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
-
Improving SEO for an e-commerce page with 1 product page
I'm trying to improve the SEO for an e-commerce store that I'm working for that sells custom car air fresheners where you select the shape of the item and then upload the photo. The site has been around for almost 10 years so has authority in the field and ranks number one for custom car air fresheners and other related high-traffic keywords. However, there is no blog, no social media and has 8 total pages: landing page, FAQ, contact, guidelines, shape/product (page that starts the ordering process with little text), scents, terms, and samples.
Keyword Research | | campionn
I'm struggling with how we rank higher for specific keywords that we are not number 1 with ok traffic (such as dog air freshener, custom air freshener for car with picture, custom photo car air freshener) and not affect the current keywords that we are ranking number one for. In addition, how do we rank higher for other keywords, if we don't have that many pages like a blog to create content? I was thinking of creating a blog to target more keywords, but I don't think there is enough relevant content to make. And I feel Google would find a blog about "top gifts for dad" or "top gifts for the holidays" not relevant. I was also thinking of adding more text to the shapes/product page which could be tailored towards a keyword. Maybe I could create another product page that goes into more detail about the air freshener with images, descriptions, and other use cases. On MOZ, the Domain Authority is 18 (really low), so I am thinking about working on getting backlinks from relevant sources with authority to improve our SEO. Or do we not mess with the text on the website since it works and not worry about the other keywords and focus on technical SEO items and backlinks to help with SEO? TLDR: How do you improve SEO for new keywords for an e-commerce business that doesn't have a lot of pages for content without affecting its number 1 ranking on other keywords?0 -
What keywords are people using that get them to my website page
I have several pages that get a lot of visits, and 90% of the traffic is from Google searches. How can I discover what the search terms are that bring people to these pages?
Keyword Research | | obgproject1 -
Wrong page ranking for keyword.
I have a page i'm trying to rank for certain keywords around "emergency vet clinic" the page is domain.com/emergency-vet-care but my home page is the one that is ranking better and better. How can I get the other page to rank for e.g. "emergency vet care" , "emergency animal care" and the main page to rank for just regular vet care? My on page looks pretty good. I've also taken out most references to emergency care on the main home page except for the one link to it. Thanks
Keyword Research | | swagseo0 -
Page not ranking despite indicators showing should easily be mid-1st page?
I have many years old website selling a service. The main keyword is 47% competitive, and we used to be #1 page 2, occasionally page 1 couple years back. Domain authority is double of any of the competitors on 1st page, followed root domain links is many times that of 1st page competitors, infact against some of them almost 10 times as much, MozRank and MozTrust higher too. Infact, every metric is higher than competition. Only metric which isn't as good is Followed vs NoFollowed links metric, 95% of our links are NoFollowed, but we are still #1 in external followed links. Yet we are stuck on 4th page, and on some localizations we are not even in Top 50. This has happened slowly over time, not a overnight thing. Page we are trying to rank for gets grade A for optimizations, yet we have less significant pages ranking higher for that keyword. Further, newer pages tend to rank better than old ones. The whole site actually ranks quite low and we are not even getting search traffic for long tail keywords.
Keyword Research | | PulsedMedia
No problems reported on GWT, Analytics etc. Is this a google penalization or something of the sort? How can i troubleshoot this and get past this?0 -
For an e-commerce page with more than 2,000 products, how should I conduct my initial keyword research?
Hi all, A confused and frustrated SEO noob needing a little guidance here 😞 I'm a bit lost on how I should conduct my keyword research for a start-up e-commerce site selling dietary supplements (~200 brands and ~2000 SKU's). From my understanding, there are two different types of pages I have to optimize for other than the Homepage & CMS pages: Category pages and product pages. As part of the fundamental on-page optimization, I'm planning to write unique category/product descriptions for better visibility (as well as to avoid duplicate content issues) on SE. Consequently, this process has prompted several questions related to my keyword research. My questions are: How would I determine which keywords to optimize for? How many keywords should I target per product page? per category page? Should I include product / brand name as keywords? The site isn't live yet, but is set to launch in mid-August. Any ideas on how I can conduct my keyword research to be used for category/product level pages? Thanks all.
Keyword Research | | byoung860 -
E-Commerce SEO: Where to start with 4,000+ products?
Hey everyone! Complete SEO novice here. I work as the sole content person for an ecommere website with 4,000+ products. I've been trying for months to come up with some sort of SEO strategy, but I'm drowning. Completely drowning. I've been trying to use on-page analytics here at Moz for certain products that get a lot of margin for us. This worked great for awhile, but I haven't seen much progress. And then I jumped to link building and then I jumped to blogging and social, and now I don't know where to focus. I know each and every one of these is important, but I feel like I'm only giving 10% to each instead of 100%. I'm not getting anywhere. I'm just doggy paddling. I am in desperate need of a starting point. And yes, I've read Moz's beginner guide to SEO. I've researched for hours, but nobody seems to have a good starting point for someone trying to optimize a site with 4,000+ products. WHERE DO I START? Category pages? Low-hanging fruit? I feel like I've tried it all. I need some concrete ecommerce advice. Something that gives me a solid game plan as a one-woman show. Do I go brand by brand? Do I go with products with good margin? Do I stop focusing on individual products and go for category pages? I can't wrap my head around an SEO workflow. I'm really looking for ANY advice that can stop my head from spinning with ecommerce SEO. It's completely overwhelming! Thank you in advance!
Keyword Research | | ronyon0 -
What is the relationship/difference between categories and keywords in terms of google local seo?
I know that they are very similar as search signals, but I would like to understand the exact relationship. My company is in the process of adding local seo services to our seo offerings, and we are trying to hammer out a process for determining optimal categories for businesses based on keywords we are already using for optimizing their sites. Any insights or suggestions on how best to do this would be much appreciated.
Keyword Research | | CustomCreatives0 -
Page Authority & Domain Authority for dummies
Can someone explain me what is this? I just ran a keyword difficulty report for my keyword "refurbished printers", we are not in the top 10, and I see a table with 4 columns: page authority, Page Linking Root Domains, Domain Authority, Root Domain Linking Root Domains I have many questions here: 1. The bigger the number the better? 2. The most green the better? What about the red in the last 2 columns? 3, How can I improve an specific page to rank there and improve these numbers? 4. What does it mean the green check next to some numbers? Thanks
Keyword Research | | levalencia10