Magento webshop ranks bad on Category pages

[Canome79]

Hi All!

Our webshop is www.hond.nl.  We operate it for about a year now and it is not ranking on our most important pages.

Basically we have 3 types of pages:  Category pages, Product pages and 'Splash' pages.  The 2nd and the 3rd rank OK. But the 1st, the category pages not at all.  While the category pages have the best (hand written, unique) and the most content.

For example https://www.hond.nl/hondenvoer.html is not ranking on keyword 'hondenvoer' (position 140...)

We have investigated quite thoroughly and did most common (moz) tests and can't find a reason why the category pages don't rank. (could it have something to do with the filters...?)

If anybody can shed some light on it, we would be much obliged!

Thanks, Sander

[Canome79]

Tnx & yes: i'll keep it between my business partner and myself!

[David-Kley]

Sent! Check your email and let me know if this helps. I included the PDF of the article and the full size image if you would like to print it out. Sorry about you not being able to view the live article. Please do not repost the article on any other webpage, as it is a copywritten document.

[Canome79]

Hi David,

my email address is sander@canome.com

tnx!!

Sander

[David-Kley]

Sander,

PM me your email and I will send that PDF over for the Competitive analysis. Its something that will help you understand what you are trying to do. Or, if you can send me your IP, I will make sure that it is unblocked.

[AlexMcKee]

Quite a few things going on I think. Firstly it is an extremely common keyword so ranking well is going to be hard anyway. I did a search and see that a lot of the results that came up for me contained the keyword in the domain name. Do you have relevant inbound links to the category pages?

I had a look at the example category page you posted. I suspect your category pages may be being seen as relatively thin pages. The main text is far below the fold and the links to the product pages are probably sending signals that the category pages are not going to answer the searchers query directly (click and click again) when we know that Google prefers to direct people to the most relevant endpoint for their query.

I notice that the paragraphs of text on the supplementary pages are not contained within HTML paragraph elements. This could be contributing to a loss of ranking potential, especially when combined with the text being low down on the page.