Should I change our main category pages to product listing pages?
-
With the thought of improving user experience, as well as rankings in Google, I'm considering changing our main category pages to product listing pages (with sub-categories remaining, still). These main category pages are very standard and don't link to any informational content, such as buyers guides, etc.
What's driven this is the latest Google core update. I've noticed our main competitor (who we were out-ranking before... but not now) now uses this approach.
I can see the benefit from a user perspective, i.e. less clicks to reach products.
What's the pros/cons from an SEO point of view, please? Could the potential duplication of content be an issue?
For context, we have about 2,000 products and website is on Magento 2.
-
if a visitor is already browsing through your product listing pages, it means that they’re interested in your online store. So this is where you lead them to product pages and persuade them to buy.
With minor improvements, you can start driving more visitors to your product pages and increase your conversions.
Here are the seven best strategies you can use to optimize your product listing pages, and why they’re so effective.
-
Hi There Hope you are doing well. I Started My site and Working on this Site's best laptop buyer's Guide. and with Google update, this is going down. Then I Just publish Quality Content and it ranked Again. With No backlinks.
Thanks
Raisaleem.
-
Sure can you tell me a bit more about what you want to do?
all the best,
Tom
-
I agree with the Silo Structure for blogs & e-commerce it works well when done the right way.
I like Patrick Stox & agree with a lot of what he said about blogs but for the most part the deeper the page the less chance to rank th is why he is saying interlinking is so important for this to work. Look at your site depth & you will see what I am talking about.
he is right about the home page n being the main start for everything but you must interlink
- https://searchengineland.com/everything-not-blog-post-start-using-silos-242508
- https://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo/
a silo might require you almost remake your website.
- https://www.brightedge.com/blog/content-silo-seo
- https://backlinko.com/ecommerce-seo
- https://ahrefs.com/blog/ecommerce-seo/
- https://www.searchenginejournal.com/technical-seo/url-structure/
- https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
Hope this helps,
Tom
-
Well in this case, you should use silo structure, Silo will not only helps users but also help search engine to better understand your website structure. and using silo your website will get a huge boost in rankings. This website TenRater is using Silo Structure. They're Ranking on some high volume Keywords without links.
-
Hi,
I didn't get your question, If you want to see an example of micro niche sites to decide you can check the boxing gloves related blog of me in which i cover some keywords but only in one category
-
The link that you had created goes to a gateway page? I can see you at the bottom you show that there is the ability to purchase the shoe however there’s no way for me to actually purchase it. I don’t know if you want that or not?
without seeing the entire site I can only give you advice on the side that you have shared with me. It would not affect your site to add categories based on the website where it says you can see my store by “click“
What you have already created could be used as categories if you were going to sell the product generally a category page in e-commerce is not a comparison but your content is very thorough & useful I would incorporate it into the main e-commerce site
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/technical-seo/url-structure/
https://yoast.com/video/ask-yoast-order-of-categories-and-subcategories-in-urls/
(this video might seem like it’s not very helpful but it does bring one very important thing into account. Don’t make redirects if you don’t have to. and if you have to make sure you do them page to page
so if you have a list of URLs and in this example: D is the final URL the one that you want every page to go to. (The other letters represent any other relevant pages that need to be redirected to The final URL D)
never link URLs like this A to B to C to D
all 301s Should be lined up like spreadsheet columns (but the spreadsheet should have a maximum of two columns) were the last URL/final URL is pointed to directly like below
- A to D
- then
- B to D
- then
- C to D
The final URL again is D
then line them up like a spreadsheet but never more than one redirect. Unless you can’t help it.
https://moz.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls
bigger photographs below (and the links are examples of awful URLs.)
- https://9c93f9579e3f41fd4e9c-0310e6d68b80e24ea2ff21e1b495e94b.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/6ED12A91-BF22-4D6E-B21F-ED423E7626A5.png
- https://9c93f9579e3f41fd4e9c-0310e6d68b80e24ea2ff21e1b495e94b.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/F50795AA-FF5F-42B1-B3D2-72F19432D9B9.gif
- Hope this helps,
Tom
-
I will be happy to help in 1 hour
-
I'm also looking for the same answer. I'm working on one niche store. And now want to go for macro website. You can see my store by click.
-
I would definitely take a handful and make them the main category pages that you suggested, in the beginning, we really don't have anything to lose if you keep the subcategories however I would like to map out the site it would make it a lot clearer
-
Hi
Yes, I see what you're saying now. I like those subcategories here. You are saying that you might fill this the text which would definitely give Google some more information on the products.
I don't know how you would make the products any closer to the homepage that way?
I would simply add an additional product overview page that is mostly text and links to the subcategory page.
These types of things are never easy because you have a very nice site I would to know a lot more about what's going on with it if I can try to help you with the algorithm update how much traffic have you lost?
I would keep the age that you currently have because it does showcase the current products very well and add an additional main category page with content.
I don't see the harm in doing it to a handful of categories as an experiment. Please keep in mind the closer to the homepage the cliques are the better. And your content should be informational and transactional meaning you're trying to sell on the product pages and product category pages and maybe use a blog for informational content which would allow people who are engaged like myself & planning a wedding the opportunity to learn everything I need to know about the big event. I would also partner with churches and other venues to make sure that the backlinks profile is relevant to your industry.
I will say this part is very confusing because it bears the same name
this is appropriately named https://bseo.dev/RjS2Hq
this is a duplicate and does not work properly.
I can give you an audit of your website if you'd like me to?
My information is right here
https://moz.com/users/view/383525
respectfully,
Tom
-
Hi Tom
This is my domain (I’ve shortened using bitly):
This is one of the main category pages: https://bit.ly/2RSWmZL
I’m planning to keep URL structure the same, and keep the sub-categories still. The only change would be that you see a list of products (which you can filter) rather than the current main category page.
I appreciate any thoughts that you might have! I can email you my email address if you like?
Thanks so much
-
Can you show me what you're being category pages look like now? Or describe them are they just products?
fewer clicks to reach products/ or any page From the homepage has a very strong correlation with ranking.
"with sub-categories remaining" you mean you're going to keep the category pages anyway?
the new algorithm update if it hurt your website could have done so for many reasons that have nothing to do with what you're discussing. If you wouldn't mind could you share the domain with us?
If you feel uncomfortable doing that will give you an email you can send it to.
Sincerely,
Tom
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
-
Unsolved Duplicate Contents in Order Pages of Multiple Products
Hi, I have a website containing 30 software products. Each product has an order page. The problem is that the layout and content of these 30 order pages are very similar, except for the product name, for example: https://www.datanumen.com/access-repair-order/
On-Page Optimization | | ccw
https://www.datanumen.com/outlook-repair-order/
https://www.datanumen.com/word-repair-order/ Siteliner has reports these pages as duplicate contents. I am thinking of noindex these pages. However, in such a case, if a user search for "DataNumen Outlook Repair order page", then he will not be able to see the order page of our product, which drives the revenue go away. So, how to deal with such a case? Thank you.1 -
Insurance agency - Videos for product pages
I use a company that provides me with insurance related videos. However - these video's can not be shared on You Tube, for whatever reason. My question is; if I add these video's to my product pages on my website will it hurt me in any way? OR do I need to add the text underneath the video? Or do something else to optimize them? I don't want to hurt my pages in any way - but the videos are informative and good quality. Thoughts? and thanks 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | MissThumann0 -
Renamed a page and created a 301, page lost its rankings.
We changed a page name to fall under the root of our site from domain.com/page1/page301d/ to domain.com/page301d/ and after 2 weeks it still is not back to its #3 position. Now it is on the bottom of page 3. I cant figure out what im doing wrong here. The original .com/page1/ that this page fell under was removed totally and redirected to antoher page that was more relevant. I went ahead and re-enabled this page and its contnent, because the page was linking out to the page we 301d. This page we re-enabled had about 150 links poitning to it and therefore i was thinking that maybe the link juice from this page (or relevancy) via an internal link was helping it rank. This was updated about 6 days ago and the internal link is back Any other ideas why this might not be working. Ive checked all the 301s, content has not changed on the page. We have updated the strcuture for many pages. Instead of having the pages in question fall under anotehr page, they all fall under the root and its sub content is now only 2 levels deep , instead of being 3. hope that makese sense.
On-Page Optimization | | waqid0 -
Can you use the canonical tag and rel=next and rel=prev on category pages.
We have a conflict of information between our web developers and our SEO company. We are an on-line retail company hence we have a fair number of different categories. Our site is set up with the rel=next and rel=prev tags. Our SEO company have asked us to implement canonical links on our category pages and leave the rel=next and rel=prev tags as they are. Our web developers are saying by doing this we are asking Google to ignore all of our products on all of the pages except page 1 which would mean Google would not index a lot of our products. I have looked at a few articles but I am struggling to understand which way to go. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
Why would changing 404 pages increase traffic by 9%?
Neil Patel claimed in this article that by creating a custom 404 page that links out to 25 to 50 random internal pages on the website, he was able to increase the traffic of Techcrunch by 9%. I'm a bit skeptical about this claim. A couple of questions: Is this theory sound? If you've personally tried this or have read other articles supporting Neil, I'd love to learn more. Would a big site like Techcrunch really have problems with Google not indexing all of its pages? Also, does getting more pages crawled help you get more traffic? Specifically, would it help a site like mine? For reference, my site gets an average of 12,040 pages crawled per day in last 90 days. Currently 28,922 pages have been indexed. Are there any possible downsides to trying this? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Brand_Psychic0 -
"Issue: Duplicate Page Content " in Crawl Diagnostics - but these pages are noindex
Saw an issue back in 2011 about this and I'm experiencing the same issue. http://moz.com/community/q/issue-duplicate-page-content-in-crawl-diagnostics-but-these-pages-are-noindex We have pages that are meta-tagged as no-everything for bots but are being reported as duplicate. Any suggestions on how to exclude them from the Moz bot?
On-Page Optimization | | Deb_VHB0 -
Page Analysis - Helping Product Pages Outrank Search Results Pages
Hi! We have a lot of our search results pages that have been indexed and outrank our product pages and in some instance the actual product pages barely show up at all. Here is an example query that includes our brand name: http://goo.gl/cgB6W So, we have loads of actual product pages, video pages, etc that should be showing up here, but are not and this is just one example. Unfortunately, there are a LOT of these Search Results pages out there and utlimately we would love to de-index them altogether, but it's going to have to be carefully done. So, was wondering if anyone would want to check out one of our product pages and give any feedback as to what we could change to possibly improve rank or to make them more search friendly or hopefully to help them rise above these indexed search results pages? Here is an example product page: http://goo.gl/2R4IT Thanks!! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
Category listing page coming above product pages
A new SEO client we have taken on seem to be hitting most of the points right on with their site and SEO. However one thing that is bugging me is that their category pages i.e. "Footwear" which title tag includes the brands they stock. Is almost always coming up above (if they are ever even found) the product individual pages. Anyone seen this sort of things happening? Very frustrating.
On-Page Optimization | | iboxsecurityltd0