Category Pages in competition with Homepages
-
I am finding it a real uphill task with a few of our clients with there either product or category pages competing against other sites on main keywords.
The sites either categories or product specific pages are in direct competition with other sites homepages and I am finding it increasingly more difficult to break into positions.
What are other peoples experiences with this ? Do you feel the way the pages are ranked within the xml sitemap with priority could also be a factor.
-
Yeah sorry about that Garry - EGOL helped clarify.
-
thanks EGOL some great replies. On the sites in question it ranks NO1 for its major keyword on google .
Its a very competitive term in the supplements industry.
Whey protein which other competitors target from their homepages. The sites page is the highest ranking non "homepage"
-
alan I am well aware of the complexities (Granny and suck eggs) comes to mind
Not looking for a in depth response just wanted to know if anyone else has experienced this difficulty with category pages.
-
When I read the question I assumed that Garry was talking about the homepages, category pages and product pages of retail sites.
Really hard to get links into those types of pages - especially good links. However, informative pages on the same site can attract links from other websites - and if they are really informative attract enough links to compete.
Search for "hiking boots" and look for the REI page about how to pick a hiking boot.
If I was going to attack "poker" I would do it with an interactive probability game with feedback that every statistics professor on the planet would link to from his .edu webpages. "Don't go along with bets when the odds of drawing your needed card are smaller than the multiple of potential winnings compared to the size of the wager."
-
EGOL,
What did I not read in the question that allowed you the ability to provide a recommendation? We're talking multiple sites. In unknown markets. Without any insight into the quality of the on-site SEO or the off-site signals for these sites, right?
Just checking in because if I missed something and was way off in my response, I need to understand how that happened.
-
I've found that the best way to break in is to produce "information" pages that attract links.
That will get you into the difficult SERPs. Then you either feature a sales item or two on a content page or pull them into your retail pages with seductive ads or links.
A better alternative is an information site with a store.
-
Garry,
With all due respect, you're asking a question that is impossible to answer with anything resembling a valid, helpful answer. SEO is such a complex set of multiple factors, not the least of which is that every site is unique, every specific market is unique and every primary topic within every market has a unique set of circumstances determining why some sites show up higher than others.
Your situation could be due to improper information architecture, topical dilution, lack of off-site authority - or any of a host of other issues, or a combination of all or part of these.
The only way to know is for you to perform a proper audit for each site compared to each competitive landscape. Barring that, any answer you get here would be throwing darts on a wall while wearing a blindfold.
Without any more specific examples, there's just now way to point you in a healthy and wise direction.
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
-
How I improve my ON-PAGE?
Hi, My Tech related site zophra is not rank in google properly and traffic is not increasing. I think my website on-page is not suitable according to google algorithm. Kindly help me if anyone knows about on-page.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | igaoevale0 -
Pillar pages and blog pages
Hello, I was watching this video about pillar pages https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db3TpDZf_to and tried to apply it to my self but find it impossible to do (but maybe I am looking at it the wrong way). Let's say I want to rank on "Normandy bike tou"r. I created a pillar page about "Normandy bike tour" what would be the topics of the subpages boosting that pillar page. I know that it should be questions people have but in the tourism industry they don't have any, they just want us to make them dream !! I though about doing more general blog pages about things such as : Places to rent a bike in Normandy or in XYZ city ? ( related to biking) Or the landing sites in Normandy ? (not related to biking) Is it the way to do it, what do you recommend ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Ecommerce category pages
Hi there, I've been thinking a lot about this lately. I work on a lot of webshops that are made by the same company. I don't like to say this, but not all of their shops perform great SEO-wise. They use a filtering system which occasionally creates hundreds to thousands of category pages. Basically what happens is this: A client that sells fashion has a site (www.client.com). They have 'main categories' like 'Men' 'Women', 'Kids', 'Sale'. So when you click on 'men' in the main navigation, you get www.client.com/men/. Then you can filter on brand, subcategory or color. So you get: www.client.com/men/brand. Basically, the url follows the order in which you filter. So you can also get to 'brand' via 'category': www.client.com/shoes/brand Obviously, this page has the same content as www.client.com/brand/shoes or even /shoes/brand/black and /men/shoes/brand/black if all the brands' shoes happen to be black and mens' shoes. Currently this is fixed by a dynamic canonical system that canonicalizes the brand/category combinations. So there can be 8000 url's on the site, which canonicalize to about 4000 url's. I have a gut feeling that this is still not a good situation for SEO, and I also believe that it would be a lot better to have the filtering system default to a defined order, like /gender/category/brand/color so you don't even need to use these excessive amounts of canonicalization. Because, you can canonicalize the whole bunch, but you'd still offer thousands of useless pages for Google to waste its crawl budget on. Not to mention the time saved when crawling and analysing using Screaming Frog or other audit tools. Any opinions on this matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adriaan.Multiply0 -
Link title tags on devices - product category page
I saw that any big page doesn't have a title tag on the product link on the category page. Title tag has any advantages on internal links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormar0 -
What to do when your home page an index for a series of pages.
I have created an index stack. My home page is http://www.southernwhitewater.com The home page is the index itself and the 1st page http://www.southernwhitewater.com/nz-adventure-tours-whitewater-river-rafting-hunting-fishing My home page (if your look at it through moz bat for chrome bar} incorporates all the pages in the index. Is this Bad? I would prefer to index each page separately. As per my site index in the footer What is the best way to optimize all these pages individually and still have the customers arrive at the top to a picture. rel= canonical? Any help would be great!! http://www.southernwhitewater.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VelocityWebsites0 -
Dynamic pages
Hello Team, How can we create dynamic pages or more pages on website but maintaining SEO standards.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Obbserv0 -
Merging your google places page with google plus page.
I have a map listing showing for the keyword junk cars for cash nj. I recently created a new g+ page and requested a merge between the places and the + page. now when you do a search you see the following. Junk Cars For Cash NJ LLC
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars
junkcarforcashnj.com/
Google+ page - Google+ page the first hyperlink takes me to the about page of the G+ and the second link takes me to the posts section within g+. Is this normal? should i delete the places account where the listing was originally created? Or do i leave it as is? Thanks0 -
Do keywords for my homepage matter?
Prob the most n00b question of all, but once I understand this I will be able to research on my own from here: If a search engine produces results by the keywords from individual website posts/pages, then how are the keywords I choose for my homepage so important if the general homepage meta-tag keywords are essentially ignored by the search engines? Should I repeat my primary keywords on EVERY post, in addition to the ones that relate to that individual post or am I misunderstanding something fundamental? My new site is http://splatterMUSIC.com and I want to be at the top of the results for anyone wanting to watch music vlogs, album reviews, music lessons, funny music-related videos, new non-major label music videos, and all kinds of other concert footage, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOsolver0