E-commerce site structure & link juice: Bouncing off an idea
-
Hi guys,
Question from a new-comer in SEO. Summary of the situation:
- potential customers are searching for a generic product category (buy mountainbike) more often than a brand in that category (Specialized MTB).
- And the latter is searched more often than a specific product ('some specific product from Specialized brand').
- Both the brand pages and product pages are not ranking good
Then would it be a good idea to have the category pages only link to the brand pages? They may show the products, but the links wouldn't pass link juice. I'm not even sure if that is technically possible, but I wanted to figure out the merit first.
I'm hoping this would support the brand pages to rank better as they take in more volume. Please do feel free to teach me!
-
I'm still a little confused. Perhaps because we are thinking of different things when we say "category page"?
I think of "category page" as a special page in the flow a customer goes thru when they start on your home page. Like this: Home page (has links to all the categories) >>> Category page (has links to all the products in that category) >>> Product page (has complete description and the Buy button)
So in my view, it is perfectly normal for the Category page to have a link going out to each Product page it serves. That might be 5 products or it might be 50 products.
If you feel there are too many products showing on the Category page, then you can use Sub-Categories to decrease the number of links. Like this: Home page >>> Category page (has links to all the sub-category pages) >>> Sub-Category page (split logically, like Men's bikes and Women's Bikes, or Under $200 and $200 to $400 and Over $400, etc) >>> Product page
You may also want to check with your e-commerce system provider. If they don't have an arrangement that you like, there are lots of other e-commerce systems out there...
-
Thanks a lot Dana. And thank you for going beyond the question.
We offer vouchers for writing a review, but there's only a handfull of reviewed products per category.
Where could I find inspiration to make our brand & product pages more compelling? I can't make the question more specific atm as there is still a lot in the "I don't know that I don't know" quadrant
-
Thanks for your answers.
It's definitely a normal situation. However, in the current situation the category page shows the product, each product box contains a link to the product page.
So a category page with 50 products will have 50 links plus links to other categories in the menu and so on.
-
To clarify, my comment was not a suggestion, just a description of what is technically possible given Peter's original post. Hence my warning about using nofollow extensively for internal links.
Regards,
Chris
-
I agree with Gregory that this is a very typical ecommerce scenario. It's also very common to see the search volume greater for the generic terms and then less and less as things become more specific (down to specific models of bikes, for example). I disagree with Chris' suggestion regarding the use of the "nofollow" attribute, here's a Matt Cutts video explaining why: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022462.html - Matt Cutts reiterates, point blank, "I would not 'nofollow' internal links." [Period]
I would take a long hard look at the brand and product pages and try to figure out how to make them more compelling. Do you have customer reviews? Are they being cultivated (i.e. collected, posted, requested...regularly)? Are your product pages getting social shares? If not, spend some time cultivating that. Without seeing one of the pages, my best guess is that there are 5-10 things that you could do right away to make those pages stickier and more compelling. Do that. Don't waste your time trying to sculpt PageRank.
Just my 2 cents! Hope it's a little helpful.
Dana
-
Hi Peter,
Like Gregory said, this is a fairly standard arrangement for large ecommerce sites. Regarding the passing of link juice, you can use NoFollow links to cut off the flow of link juice and concentrate the flow towards a few pages that you want to rank. However, be careful about using too much NoFollow linking internally because you want to make sure your site gets crawled properly.
Hope this helps,
Chris
-
Hi Peter. Maybe I'm reading your description wrong, but it sounds like a pretty standard ecommerce arrangement.
Is the following true?
Search Volume (ranked highest to lowest):
- Generic Products (mountainbike, commuter bike, racing bike, etc)
- Product Brands (Schwinn mountainbike, Trek mountainbike, Hurley mountainbike, etc)
- Brand Models (Scwhinn 851, Schwinn 3400, Schwinn 4xtc, etc)
Page linking plan in question: ( >>> means links going to a collection of pages)
Generic Product page >>> Product Brand pages
Product Brand page >>> Brand Model pages
Although this is a pretty typical ecommerce arrangement, I personally think it is not the best plan for sites only selling a few products. When there are only a few products I think it is better to go straight from the Home page to the specific product pages.
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
-
Can I change a URL on a site that has only a few back links?
I have a site that wants to change their URL, It's a very basic site with hardly any backlinks. http://www.cproofingandexteriors.com/ The only change they want to make is taking out the 'and'.. so it would be cproofingexteriors.com they already own the domain. What should I do?? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MissThumann0 -
URL Structure For E-commerce Sites
Hi Guys, I was wondering what would be the optimal and best URL structure for sub-categories on a E-commerce site for SEO purposes. Example if my category was dresses and I had multiple sub-categories within dresses would 1 or 2 below be the better URL structure? 1) Domain + Category + Sub-Category be the most suitable URL structure: Sleeveless Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/dresses/sleeveless-dresses Midi Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/dresses/midi-dresses 2) OR would excluding the category be better Domain + Sub-Category like: Sleeveless Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/sleeveless-dresses Midi Dresses URL: clothingstore.com/midi-dresses Do you think it makes much of a difference, is shorter better and more effective in this case? E.g. Rand discuses in this article: https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/15-seo-best-practices-for-structuring-urls that having the keyword in the URL serves as anchor text, so wouldn't having additional keywords dilute value in this case? Plus he mentions shorter URLs the better. Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright1 -
Realtor site with external links in navigation
I have a client with a realtor site that uses IDX for the listings feed. We have several external links going over to the IDX site for various live custom searches (ie: luxury listings, waterfront listings, etc...). We are getting a Moz spam ranking of 2/7 for both "Large Number of External Links" and "External Links in Navigation". Chances are, these are related. My question is this: (1) Being the score is only 2/7, should I bother with fixing this? (2) If I add a rel="nofollow" to all the site-wide links (in header, footer & menu) will this help? I couldn't find anything definitive in the Q&A search. Looking forward to any insights!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcallander1 -
URL Re-Writes & HTTPS: Link juice loss from 301s?
Our URLs are not following a lot of the best practices found here: http://moz.com/blog/11-best-practices-for-urls We have also been waiting to implement HTTPS. I think it might be time to take the plunge on re-writing the URLs and converting to a fully secure site, but I am concerned about ranking dips from the lost link juice from the 301s. Many of our URLs are very old, with a decent amount of quality links. Are we better off leaving as is or taking the plunge?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
Unpaid Followed Links & Canonical Links from Syndicated Content
I have a user of our syndicated content linking to our detailed source content. The content is being used across a set of related sites and driving good quality traffic. The issue is how they link and what it looks like. We have tens of thousands of new links showing up from more than a dozen domains, hundreds of sub-domains, but all coming from the same IP. The growth rate is exponential. The implementation was supposed to have canonical tags so Google could properly interpret the owner and not have duplicate syndicated content potentially outranking the source. The canonical are links are missing and the links to us are followed. While the links are not paid for, it looks bad to me. I have asked the vendor to no-follow the links and implement the agreed upon canonical tag. We have no warnings from Google, but I want to head that off and do the right thing. Is this the right approach? What would do and what would you you do while waiting on the site owner to make the fixes to reduce the possibility of penguin/google concerns? Blair
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlairKuhnen0 -
E-Commerce Multilanguage - Better on Subdomains?
Hi, We have an e-commerce store in English and Spanish - same products. URLs differ like this: ENGLISH:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
www.mydomain.com/en/manufacturer-sku-productnameinenglish.html SPANISH:
www.mydomain.com/es/manufacturer-sku-productnameinspanish.html All content on pages is translated, e.g, H1, Titles, keywords, descriptions and site content itself is in the language displayed. Is there a risk of similar or near dupe content here in the eyes of the big G? Would it be worth implementing different languages on subdomains or completely different domains? thank you B0 -
Removed Site-wide links
Hi there, I have recently removed quite a lot of site-wide links leaving the only link on homepage's of some websites, since doing this I have seen a dramatic drop on my keywords, going from position 2-3 to nowhere. Has anyone else experienced anything like this, should I expect to see a return on these keywords? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Has anyone found a way to get site links in the SERPs?
I am wanting to get some site links in the serps to increase the size of my "space", has anyone found a way of getting them? I know google says that its automatic and only generated if they feel it would benifit browsers but there must be a rule of thumb to follow. I was thinking down the line of a tight catagorical system that is implimented throughout the site that is clearly related to the content (how it should be I guess)... Any comments, suggestions welcome
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CraigAddyman0