E-Commerce Website Architecture - Cannibalization between Product Categories and Blog Categories?
-
Hi,
I have an e-commerce site that sells laptops.
My main landing pages and category pages are as follows:
"Toshiba Laptops", "Samsung Laptops", etc.We also run a WP blog with industry news.
The posts are divided into categories which are basically as our landing pages.
The posts themselves usually link to the appropriate e-commerce landing page.
For example: a post about a new Samsung Laptop which is categorized in the blog under "Samsung Laptops" will naturally link somewhere inside to the "samsung laptops" ecommerce landing page.Is that good or do the categories on the blog cannibalize my more important e-commerce section landing pages?
Thanks
-
I do often agree with your assessment and perhaps I should have worded it as "you might want to consider" instead of "make sure".
Its because in certain circumstances, having a blog post about something like "5 Reasons the New Toshiba Laptop is Awesome" with a link to your ecommerce page selling the product could be considered a paid link or the post may be seen as an advertorial. Because you sell laptops and you're writing a blog post about laptops that includes a link to the sale of laptops on your own site, there is concern it _migh_t be devalued especially after all the news concerning press release links and advertorials in recent months.
Of course, much of this is conjecture and the more I think about it the more it would seem that the people I've seen concerned about being hit for something like that are people that have been doing other, more sketchy things.
-
No problem. This isn't the clearest example of what I am talking about, but it was the one that I had open in a tab when I got the email notification of your question!
http://www.backcountry.com/3-season-tents
The top of that page has three guides. There are three more at the bottom. Those guides are in a place where customers are more likely to see/use them. That makes sense as they are also great sales tools. Those that open in a modal window for that page also mean that the category page becomes the page that attracts links rather than the blog page.
-
Thanks Mat for the reply.
I didn't quite understand what you meant... Can you provide an example of an e-commerce site you feel that implements it well? (doesn't need to be one related to you).
Thanks
-
Your ending was hilarious:
"hurt you depending on Google guidelines for the given month/week/day"
About nofollow and violating Google:
I think that having a call to action at the end of every post is legit and obvious (for example at the end of "Toshiba Laptops" post having a "Looking for a Toshiba Laptop?" button). It doesn't make sense to me nofollowing it. Doing so will only waste the juice I'm nofollowing - Google stated that no following links that not pass over more juice on the others, it simply wastes it.Look at Hubspot's blog for example, at the end of each post they offer an ebook or something. All of the links are followed.
What do you think?
-
I've always been more of an "if they cannibalized then cross-link" type of person, followed up with a hint of "tweak accordingly". If our blogs are ranking well for something and drawing in more people than the actual product page, it could be that more people are just looking for information and not necessarily purchasing... of course there's the AIDA conversion funnel to consider as well. Why not make sure there is a prominent link/call to action that users can follow once they're done digesting the info so then they can look at the product page and (hopefully) convert? And make sure the link is NoFollow or it could be seen as unnatural and/or inadvertently hurt you depending on Google guidelines for the given month/week/day.
-
Your structure is probably the most common. As you say though, you do risk cannibalising your own results. You could no-index the blog categories.
My preferred approach is to have blog and store more closely integrated. This can allow you to do away with blog category pages entirely, and have those as part of the e-commerce category. Bringing the content closer to the products brings a number of benefits in terms of both SEO and Conversions. It also results in much richer category pages which can be another big win.
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
-
Homepage Gateway for Website Divisions (Residential / Commercial) Bad for SEO?
When a website offers multiple divisions for products and services would it be a good SEO practice to implement something as Culligan does by having their homepage be a sort of gateway to the different divisions of site (home, office, commercial, industrial)? 2DaYz
Web Design | | m-johnson0 -
We added hundreds of pages to our website & restructured the layout to include 3 additional locations within the sub-pages, same brand/domain name. How long could Google take to crawl/index the new pages and rank the keywords used within those pages?
We added hundreds of pages to our website & restructured the layout to include 3 additional locations within the sub-pages, same brand/domain name. The 3 locations old domains were redirected to their sites within our main brand domain. How long could Google take to crawl/index the new pages and rank the keywords used within those pages? And possibly increase our domain authority hopefully? We didn't want our brand spread out over multiple websites/domains on the internet. This also allowed for more content to be written on pages, per each of our locations service's, as well.
Web Design | | BurgSimpson0 -
SEO Tips for Affiliate Website
Hi all , I would just like to have an expert Opinion on SEO for Affiliate Website . Basically if I list all Third party products (Amazon/Affilate Window etc ) on my website and then the customer will be redirected to the Affiliates website to make a Purchase will there be an issue with SEO (Lots of Outgoing Url's) and Will the website not rank for Important keywords or will it be hit by any penalty ? I heard it's not good for SEO , any work around this ? If this is case How come cashback Sites rank well with no issues , although the concept is basically the same ? Any Tips or Advice appreciated as how to get this done safe . My Preferred Option would be with Magento Shopping Cart or second option would be with Wordpress Cart only in case this provides some SEO benefits over Magento by some plugins .
Web Design | | Aus0070 -
Parallax websites - good for SEO?
A client of mine is redesigning their site using a vertical Parallax & upon doing some research I've stumbled across Drew Barrymore's site: http://flowerbeauty.com/ - which also uses Parallax. What I like in particular is that the site changes URLs as you scroll down. If you go direct to one of those URLs you'll notice unique meta data (albeit poorly optimised). All pages are indexed fine in Google (https://www.google.com/#bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=f8873f78dfbb8c5e&q=site:flowerbeauty.com) I'm just wondering if this is considered ok as the user experience is good and they're not doing anything manipulative, however, there's duplicate content and a potential case of cloaking at hand. I think this approach may be ok for my client for a product features page or a global office locations page since I can break up the sections nicely and split a really long page featuring a lot of content into separate URLs. Whereas Flower Beauty have done it across the whole site... i.e. one page of HTML = the whole site. What do you guys think?
Web Design | | wojkwasi0 -
Does Google penalize duplicate website design?
Hello, We are very close to launching five new websites, all in the same business sector. Because we would like to keep our brand intact, we are looking to use the same design on all five websites. My question is, will Google penalize the sites if they have the same design? Thank you! Best regards,
Web Design | | Tiberiu
Tiberiu0 -
Website platform
I read through this 2008 Moz post and comments: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/choosing-the-right-cms-platform-for-your-website-from-an-seo-perspective but a few years have passed since the discussion. I am looking to completely revamp my site which is primarily static and built on WordPress, and create a rich community environment that is highly interactive and serves the visitor well. The question continues to come up why I'm using WP vs DotNet vs Drupal vs Juumla. The honest answer is: 1) it's easy for a non-tech like me to update, 2) seems like a lot of plugins are available for use, 3) has a high adoption rate (stable) But also, I kind of don't know what I don't know. I wanted to open up the conversation to see why others favor a specific platform as it relates to the following needs: Must be non-tech EASY to use (no high learning curve Lots of plugins and interoperability - can add and remove as needed/times change Must support forum/community needs and conversations Must be able to create granular authentication / permissions for different audiences to see "permissioned" content BONUS if it can interoperate with MS Dynamics CRM (unfortunately, sigh) I've been burned in the past by using teams that had a predilection for a platform simply because they were comfortable with it - not because it was right for my needs. I have a hard time understanding pro/con conversations if the technologies are too focused on the tech and not enough of what the technology delivers, and I'm naturally resistant to technologies that require a techie, rather than a marketing expert to use them.Thoughts anyone? Would love to hear Mozer opinions - thanks in advance 🙂
Web Design | | JeanieWalker0 -
Website design for non-coders
Hi All Anyone any experience with using Headway Themes for wordpress. How does it compare to Artisteer 3 for ease of use for a non-coder. Does "Headway Themes" really allow for the designing of sharp business wordpress websites for people with no coding skills as it claims. Thanks Peter
Web Design | | peterds0 -
Need an SEO pro to build us a new fine art website
Hey Seomoz friends My friends and I started buying and selling art 5 years ago. We did it all on ebay. Two years ago I decided to try an attempt at building us a website to further our business outside of ebay. www.originalartbroker.com I used homestead.com software aka intuit to do this. I was able to get a lot of first page results in seo after a ton of work and willing to do a lot more. I'm sure the homestead site slowed my efforts down. I need more power 🙂 What we do. We sell fine art. We are trying to aspire to the leading seller of fine contemporary art online. We will do whatever it takes to get there. Our issue is not our product. Our issue is getting traffic to the site. I only have 175-200 visitors a day. I need better results for the keywords of our artists and inquires that surround them. We have a bounce rate of 70%, average time on site of 1 minute 50 seconds, and a slow loading site that is almost impossible to create individual pages for pieces (mgmt nightmare) Outside of our site we have blogs, squidoo pages, facebook account with 2500 fans, twitter page with 2k followers, youtube channel, and a blog on the site for new arrivals. We have a 200-250 piece on our site at any given time. We add probably ten pieces on average a week. We don't need any kind of ecommerce management software as most of our sales are done over the phone being that it is higher end art. I need a site that out performs my competition. I need to be in the top three when someone types in "leroy neiman" "peter max" and so on. I, with limited knowledge, need to be able to use the software everyday to upload new art as it comes in. I want every piece to have its own page so that I can also add pieces to a google merchant account. When I add new pieces under a certain artists and it creates its own page i want it to create h tags and an url extension for each product as I add them based off the discription and artists name. I would like some sort of blog integration to post our new arrivals as we get them. I would like some sort of customer capture. I am thinking something along the lines of them prociding email, name, and zip code to see the prices on the site. You are the seo pro so you know what it takes. I would like to know what a solution would cost to get us on the ground with more seo power. A site with speed that is easily indexed. It doesn't need to have a lot of bells and whistles. Please look at my site and let me know what you think. You can get an idea from that of what we are doing. Please give me an idea of what you can do and what it would cost. Thank you
Web Design | | forecastedinvestments0