My blog's categories are winning over my landing pages, what to do?
-
Hi
My blogs categories for the ecommerce site are by subject and are similar to the product landing pages.
Example
Domain.com/laptops that sells laptops
Domain.com/blog/laptops that shows news and articles on laptops
Within the blog posts the links of anchor laptop are to the store.
What to do?
Thanks
-
Hi denverish,
The results for now are quite interesting... As I mentioned above I added texts to the category pages which I wanted to turn into landing pages. In one case, I also added NOINDEX to the matching category on the blog and in the others I didn't.
The result was that where I added the NOINDEX the blog category obviously disappeared (was mid second page) and an article from deep within the site replaced it - BUT NOT the wished landing page. Keep in mind that the category page on the blog linked to posts that each linked back to the desired category page.
The other pages on which I added the texts are gaining real good placements within the SERPS. Most are now on top of page 2 and are tougher phrases.
It is as if all of the posts within the category I now "NOINDEX" have lost their weight!
I am today planning on removing the NOINDEX and will see in a month or so (hopefully sooner) where I stand.
I am surprised from the result!
-
Hi there! How did things turn out?
-
Great, it is always wise to test changes! Looking forward to hearing about your results.
-
I didn't get a yes/no answer but based on the above I'm currently trying to add some information to the category pages (snippets to the important articles).
Another thing I just tried is to add NOINDEX on one of the category pages and see how it works.
This way google will still crawl it but just won't serve it in the SERPS (which is fine by me).
I will update how it works
-
You are correct about the blog posts themselves and that's ok.
The problem I'm having is that the category pages rank too high (more than the category pages).I am trying to add information to the category pages as well as de-indexing (NOINDEX) one of the category pages as a test...
-
Hi methodicalweb,
I have a relatively new site so links are not the reason...
-
Hi there, thanks for your question! You've received some excellent responses. Did any of them answer your question? If so, please mark one or more as a "good answer". If not, please provide us with the requested details so we can help you resolve this. Thanks!
Christy
-
I agree with the 2 responses above.
Your blog is probably ranking because it has more links/shares (or at least more recent links/shares) and potentially more relevant content. You should try improving the content on the laptops products page.
You should also make it very easy for someone visiting your blog to get to your products to purchase them. If the blog is well written and useful/engaging, this might be a good opportunity for your content marketing to form a key part of your customer journey.
-
When you say winning, do you mean ranking higher, or getting indexed instead of your store's pages?
Chances are your blog posts are targeted directly at certain questions and information and have links pointing back at them. Do your store pages have the same? Most stores have an area when you can add information to the landing pages.
Can you provide a link to the store, so that I may have a closer look? It's difficult to give you a accurate answer without seeing how the store/blog is set up.
-
This happens to me as well, are the title tags and descriptions similar to each other? What i did in one instance was redirected the blog post to the desired page, but there may be a better solution for you.
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
-
How to Canonicalise all filter pages (URL parameters) to the main category
Hi guys, I am working on an e-commerce site that's running in Shopify. I noticed that the filter pages do not have canonical tags pointing to their respective main categories. I doubt that the action needed is to canonicalise each filter pages to the main category as it would take time (there are a lot of filter URLs involved). Do you know any technical coding to do in Shopify to have all filter pages canonicalise to its main category? Keen to hear from you. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | brandonegroup0 -
Htaccess - Redirecting TAG or Category pages
Hello Fellow Moz's, We have an issue redirecting some /TAG and /Category pages to inner pages. As an example we use: RedirectMatch 301 /category/Sample-Category(.*) https://OurDomain.com.au/New-Page//$1 That works well. The issue is we have other categories and tags that are named similar to /Sample-Category As an example, if we try to redirect /Sample-Category-1 to /New-Page-1 - it will not work, and redirects to /New-Page I assume this is because /Sample-Category is already being redirected, so anything after /Sample-Category like -1 or -2 or -3 etc, will not be recognized. Anyone know of a workaround?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jes-Extender-Australia0 -
Do I eventually 301 a page on our site that "expires," to a page that's related, but never expires, just to utilize the inbound link juice?
Our company gets inbound links from news websites that write stories about upcoming sporting events. The links we get are pointing to our event / ticket inventory pages on our commerce site. Once the event has passed, that event page is basically a dead page that shows no ticket inventory, and has no content. Also, each “event” page on our site has a unique url, since it’s an event that will eventually expire, as the game gets played, or the event has passed. Example of a url that a news site would link to: mysite.com/tickets/soldier-field/t7493325/nfc-divisional-home-game-chicago bears-vs-tbd-tickets.aspx Would there be any negative ramifications if I set up a 301 from the dead event page to another page on our site, one that is still somewhat related to the product in question, a landing page with content related to the team that just played, or venue they play in all season. Example, I would 301 to: mysite.com/venue/soldier-field tickets.aspx (This would be a live page that never expires.) I don’t know if that’s manipulating things a bit too much.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ticket_King1 -
Could this be seen as duplicate content in Google's eyes?
Hi I'm an in-house SEO and we've recently seen Panda related traffic loss along with some of our main keywords slipping down the SERPs. Looking for possible Panda related issues I was wondering if the following could be seen as duplicate content. We've got some very similar holidays (travel company) on our website. While they are different I'm concerned it may be seen as creating content that is too similar: http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays/the-wildlife-and-beaches-of-kenya.aspx http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays/ultimate-kenya-wildlife-and-beaches.aspx http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays/wildlife-and-beach-family-safari.aspx They do all have unique text but as you can see from the titles, they are very similar (note from an SEO point of view the tabbed content is all within the same page at source level). At the top level of the holiday pages we have a filtered search:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KateWaite
http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays.aspx These pages have a unique introduction but the content snippets being pulled into the boxes is drawn from each of the individual holiday pages. I'm just concerned that these could be introducing some duplicating issues. Any thoughts?0 -
I've seen and heard alot about city-specific landing pages for businesses with multiple locations, but what about city-specific landing pages for cities nearby that you aren't actually located in? Is it ok to create landing pages for nearby cities?
I asked here https://www.google.com/moderator/#7/e=adbf4 but figured out ask the Moz Community also! Is it actually best practice to create landing pages for nearby cities if you don't have an actual address there? Even if your target customers are there? For example, If I am in Miami, but have a lot of customers who come from nearby cities like Fort Lauderdale is it okay to create those LP's? I've heard this described as best practice, but I'm beginning to question whether Google sees it that way.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley2 -
Report card shows many F's. How do I specify keywords for pages?
I have been doing general optimization for on-page, but still have many F's because SEOMoz considers the pages to be weak for keywords that are anyway not relevant. Is there a way to tease out keywords for specific pages so I can get a more accurate report card?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ocularis1 -
What's the best SEO practice for having dynamic content on the same URL?
Let's use this example... www.miniclip.com and there's a function to log in... If you're logged in and a cookie checks that you're logged in and you're on page, let's say, www.miniclip.com/racing-games however the banners being displayed would have more call to action and offers on the page when a user is not logged in to entice them to sign up but the URL would still be www.miniclip.com/racing-games if and if not logged in, what would be the best URL practice for this? just do it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdiRste0 -
Charity project for local women's shelter - need help: will Google notice if you alter the document title with Javascript after the page loads?
I am doing some pro-bono work with a local shelter for female victims of domestic abuse. I am trying to help visitors to the site cover their tracks by employing a document.title change when the page loads using JavaScript. This shelter receives a lot of traffic from Google. I worry that the Google bots will see this javascript change and somehow penalize this site or modify the title in the SERPs. Has anyone had any experience with this kind of javascript maneuver? All help would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jkonowitch0