Is it best to condense 2 similar category pages?
-
After reading Rand's great article about building Seo focused pages to serve topics, not keywords (http://moz.com/blog/topics-people-over-keywords-rankings-whiteboard-friday ) I started looking at my site.
Question: I have 2 very similar category pages, orginally built to go after similar but different keyword terms.
For example, one is: domain.com/blue-rings.html and the other is domain.com/blue-bands.com. (bridal jewelry) "Blue" is just a hypothetical type.
At one time I could rank for "blue-rings" and "blue-bands". But with google changes, I think it's better to focus on a general term, right? Not set up similar pages, with same product, for very similar keywords.
I'm thinking that having these 2 pages could be actually hurting, as they are competing with each other.
Any recommendations?
Thanks folks!
Ron
-
It's hard to say but I've seen examples where removing duplicate categories has improved the strength of the ones that remain. It does depend on the architecture/internal links on your site, what if any external deep links you may have and making sure any removed categories are correctly 301'd to the category that you keep.
I've also seen examples where it's made no difference at all.
If you've got as whole bunch of categories in your navigation I've also seen improvements in engagement by putting these categories in popularity order (Google Analytics can tell you which categories are the most popular). Make the ones that people are looking for easy to find. If you've got the traffic, it can be worth testing.
-
Thanks Doug.
I agree having basically duplicate categories with same products is confusing to customers. In your opinion, by removing one of the category pages would it give a potential boost to the remaining category page?
-
Thank you for your help! Much appreciated.
-
Interestingly if you have a play with Google Trends you'll find that Google interprets "wedding rings" as a product category and when you enter "wedding bands" it give you the option of the Wedding Rings" category. This might be a hint that Google sees things a particular way.
Interestingly, I just did a search for "wedding bands" and noticed that while the serp was dominated with pages offering wedding bands (ring), the top result for me was offering wedding musics/DJs etc.
If you're building pages to target synonyms with exactly the same products/content then I suspect this is unlikely to be helping you significantly.
You've got some data though - look at your analytics and see which category pages organic search traffic is landing on and how that traffic is performing conversion wise. look at the category your visitors and navigating to and if you've got site search, what's their preferred term?
Think also how duplicate categories may be confusing your vistors once they arrive on your site.
Also consider if there are any other factors such as the your location, and demographic of your target audience.
-
Hi Ron,
I agree With You as I think there is no Point creating two different pages for a Singe Product.
You should Create One highly optimized page for a Product and Focus on getting it Ranked.
Hope it helps.
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
-
SEO Impact & Google Impact On Removing Product From Category Page for Ecommerce Site
Hello Experts, For my Ecommerce site previously I was showing products at category pages i.e. first all subcategories name after that list all products of all subcateogries. That also approx per category 500 products via load more feature. My query is now I am planning to show products only at Product Listing Page and not on Category pages so what will be SEO impact and how google will treat this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Johny123450 -
Best way to link to 1000 city landing pages from index page in a way that google follows/crawls these links (without building country pages)?
Currently we have direct links to the top 100 country and city landing pages on our index page of the root domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
I would like to add in the index page for each country a link "more cities" which then loads dynamically (without reloading the page and without redirecting to another page) a list with links to all cities in this country.
I do not want to dillute "link juice" to my top 100 country and city landing pages on the index page.
I would still like google to be able to crawl and follow these links to cities that I load dynamically later. In this particular case typical site hiearchy of country pages with links to all cities is not an option. Any recommendations on how best to implement?0 -
Duplicate page content on numerical blog pages?
Hello everyone, I'm still relatively new at SEO and am still trying my best to learn. However, I have this persistent issue. My site is on WordPress and all of my blog pages e.g page one, page two etc are all coming up as duplicate content. Here are some URL examples of what I mean: http://3mil.co.uk/insights-web-design-blog/page/3/ http://3mil.co.uk/insights-web-design-blog/page/4/ Does anyone have any ideas? I have already no indexed categories and tags so it is not them. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 3mil0 -
Home Page Authority
My site has several different homepage versions. I am running on the Volusion eCommerce. www.mydomain.com - Page Authority 44
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore
www.mydomain.com/Default.asp - Page Authority 33
www.mydomain.com/default.asp - Page Authority = 33 So here is the question, is it normal to have different page Authorities for each version? Is this diluting my SEO for the homepage? Any input on this would be appreciated.0 -
What is the best practice for URLs for E-commerce products in multiple categories?
Hello all! I have always worked successfully with SEO on E-commerce sites, however we are currently revamping an older site for a client and so I thought I'd turn to the community to ask what the best practices that you guys are experiencing for url structures at the moment. Obviously we do not wish to create duplicate content and so the big question is, what would you guys do for the very best structure for URLs on an E-commerce site that has products in multiple categories? Let's imagine we are selling toy cars. I have a sports car for sale, so naturally it can go in the sports cars category and it could also go in to the convertibles category too. What is the best way you have found recently that works and increases rankings, but does not create duplicate content? Thanks in advance! 🙂 Kind Regards, JDM
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hatfish0 -
When migrating website platforms but keeping the domain name how best do we add the new site to google webmaster tools? Best redirect practices?
We are moving from BigCommerce to Shopify but maintaining our domain name and need to make sure that all links redirect to their corresponding links. We understand the nature of 301s and are fine with that, but when it comes to adding the site to google webmaster tools, not losing link juice and the change of address tool we are kind of lost. Any advice would be most welcome. Thank you so much in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WNL0 -
Page A Best for Users, but B Ranks
This is real estate MLS listings related. I have a page "B" with lots of unique content (MLS thumbnails mixed with guide overview writing, pictures etc) which outranks "A" which is a page simply showing MLS thumbnails with map feature included. I am linking from "B" to "A" with anchor "KEYWORD for sale" to indicate to search engines that "A" is the page I want to rank, even though "B" has more unique content. It hasn't worked so far.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
Questions: Should I avoid linking from "B" to "A" as that could impact how well "B" ranks? Should I leave this setup and over time hope search engines will give "A" a chance to rank? Include some unique content on "A" mostly not viewable without clicking "Read more" link? I don't foresee many users will click "Read more" as they are really just looking for the properties for sale and do rarely care about written material when searching for "KEYWORD for sale". Should I "no index, follow" A as there are limited to none unique content and this could enhance chance of ranking better for B? When I write blog posts and it includes "KEYWORD for sale" should I link to "A" (best for users) or link to "B" since that page has more potential to rank really well and still is fairly good for users? Ranking for "B" is not creating a large bounce rate, just that "A" is even better. Thank you,
Kristian0 -
Why my own page is not indexed for that keyword?
hi, I recently recreated the page www.zenucchi.it /ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.html on the third level domain poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it by putting it on the home page. The first page is still indexed for the keyword poltrona frau brescia . But the new page is no indexed for that keyword and i don't know why ( even if the page is indexed in google ) .. I state that the new domain has the same autorithy and that i put a 301 redirect to pass his authority to the new one that has many more incoming links that did not have previous .. i hope you'll help me thanks a lot
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0