undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. Digital Marketing
  3. Web Design
  4. How to make sure category pages rank higher than product pages?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

How to make sure category pages rank higher than product pages?

Web Design
6
11
3.8k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • WebmasterAlex
    WebmasterAlex last edited by Sep 12, 2013, 11:55 AM

    Hi,

    This question is E-Commerce related. We have product categories dividing products by color. Let's say we have the category 'blue toy cars' and a product called 'blue toy car racer', both of these could rank for the keyword 'blue toy car'.

    How do we make sure the category 'blue toy cars' ranks above the product 'blue toy car racer'? Or is the category page automatically ranked higher because of the higher page authority of that page?

    Alex

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • AWCthreads
      AWCthreads @EGOL last edited by Sep 12, 2013, 3:47 PM Sep 12, 2013, 3:47 PM

      One of us is having a senior moment.

      You wrote: "If this was my site we would get rid of the product pages and display all of the color choices on one page."

      You sent a link to a product page. I was expecting a link to a psychedelic category page saturated with pictures, colors, content and "buy now" buttons with no links to products.

      The Target bread crumbs show a hierarchy and presentation as proposed by Allen.

      I get it. And agree. With both of you. 🙂

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • EGOL
        EGOL @AWCthreads last edited by Sep 12, 2013, 3:15 PM Sep 12, 2013, 3:15 PM

        See how Target gives you all of the colors of this Rachel Ray cook set on one page...

        http://www.target.com/p/rachael-ray-10-piece-porcelain-cook-set/-/A-14595398#prodSlot=medium_1_2

        I would improve on this by listing the colors in text outside of the JavaScript and adding the most popular colors in the title tag.

        Rachel Ray Cook Set | Red Blue Green Orange

        AWCthreads 1 Reply Last reply Sep 12, 2013, 3:47 PM Reply Quote 0
        • AWCthreads
          AWCthreads @EGOL last edited by Sep 12, 2013, 2:46 PM Sep 12, 2013, 2:46 PM

          I'd like to see this in action.  Can you share a link EGOL?

          EGOL 1 Reply Last reply Sep 12, 2013, 3:15 PM Reply Quote 0
          • WebmasterAlex
            WebmasterAlex @Davenport-Tractor last edited by Sep 12, 2013, 12:22 PM Sep 12, 2013, 12:22 PM

            Thank you. In my view this would make sense to the users as well.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • LesleyPaone
              LesleyPaone @WebmasterAlex last edited by Sep 12, 2013, 12:22 PM Sep 12, 2013, 12:19 PM

              Actually have recommended products on page, or other products in the same category. You could have it pop up a fancy / color/ thickbox when people add to the cart and recommend other products, something like this http://module-presta.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/thumbnail/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/m/imgforuserguide_popup_cart_02.jpg

              There are all kinds of different things that you can do to cross sell. Look at what amazon does and how they operate, they optimize the product pages. On them they have lots of different product offers.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • EGOL
                EGOL last edited by Sep 12, 2013, 12:18 PM Sep 12, 2013, 12:18 PM

                If this was my site we would get rid of the product pages and display all of the color choices on one page.  Then you have a product page AND a category page in one.

                AWCthreads 1 Reply Last reply Sep 12, 2013, 2:46 PM Reply Quote 0
                • WebmasterAlex
                  WebmasterAlex @LesleyPaone last edited by Sep 12, 2013, 12:15 PM Sep 12, 2013, 12:15 PM

                  Good point. From a conversion standpoint it be much better if people would land on a product page immediately. Although it's almost impossible for people to see our other products when they never land on a category page, and this would mean a decrease in order value...

                  LesleyPaone 1 Reply Last reply Sep 12, 2013, 12:19 PM Reply Quote 0
                  • Davenport-Tractor
                    Davenport-Tractor last edited by Sep 12, 2013, 12:16 PM Sep 12, 2013, 12:12 PM

                    Alex,

                    I would make the category page Toy cars with the separate product links: Blue toy cars, Red toy cars, Racer cars, etc. By linking one higher category page to a lower product page you are establishing your own page ranking "Score" that is read by the search engines as higher or lower in authority.

                    Your meta descriptions will further reinforce this higher archery by having the category pages describe most of the terms used in the lower level pages. Then be very specific on the separate product pages.

                    Now if someone searches for toy cars your category page is a higher result offering an entire selection of toy cars. But if your customer wants to type a longer search term "Blue racer toy cars" they will be directed to your specific product page.

                    WebmasterAlex 1 Reply Last reply Sep 12, 2013, 12:22 PM Reply Quote 3
                    • Dave_Whitty
                      Dave_Whitty last edited by Sep 12, 2013, 12:05 PM Sep 12, 2013, 12:05 PM

                      Most category pages are pretty content shallow. They usually just have basic product info that links to the product pages. Make sure you have category pages built out with plenty unique content that would be valuable to your customers and the bots. It seems that people like to link directly to the product page so do your best to acquire links to the category level.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • LesleyPaone
                        LesleyPaone last edited by Sep 12, 2013, 11:59 AM Sep 12, 2013, 11:59 AM

                        Honestly in my opinion you are going to have a hard time making the category rank higher than the product. Especially since things like rich data only supports one offer per page. I have no proof, but I would off the hip say that search engine want to put people on a product page, not a category page.

                        One thing to take into account to is conversion rate, just about every study says you convert more with a product as a landing page vs any other page in a site.

                        WebmasterAlex 1 Reply Last reply Sep 12, 2013, 12:15 PM Reply Quote 1
                        • 1 / 1
                        1 out of 11
                        • First post
                          1/11
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • Dynata_panel_marketing

                          Are non-breaking spaces ( ) in keyword phrases bad for ranking

                          Hello all, I came across a tip for avoiding text orphans in responsive design by putting a non-breaking space between the last two words. While this works nicely, I was wondering if I did this inside of a keyword phrase, would it still rank equally as well? Or will it be viewed as separate phrases or terms? Thanks, Roman

                          Web Design | Apr 20, 2016, 7:25 PM | Dynata_panel_marketing
                          0
                        • BearPaw88

                          Can a cloud based firewall affect my search ranking?

                          Hi, I recently implemented a firewall on my website to prevent hacking attacks. We were getting a crazy amount of people per day trying to brute force our website. I used the sucuri cloud proxy firewall service which they claim because of the super fast caching actually helps SEO. I was just wondering is this true? Because we're slowly falling further and further down the SERPS and i really don't know why. If not, is there any major google update recently I don't know about? Thanks, Robert

                          Web Design | Apr 12, 2016, 6:40 PM | BearPaw88
                          0
                        • SEOguy1

                          Https pages indexed but all web pages are http - please can you offer some help?

                          Dear Moz Community, Please could you see what you think and offer some definite steps or advice.. I contacted the host provider and his initial thought was that WordPress was causing the https problem ?: eg when an https version of a page is called, things like videos and media don't always show up. A SSL certificate that is attached to a website, can allow pages to load over https. The host said that there is no active configured SSL it's just waiting as part of the hosting package just in case, but I found that the SSL certificate is still showing up during a crawl.It's important to eliminate the https problem before external backlinks link to any of the unwanted https pages that are currently indexed. Luckily I haven't started any intense backlinking work yet, and any links I have posted in search land have all been http version.I checked a few more url's to see if it’s necessary to create a permanent redirect from https to http. For example, I tried requesting domain.co.uk using the https:// and the https:// page loaded instead of redirecting automatically to http prefix version.  I know that if I am automatically redirected to the http:// version of the page, then that is the way it should be. Search engines and visitors will stay on the http version of the site and not get lost anywhere in https. This also helps to eliminate duplicate content and to preserve link juice. What are your thoughts regarding that?As I understand it, most server configurations should redirect by default when https isn’t configured, and from my experience I’ve seen cases where pages requested via https return the default server page, a 404 error, or duplicate content. So I'm confused as to where to take this.One suggestion would be to disable all https since there is no need to have any traces to SSL when the site is even crawled ?. I don't want to enable https in the htaccess only to then create a https to http rewrite rule; https shouldn't even be a crawlable function of the site at all.RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTPS} offor to disable the SSL completely for now until it becomes a necessity for the website.I would really welcome your thoughts as I'm really stuck as to what to do for the best, short term and long term.Kind Regards

                          Web Design | Feb 25, 2016, 1:31 PM | SEOguy1
                          0
                        • ScottOlson

                          Does moving Server (IP) affect rankings?

                          I work for a pretty large company with an established web domain with thousands of pages. We are working on a new website and they talked about moving the site onto a new server. What is the impact ranking wise of going to a new server? Does Google care so long as it's the same domain, or is there some equity lost? Thanks in advance!

                          Web Design | Feb 10, 2015, 9:20 PM | ScottOlson
                          0
                        • KempRugeLawGroup

                          Does an age verification home page hurt SEO?

                          There's a microbrewery in our area that just launched its first website. It has the "verify your age" homepage (which is not really their homepage, but I don't know what it's called) before you can enter. It looks like this: http://angrychairbrewing.com/ Anyway, does this hurt them at all from a rankings standpoint? Also, assuming bots/spiders/ROGER can crawl sites like this, (which I think they would have to be able to do) how do they get around this verification? Thanks, Ruben

                          Web Design | Sep 20, 2014, 1:38 AM | KempRugeLawGroup
                          0
                        • jmueller0823

                          Multi-page articles, pagination, best practice...

                          A couple months ago we mitigated a 12-year-old site -- about 2,000 pages -- to WordPress.
                          The transition was smooth (301 redirects), we haven't lost much search juice. We have about 75 multi-page articles (posts); we're using a plugin (Organize Series) to manage the pagination. On the old site, all of the pages in the series had the same title. I've since heard this is not a good SEO practice (duplicate titles). The url's were the same too, with a 'number' (designating the page number) appended to the title text. Here's my question: 1. Is there a best practice for titles & url's of multi-page articles? Let's say we have an article named: 'This is an Article' ... What if I name the pages like this:
                          -- This is an Article, Page 1
                          -- This is an Article, Page 2
                          -- This is an Article, Page 3 Is that a good idea? Or, should each page have a completely different title? Does it matter?
                          ** I think for usability, the examples above are best; they give the reader context. What about url's ?  Are these a good idea? /this-is-an-article-01,  /this-is-an-article-02, and so on...
                          Does it matter? 2. I've read that maybe multi-page articles are not such a good idea -- from usability and SEO standpoints. We tend to limit our articles to about 800 words per page.  So, is it better to publish 'long' articles instead of multi-page? Does it matter?  I think I'm seeing a trend on content sites toward long, one-page articles. 3. Any other gotchas we should be aware of, related to SEO/ multi-page? Long post... we've gone back-and-forth on this a couple times and need to get this settled.
                          Thanks much! Jim

                          Web Design | Dec 19, 2013, 9:17 PM | jmueller0823
                          0
                        • Atlanta-SMO

                          ECWID How to fix Duplicate page content and external link issue

                          I am working on a site that has a HUGE number of duplicate pages due to ECWID ecommerce platform.  The site is built with Joomla!  How can I rectify this situation?  The pages also show up as "external " links on crawls...  Is it the ECWID platform?  I have never worked on a site that uses this. Here is an example of a page with the issue (there are 6280 issues) URL: http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spare-parts?Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560081

                          Web Design | Jul 19, 2013, 3:56 PM | Atlanta-SMO
                          0
                        • eseyo

                          Site-wide footer links or single "website credits" page?

                          I see that you have already answered this question before back in 2007 (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/2163), but wanted to ask your current opinion on the same question: Should I add a site-wide footer link to my client websites pointing to my website, or should I create a "website credits" page on my clients site, add this to the footer and then link from within this page out to my website?

                          Web Design | Apr 14, 2011, 11:21 AM | eseyo
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.