Wordpress SEO: Category page + Product page or only category page?
-
Trying to improving my website's ranks on google for a specific keyword (e.g. Samsung S6), I'm thinking about doing some experiments. I've a wordpress based blog. Now, I've the category "Samsung S6" (url: example.com/samsung-s6), with only the latest 6 news (with excerpts) + pagination. This ranks good, but it's a bit ugly as a landing page and I want a better rank. I could improve this page by customizing the template and adding some static text, but it could be a time-consuming solution considering that I'm using a third party theme and I should check this every update. Also, it's harder to customize this page then the next solution:
I'm thinking about creating a new page Samsung S6 (url: example.com/samsungs6). This page will contain a product overlay (e.g. RAM, HD, screen size etc.), + product description with features and a small review of it's elements (e.g. camera description with results, suggested applications etc.) + some images/youtube videos + latest 6 news (without excerpts) + some links to other relevant pages in my website for that product, including a link to the category page.
What will happen in terms of SEO? Any idea if the new page could rank better than the category page, considering that it has more static elements? Not sure if google could detects duplicates, or two page comepting for the same keyword on the same website is a bad thing. Which are your ideas? Is it ok to have two pages competing for the same keyword on the same website?
-
If you wanna take it safe, promote both pages and apply the canonical in few weeks if you see that the product page has not managed to over rank the category page. Also note that internal penalisation is only to the newly added page and not to all the website.
-
Ok, thanks for your help. Canonical seems to be the way!
Just the final question: from what I knew, canoncial should be used for duplicate page content. Fact is, page content will be quite different. Is this a problem?
I'm also thinking that, being in wordpress, every article will have a link to the Samsung S6 category (wordpress shows a link to the category that an article belong to). I can't remove it, neither change this with the page url. Mmh. Best solution should be to be able to rank both pages, but I'm afraid a lot about penalization. I'll add a link to this new page in the menu.
-
Yes if you apply the canonical, it will not appear in the SERPs.
By changing the category page to Samsung S6 News you could have the following results:
- The rankings will remain for the same category page.
- There will be a change towards the new product change but only if you allocate many links from the website but from other websites.
- Or, it could destroy even the current rankings as none of the two pages maybe fit to rank high for the given keywords.
Every change requires taking a risk. My action plan would be:
- to have many links from all the websites to this newly designed product page.
- ensure you have checked that technically the new page is optimised accordingly.
- issue a canonical tag from the category page to be the same as the product page.
- monitor and apply changes according to rankings
Hope you are successful at your task!
-
Ok, this is an option in the Yoast plugin so this can be done. Just one thing: in this way, the category page won't rank high, right?
What if I change the title of the category page to Samsung S6 News?
So:
Category page: title (Samsung S6 News), url (example.com/samsung-s6)
Product page: Title (Samsung S6), url (example.com/samsungs6)Couldn't this work?
-
I am now thinking the possibility of using a canonical tag, so for Google there is only one page, the new one that you are trying to promote. So both pages should have as a canonical the URL of the newly designed page! hope this helps
-
First of all, thanks for the reply. There's a problem: from an user point of view, the two pages would have a different utility. Users who know the product are only interested in the latest news, and would prefer the simple news list like it's in the category page. They don't want to read the specifications pf the product every time. On the other side, users that don't know the product would be more than happy to find a full description of it, with highlights on the features.
So, for the users, the two pages approach should be preferable. Mixing all the content in just one page could be bad for the user experience, with too many informations in just one page. Do you agree?
About wasting time/moneys: moneys aren't a problem, I'll do the edits by myself. Time, it is, but the quickest solution is the two page approach: I just need to do this once forever, while editing the category template in wordpress means to be forced to check it at every theme update.
-
To atart with the anwser, not recommended. Is best to have one single page ranking for such an important keyword. I would not worry so much about duplicate content, but more towards wasting your time and money.
Another solution is to develop this page, but force the page to take the roll of the category page. Maybe by issuing a 301 or just replacing the page. Am sure there is an easy way your developer could do this.
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 question for page keyword focus - how to make it sound natural
So I have a page that sells say hockey sticks and the site is situated in Australia. My Keyword focus for the page would be hockey sticks Australia.
Keyword Research | | eulabrant0 -
Image gallery page with very similar pictures
What measures should I take for a photographer's portfolio website with image-heavy gallery pages withotu content? Galleries are separated to different categories - weddings, fashion, beauty, thus having very similar content. What is better for example this page images https://www.karolinnafoto.lt/beauty/ 1. Use no titles and alts so as not to repeat and not be penalized?
Keyword Research | | audiosavas
2. Repeat same titles and alts like "beauty portrait 1" "beauty portrait 2" etc.? Or are there better measures to take to have this website more optimized?0 -
Can you ever compete with product keywords?
I am doing keyword research for a dental blog and wanted to get the forum's opinion about these SERP results: https://mza.seotoolninja.com/explorer/keyword/serp-analysis?q=electric+toothbrushWondering if the Google algorithm will always favor something like Amazon since someone searching "electric toothbrush" probably doesn't want info -- they probably want to buy...right?
Keyword Research | | catbur2 -
How do you create landing pages with different domains?
I am wondering how do I create landing pages with differing domains? We recently acquired some other domains that will hopefully help with our SEO, Key Word targeting. I understand how to create the landing page but I don't know how to link it to our other domain. I was thinking about a rel canonical but will that defeat the purpose of the landing page, in terms of ranking? I guess the issue that I am facing is when we start up these new domains they will not have the Domain Authority or the Page Authority of our main site. I would like to try and get them ranked organically as well as PPC. Thanks.
Keyword Research | | LovingatYourBest0 -
What is the best tool for finding what people are using as search phrases for my product
what is the best tool for finding what people are using as search phrases for my product? i used to use the google adwords keyword suggestion tool but that tool is gone now. Is the google keyword planner now the best tool to use? Thanks, Ron
Keyword Research | | Ron101 -
Weekly on-page SEO report problem
I just got my first on-page SEO report, and only got report on 3 random keywords in my list of keywords. Why don't I get a report on the other keywords? Is there a certain reason for why I get only those specific keywords? Thanks in advance.
Keyword Research | | danielpett0 -
Duplicate Page Title Recommendation (For pretty much identical products)
Hi, I'm currently writing the meta data for the launch of a new ecommerce site for our company & the way the site is set out means that each product has it's own landing page. The issue with this is that we have a lot of products that either do the same thing or are only a very slight variation of another product. This is causing a bit of a problem writing the page titles because as you can imagine in order to keep it relevant I'm having to pretty much copy other page titles. For example Product A 3/4 Length | Keywords | Company Product A Full Length | Keywords | Company Also as you can imagine it's a bit of an issue for the on-page text due to the only variation being the length (in this example) with only a slight bit of changed content to accomodate. I was wondering if anyone had come across similar problems to this and if so how did they resolve the issue? I don't really want to be penalised by Google for multiple duplicate content/metadata across the site. Should I just target the keyword for one of these products and then target a still relevant keyword, but one that has next to no searches for the other, similar product do you reckon? Cheers
Keyword Research | | TalarMade0