Keyword Self Cannibalization and E-Commerce
-
I run a Magento shop - let's imagine a situation where the category landing page, is about "Joe Bloggs Kettles"
Then on that page, we have the products listed ; so we would have links to products pages - these links will be called something like:
Joe Bloggs Red Kettle
Joe Bloggs Yellow Kettle
Joe Bloggs Purple KettleCan someone please tell me if this is ok or should we rework our strategy?
Thanks
-
I used to have separate pages for "each color" and other product variations. However, I changed to one larger page for the entire product group and it has worked better in my opinion.
-
Thanks EGOL,
I agree with most of your points - but similarly, wouldn't unique content for each different colour, eg., a content writer to write unique interesting content, would results in 5 potential pages in SERPS as opposed to just 1 ?
-
If you do it the way you are suggesting, you can end up with a duplicate content problem. I did some work for an online pet store that set their products up the way you are describing. For example, yellow dog bowl, red dog bowl, green dog bowl. However, we couldn't have different pages with the same description and just change the colors around. The pages were being flagged as duplicate content. So, we had to rewrite unique descriptions for every page, even though only the color was different. That's a pain. So, if you go the multi-page route, be prepared to have to do that.
-
If I was selling Joe Bloggs Kettles in three different colors. We would dedicate ONE page to it instead of four. Instead of having a category page I would have one sales page with all three items listed. Three separate product pages would not be used.
That reduces the number of pages on your site and I believe that compact sites compete better than fat ones.
That allows you to place all of the content for these products on one page instead of spreading it across four. Richer content pages generally rank higher.
In my opinion this is also better for the shopper because he can compare colors and any price difference on a single page. If you have four pages for these product the shopper might need to do some clicking around to compare and that could result in lower sales. Give them everything that they need on one page.
Less work and less bandwidth for you too!
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
-
What to do when on your keyword there are no questions ?
Let me give me you an example. For example for the keyword title tag (let's imagine) I would want to rank on that. I go to the keyword explorer or related searches at the bottom of google there are many questions people have.. I find expressions (with the same user intent) such as "title tag length", "title tags generator", " "why are title tag importants" (I found this one using the are questions drop down menu of the keyword explorer). With this in hand I can create a page where I answer all those questions. I would have all those expressions being an H2 and answer the questions using related phrases and context word that I will find with the keyword explorer in my paragraph below. Let now take one of my keyword "Sicily bike tours". If I type this expression int he keyword explorer...the only related phrases (with the same user intent) that I find are "Sicily bike tour", "Sicily cycling tours", "Sicily bike trips"... (first thing I noticed is that it is just variation of my main expression not really question...). If I look at questions I find "what is the highest elevation in Sicily" or "How safe is Sicily for tourists". I don't imagine on a page that sells bikes tours in Sicily having h2 tags that answers those questions... and this is not what people that rank do, they describe their tour and this is what is confusing to me. Let's now take a secondary related keyword to main keyword. Let' s take "Sicily cycling tours" (it is a secondary related keyword to "Sicily bike tours". Based on the keyword explorer, the secondary related phrases to "Sicily cycling tours" are "tour of Sicily". "trips to Sicily".... ( isn't that going to be boring and look unnatural to use all those expressions ? ). There are all synonyms of my expression but not really different which is my worry ? Or can I use an expression such as "Sicilian villages" or "Sicily maps" even though they don't have the same user intent) as my secondary related keyword "Sicily cycling tours". Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Ecommerce store on subdomain - danger of keyword cannibalization?
Hi all, Scenario: Ecommerce website selling a food product has their store on a subdomain (store.website.com). A GOOD chunk of the URLs - primarily parameters - are blocked in Robots.txt. When I search for the products, the main domain ranks almost exclusively, while the store only ranks on deeper SERPs (several pages deep). In the end, only one variation of the product is listed on the main domain (ex: Original Flavor 1oz 24 count), while the store itself obviously has all of them (most of which are blocked by Robots.txt). Can anyone shed a little bit of insight into best practices here? The platform for the store is Shopify if that helps. My suggestion at this point is to recommend they all crawling in the subdomain Robots.txt and canonicalize the parameter pages. As for keywords, my main concern is cannibalization, or rather forcing visitors to take extra steps to get to the store on the subdomain because hardly any of the subdomain pages rank. In a perfect world, they'd have everything on their main domain and no silly subdomain. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alces0 -
Keywords and keyword traffic
Hi I am struggling to know what keywords i should be targeting and how the website should be best optimised for said keywords. The website offers bespoke service in the lake district UK a popular tourist destination, The business operates within say a 30 km riadus of the area. So target vistors to the website would specifically be looking for services in the lake district. The trouble is for many targeted keywords for the area are quite low or no data shown. For example: tipi camping lake district, tipi hire lake district, Glamping lake district However nationally keywords for the service have a lot higher traffic i.e. tipi hire or tipi camping, glamping what keywords should be my target? and should I targeting my website for? I don't want to target customers looking for these services outside of the lake district and also by targeting keywords without the term lake district means my competition is greater as i'm competing with the whole of the Uk for serivces It can't provide. please advise thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bengo-990 -
Keyword stuffing on category pages - eCommerce site
Hi there fellow Mozzers. I work for a wine company, and I have a theory that some of our category pages are not ranking as well as they could, due to keyword stuffing. The best example is our Champagne category page, which we are trying to rank for the keyword Champagne, currently rank 6ish. However, when I load the page into Moz, it tells me that I might be stuffing, which I am not, BUT my products might be giving both Moz and Google this impression as well. Our product names for any given Champagne is "Champagne - {name}" and the producer is "Champagne {producer name}. Now, on the category pages we have a list of Champagnes, actually 44 Which means that with the way we display them, with both name of the wine, the name of the producer AND the district. That means we have 132 mentions of the word "Champagne" + the content text that I have written. I am wondering, how good is Google at identifying that this is in fact not stuffing, but rather functionality that makes for this high density of the keyword? Is there anything I can do? I mean, we can change it so it's not listed with Champagne on all the products, but I believe it would make the usability suffer a bit, not a lot - but it's a question of balance and I would like to hear if anyone has encountered a similar problem, if it is in fact a problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nikolaj-Landrock2 -
Correct strategy for long-tail keywords?
Hi, We are selling log houses on our website. Every log house is listed as a "product", and this "product" consists of many separate parts, that are technically also products. For example a log house product consists of doors, windows, roof - and all these parts are technically also products, having their own content pages. The question is - Should we let google index these detail pages, or should we list them as noindex? These pages have no content, only the headline, which are great for long-tail SEO. We are probably the only manufacturer in the world who has a separate page for "log house wood beam 400x400mm". But otherwise these pages are empty. My question is - what should we do? Should we let google index them all (we have over 3600 of them) and maybe try to insert an automatic FAQ section to every one of them to put more content on the page? Or will 3600 low-content pages hurt our rankings? Otherwise we are ranking quite well. Thanks, Johan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohanMattisson0 -
Image maps and keyword density?!
If image maps/shapes are showing as keyword density in SEO tools, could they skewing the SEO effectiveness of a page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Crumpled_Dog0 -
Meta Keywords: Should we use them or not?
I am working through our site and see that meta keywords are being used heavily and unnecessarily. Each of our info pages will have 2 or 3 keyword phrases built into them. Should we just duplicate the keyword phrases into the meta keyword field, should put in additional keywords beyond or not use it at all? Thoughts and opinions appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Towelsrus1 -
I did great keyword research but now what!?
I did some REALLY good keyword research for my specific industry and yes, it was VERY helpful and educational. Now what............... My site title has the keyword I want to rank for the MOST (highest amount of traffic) and my business name in it Meta description also mentions it (I have read this doesnt matter for seo and also read its starting to matter again) My main keyword is in the text of my site several times very well written and spread out. Also in the meta keywords tag and in some of the anchor tags and alt tags. My question is - What about the other - 6-8 keywords that arent #1 in traffic but still get a LOT.......How do I optimize for those as well besides mention them in the site content. Is that really the best place? I don't want to water down my ability to for my #1 keyword I identified but I dont want to miss out on others.............Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance for your time and suggestions! 🙂 This is a GREAT group of people - Im anxious for when I can help others like I have received! Matthew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mrupp440