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.
Home page and category page target same keyword
-
Hi there,
Several of our websites have a common problem - our main target keyword for the homepage is also the name of a product category we have within the website. There are seemingly two solutions to this problem, both of which not ideal:
-
Do not target the keyword with the homepage. However, the homepage has the most authority and is our best shot at getting ranked for the main keyword.
-
Reword and "de-optimise" the category page, so it doesn't target the keyword. This doesn't work well from UX point of view as the category needs to describe what it is and enable visitors to navigate to it.
Anybody else gone through a similar conundrum? How did you end up going about it?
Thanks
Julian
-
-
Rob's advice is very good in regard to sending people to the more effective inner page.
I would not mess around with canonical tags, unless the content is actually duplicated. Rethinking your internal links might be helpful. One thing I have done in similar situations is to use a keyword anchored link from the category page to the home page. Moz Analytics will tell you this is keyword cannibalization, but it does often work to nudge Google toward ranking the home page. So on a page about "Red Widgets", you could link to the home page with "Red Widget Company". What is likely to happen is that you will sort of split the searches based on user intent, and searches that are more than just the base keyword. Searches that Google thinks are more informational would go to the Red Widgets page, where someone looking for a supplier or maker of red widgets might be sent to the home page. Similar links throughout the site where they are appropriate would also be good. Like, if you have a page or a blog post that mentions red widgets, link to the category. If it says something about manufacturer of red widgets, link to the home page. Just like incoming links, you don't want to overuse the same keywords, though. Mix things up a bit within the same topical theme (red widget maker, manufacturer of red widgets, red widget company...)
-
Hi Rob,
I fully agree with you about sending people directly to a deeper page. A well-designed category page full of useful info is way better than a generic homepage for the visitor. I also agree about having more keywords and expanding reach that way.
The problem is that we're after a competitive term which the CEO keeps an eye on and which we used to rank well for. Over time, however, we didn't link build and others are now way ahead. That's why I am thinking that our homepage with its 500 linking domains might get a better shot than the category with 10. Question is, how do I switch the focus from category page to home page, while keeping the useful category page live. Canonical tags are one solution...
-
Hey Nick, thanks for your answer.
This is not a hypothetical situation, but something that is live in the SERPs. I have a live category page in position 11 (varies between positions 7 and 13) and I want to try that keyword with the homepage instead.
Also we're about to relaunch a different website where I currently rank with the homepage for a keyword, but the business wants to create a category page with that keyword, thus possibly cannibalizing my homepage rank.
-
I would say there is another option Julien. Just because your 'primary' KW is the focus of the homepage, it doesn't mean it is the highest converting KW for your company/site or for that specific product. Of course, you have to dig for data a little looking at how best to approach it and how that internal page performs, what KW's drive traffic (digging deeper than not provided)
Yes, your homepage has the most domain authority value (mainly, but not always). It's again, not the best page to rank for all your terms, if the bounce and exit rates are above average and/or high. This indicates that those KW's are not converting for your homepage at the best possible rate.
In the past, I have moved the KW focus to the actual product landing page and taken the focus away from the homepage, optimizing and working on improving the UI/UX, information, product, image, video etc, on that specific page - in hopes it would outrank the main primary page and thus, convert at a higher rate. As these product pages when worked on helped the 'visitors' get directly to the page that they are looking for, without having to search for it and navigate to it from the homepage (yet, another click). Why not simplify the process sending them directly to the main page of information?
Work to identify other KW's you can use to draw focus for on the main homepage and shift that focus around.
When building out your product page for the KW, I suggest as I mentioned above - work everything about the UI/UX, design, information, photos, videos, etc etc making it an extremely valuable page (think - make it THE MOST valuable page you can think of) to help visitors, thus, more than likely converting at higher rates, decreasing bounce and exit rates to the page.
As well, the added page authority, which will strengthen the domain authority overall on the site will improve the overall experience to users.
Just a thought to help you out on success I have had with similar issues.
Cheers, Rob
-
You may be over-thinking this, or taking that "one keyword per page" advice too seriously.
You are right that you should accurately describe the category page, and using that keyword (and anything else that accurately describes the topic) is going to be part of that. Since that page is the one that is actually about the category, I would not un-optimize it. I wouldn't even worry about removing the keyword from the home page, either, since it is also relevant. You may want to link from Home to the category where that keyword is used, though I don't think that would make a huge difference.
The good news is, you just might end up with both showing in the SERPs.
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
-
Should I redirect a popular but irrelevant blog post to the home page?
Hi. I'm trying to get my website; www.ciphr.com , to rank for keywords relevant to "HR Software" in the UK. It's a highly competitive industry and we rank ~mid to low on page one for some of our ideal keywords that are highly relevant and high volume. Years ago we took the decision to blog about topics more loosely related to the world of work. One of our blog posts, about plants in the office https://www.ciphr.com/advice/plants-in-the-office/ is popular. It gets decent traffic and consistently builds backlinks to the post without any further effort on our part. The specific page has a PA of 46 and DA of 55 with >500 domains linking to it. This compares to our home page with a PA of 47 and 700 linking domains. It is typically the home page that ranks for our money keywords "HR Software" "HR Systems" in the UK. Because this blog post is so loosely related to our actual business, the traffic it generates is highly unlikely to turn into a customer of ours. I am considering redirecting the blog post to the home page to pass link juice to the home page. The concern I have is that, based on the anchor text and contextual signals from linking pages, Google might then infer that our home page is less relevant for our money keywords and more relevant for "plants". Are my concerns unfounded? What are your thoughts? Should I redirect the blog post to the home page? Another internal page? Keep the blog post live? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | crichardson19922 -
URL Structure on Category Pages
Hi, Currently, we having the following URL Structure o our product pages: All Products Pages: www.viatrading.com/wholesale/283/All_Products.html Category Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale/4/Clothing.html Product Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale/product/LOAD-HE-WOM/Assorted-High-End-Women-Clothing-Lots.html?cid=4 Since we are going to use another frontend system, we are thinking about re-working on this URL Structure, using something like this: All Products Pages: www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/ Category Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/category/ Product Page: www.viatrading.com/wholesale-products/category/product-title/ I understand this is better for SEO and user experience. However, we already have good traffic on the current URL Structure. Should we use same left-side filters on Category Pages as in All Products Page? Since we are using Faceted Navigation, when users filter the Category (e.g. Clothing) they will see same page as Clothing Category Page. Is that an issue for Duplicate Content? Since we are a wholesale company - I understand is using "/wholesale/products/" in URL for all product pages a good idea? If so, should we avoid word "wholesale" in product-title to avoid repeated word in URL? For us, SKU in URL helps the company employees and maybe some clients identify the link. However, what do you think of using the SEO-friendly product-title, and 301 redirect it to www.viatrading.com/BRTA-LN-DISHRACKS/, so 1st link is only used by company members and Canonicalized 2nd is the only one seen by general public? Thank you,
On-Page Optimization | | viatrading10 -
Is it better to keep a glossary or terms on one page or break it up into multiple pages?
We have a very large glossary of over 1000 industry terms on our site with links to reference material, embedded video, etc. Is it better for SEO purposes to keep this on one page or should we break it up into multiple pages, a different page for each letter for example? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | KenW0 -
Why is my contact us page ranking higher than my home page?
Hello, It doesn't matter what keyword I put into Google (when I'm not signed in and have cleaned down my browsing history) the contact us page ranks higher than the home page. I'm not sure why this is, the home page has a higher page authority, more links and more social media shares, the website is an established one. When I have checked Google Analytics my home page gets more people landing on it than the contact us page. It looks like people are ignoring the contact us page and scrolling down until they find the home page. I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | mblsolutions2 -
Target keywords on homepage or sub page?
Is it better to target main keywords on a site's homepage, or in a sub page. I would usually assume the homepage, but if the domain for the homepage doesn't include the keyword is it better to have a sub page with an exact match URL? For example we target the keyword "abc123" Is it better to optimise the homepage: brandname.com Or create a page to target it: brandname.com/abc123/ And leave the homepage to target brand keywords, but link to the "abc123" page. Whats the best option?
On-Page Optimization | | timscullin0 -
I have two pages ranking for the same keyword.
The index page and the targeted landing page for that keyword. They have different content, title, meta but I am competing with myself for the main keyword in the industry. What is the best way to fix this? 301 the keyword page to the index page?
On-Page Optimization | | Aftermath_SEO0 -
Wordpress: Should I NO INDEX Categories & Archives Pages?
I am new to SEOmoz & trying to work my way through the ca-trillion errors that have been found on my site, but for each one I want to ensure that I am helping rather than harming my site. The tool has (as a "notice") said that my category pages & Archives are NO-INDEX, is this how these pages should be dealt with? In addition, the crawler has also (as a "warning error) discovered that my categories, and Archives do not have a meta description..is this of great importance for non indexed pages of this type? Thanks so much to the SEOmoz forum members, you have so far been of invaluable help to me.
On-Page Optimization | | KMack2 -
Tag clouds: good for internal linking and increase of keyword relevant pages?
As Matt Cutts explained, tag clouds are OK if you're not engaged in keyword stuffing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYPX_ZmhLqg) - i.e. if you're not putting in 500 tags. I'm currently creating tags for an online-bookseller; just like Amazon this e-commerce-site has potentially a couple of million books. Tag clouds will be added to each book detail page in order to enrich each of these pages with relevant keywords both for search engines and users (get a quick overview over the main topics of the book; navigate the site and find other books associated with each tag). Each of these book-specific tag clouds will hold up to 50 tags max, typically rather in the range of up to 10-20. From an SEO perspective, my question is twofold: 1. Does the site benefit from these tag clouds by improving the internal linking structure? 2. Does the site benefit from creating lots of additional tag-specific-pages (up to 200k different tags) or can these pages become a problem, as they don't contain a lot of rich content as such but rather lists of books associated with each tag? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | semantopic0