
-
I've done a fair of research to try to find the answer to this, but different people seem to give very different opinions, and none of the info I could find is recent!
I'm working with a company that produces a range of industrial products that fit into 6 main categories, within this categories, there are types of products and the products themselves.
Prior to my involvement most of the content was added to the product pages and very little was added to the overall category page. The structure works like this:
Electronic devices > type of device > products
The 'type of device' category could be something like a switch, but within that category are 3/4 different switch types...leaving me with 11 or 12 primary keyword/phrases to aim for as each switch is searched for in more than one way. Should I try to rank for all of those terms using that one category page? Or should I change the structure to something like:
Electronic devices > type of device > sub-category/specific variation of device > product
This would mean creating a page for each variation to have a more accute focus for a small number of phrases..but it also means I've added another step between the home page and the products.
Any advice is welcome! I'm worried I'm overthinking it!
-
Thanks for the response.
I was hoping that there might be a commonly used strategy for tackling this kind of problem but I think deep down I knew I'd end up just having to try it and see what happens.
I'll just have to give it a go and see if I get the response I'm looking for and go from there.
Thanks again!
-
Hey Adam,
It can be difficult to determine what google considers to be the same 'topic' and you want everything contained in a topic to be on the page to make it stronger and comprehensive.
The only way that I have had success solving your problem is to test. So many SEO's are terrified of breaking things, losing rankings and getting asked the terrible question, 'what did you do?!'
I'm lucky that I'm the CEO and can break whatever I want. I've tested splitting out products from a 'topic' to see how they rank. Sometimes they will just not get enough traffic and I think Google doesn't get enough feedback to rank them with any stability.
I've also tested combining pages and sometimes it works very well and other times it confuses visitors. So talk to your customers and do some googling yourself and competitor research to try to find the delimitations of the 'topic' so that each page can have the maximum information on it. Also write comprehensively. Usually if you have split out a topic and it's cannibalising or competing with another one you will see this pretty quickly and you just revert to how it was.
Test, test and then test again. That's the only way to solve this one I'm afraid. You're not going to get a definite answer because there isn't one unfortunately. It's what Rankbrain learns from customers and searches and you can't control that. But you can start to get a feel for it by researching.
-
Hi Adam. The practical tips that I propose below will allow you to adjust the structure of your blog.
First, good practices for the use of the categories:
- The categories must be able to classify the main topics that are covered in the blog.
- Create between 5-7 categories.
- Define the categories at the beginning of the creation of the blog.
- Index categories.
- Do not use uncategorized: it is better to create a category of "others".
- The categories must appear in the main menu or in the sidebar.
- On the main page of the category includes an explanatory text.
- The number of posts by categories must be balanced. If you identify that a category contains most of the posts, you may need to divide that category into two (or more).
- A post can be included in more than one category, but it is not necessary. If we think it can help the user, there is no problem, although you always have to think if it is really necessary and if it will add value. In some cases it will not be necessary, in others, we may discover the need to create another category that better encompasses a main theme.
Then, good practices for the use of tags:
- It is advisable not to index the tags.
- It is not necessary to include them in the main menu.
- Tags should never have the same name as a category.
- The tags are not meta keywords.
- Do not create infinite tags. Each tag must have a meaning and be able to encompass several posts. A practical exercise is to think: will I use this tag for more than one post? If the answer is no, it is advisable not to create it.
- Less is more. Do not include more tags than necessary by post. There is no limit number, but remember that they have to add value.
- Choose if we work the words in plural or singular.
- It is also ideal to define the tags when starting the blog. To do it in an orderly way we can define the tags according to the category. But never use the same tags in a category.
And don't forget the URL structure. Its very important too. If a blog is SEO friendly, it is also seen in the structure of its URLs. When you define them, remember to include /category/ or /tag/ in front of the category or tag as in this example:
In this way, you will create a healthy structure and avoid possible 404 errors and duplicate content. I hope I've helped.
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
-
URL structure - which one is better?
We are creating a new website and got stuck while deciding the URL structure. Our concern is which url is better in terms of SEO i.e. pune.fabogo.com/spa or fabogo.com/pune/spa and why. Also which one would rank faster if someone searches for **spas in pune if both **pages are same.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabogo_marketing0 -
Client would like to 301 redirect the homepage to a category page
Hello MOZ Community!!! I would like your expert opinions on a scenario, please! My client is an ecommerce company, and currently has one of its category pages outranking its homepage for a few key phrases. The homepage, however, has a better conversion rate. So, the client is asking that we make the homepage the category URL, so http://www.theirsite.com/blue-clothes. The existing homepage URL - http://www.theirsite.com - would 301 REDIRECT to the category page - which would render the current version of the homepage. Therefore, there would be nothing, ZERO content, on the MAIN URL: http://www.theirsite.com Has anyone ever done this before? What are the pros and the cons of this practice? Here is my same client, for reference: https://moz.com/community/q/issue-with-category-ranking-on-page-1-vs-homepage-ranking-on-page-2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
Targeting local areas without creating landing pages for each town
I have a large ecommerce website which is structured very much for SEO as it existed a few years ago. With a landing page for every product/town nationwide (its a lot of pages). Then along came Panda... I began shrinking the site in Feb last year in an effort to tackle duplicate content. We had initially used a template only changing product/town name. My first change was to reduce the amount of pages in half by merging the top two categories, as they are semantically similar enough to not need their own pages. This worked a treat, traffic didn't drop at all and the remaining pages are bringing in the desired search terms for both these products. Next I have rewritten the content for every product to ensure they are now as individual as possible. However with 46 products and each of those generating a product/area page we still have a heap of duplicate content. Now i want to reduce the town pages, I have already started writing content for my most important areas, again, to make these pages as individual as possible. The problem i have is that nobody can write enough unique content to target every town in the UK via an individual page (times by 46 products), so i want to reduce these too. QUESTION: If I have a single page for "croydon", will mentioning other local surrounding areas on this page, such as Mitcham, be enough to rank this page for both towns? I have approx 25 Google local place/map listings and grwoing, and am working from these areas outwards. I want to bring the site right down to about 150 main area pages to tackle all the duplicate content, but obviously don't want to lose my traffic for so many areas at once. Any examples of big sites that have reduced in size since Panda would be great. I have a headache... Thanks community.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Silkstream0 -
ECommerce keyword targeting: Blog post vs Category page
I'm targeting short head and chunky middle keywords for generating traffic to an ecommerce website. I guess I have two options both with great content: blog posts category pages with content (essentially the blog post). On the basis that it is great content that gets links, I would hope that I could garner links into the heart of the eCommerce website by doing this through option 2: category pages. Any thoughts on blog vs ecommerce category pages for tageting keywords?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruceMcG0 -
Does Google make continued attempts to crawl an old page one it has followed a 301 to the new page?
I am curious about this for a couple of reasons. We have all dealt with a site who switched platforms and didn't plan properly and now have 1,000's of crawl errors. Many of the developers I have talked to have stated very clearly that the HTacccess file should not be used for 1,000's of singe redirects. I figured If I only needed them in their temporarily it wouldn't be an issue. I am curious if once Google follows a 301 from an old page to a new page, will they stop crawling the old page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RossFruin0 -
How can we improve rankings for category pages
Hi Everyone, I have a dog breeder site I'm working on and I was wondering if I could get some tips and ideas on things to do to help the "category" pages rank better in search engines. Let's say I have "xyz" breed category page which has listings of all dog breeders who offer that particular breed, in this case "xyz". I have certain breeder profile listings which rank higher for those terms that the category page should be ranking for. So I'm guessing Google thinks those breeder profile pages are more relevant for those terms. Especially if well optimized. I know thin content may be my problem here, but one of our competitors dominates the rankings for relevant keywords with no content on their category pages. What do you all suggest?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rsanchez0 -
Merging several domains into one, a redirection question
Hi, We have a client who recently acquired a bunch of domains in all kinds of niches, each domain has a WordPress site on it, with content and backlinks. Clients wants to "merge" all these domains into categories in his "main website", moving content and "moving" backlinks as well. The syntax we came up with is the following: (sample domains of course)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MandLoys
potatomixers.com will be updated with .htaccess 301 redirect:
Redirect 301 /fastpotatomixer.htm http://www.mainwebsite.com/home-appliances/fastpotatomixer 1.) I'm not sure about the domain's root though. Where would I redirect potatomixers.com, to mainwebsite.com/home-appliances? Won't that be a problem that the new one is a "larger" category that has other posts as well, not only potatomixers? 2.) If this gets into the .htaccess (with several other lines for the other content as well of course), won't the first line "override" all the other ones? Redirect 301 / http://www.mainwebsite.com/home-appliances/
Redirect 301 /fastpotatomixer.htm http://www.mainwebsite.com/home-appliances/fastpotatomixer
Redirect 301 /easypotatomixer.htm http://www.mainwebsite.com/home-appliances/easypotatomixer etc. Thanks!0 -
Convert keyword rich PDFs to web pages (text & images)
SteriPEN is a portable water purifier that kills viruses, protozoa, e-coli, etc. Because of the technical and safety requirements nature of the product, our website has much documentation of testing, organisms affected, and more. These are in pdf form and can often be found through google search (and through links on specific pages). Because of the keyword-richness of these documents pertaining to microbes SteriPEN kills, etc. does it make sense to convert these pdf's into html text and images? Then I was thinking perhaps writing a blog post AND generating key links on important landing pages to these documents (as html). Removing pdfs may be harmful? Not a clue as to the cost/benefit.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Timmmmy0