Category Page Outranks Homepage
-
I have an online party store and when I search for broad industry terms: (party supplies & party decorations) I notice that one of my category pages outranks the homepage. The homepage's Page Authority is better and more external links pointing to the homepage. Is there s technical SEO problem? Why would a category page outrank the homepage?
-
Hi
gardenbeet.com had the same problem about 4 years ago - do not be alarmed. It just means that the internal page has (probably) higher value links than the home page .
At the time I was advised to look at my site architecture to ensure the link juice gets distributed around the website (at least as evenly as the home page would redirect the juice) (not sure if that point is still relevant).
-
It's because both your homepage and that particular category page are targetting the same keywords and are competing with each other in search results. It's rather rare that category outranks the homepage but it's not impossible. This category page has a lot more text content but also images to sub categories etc Google obviously sees it as more relevant to the search queery/keyword.
I would suggest looking at the homepage if it could be reoptimised for other maybe broader keywords to gain some extra benefits.
-
Mark thanks for the response. When I search for (party supplies or party decorations) I see competitor's homepages, not their category pages. Also when I search cheap party supplies then I see the homepage in search results. It sjust makes me think something technical is going wrong. Maybe canonicalization?
-
Homepage authority is almost always going to be better than inner page authority. That just has to do with natural linking behavior.
From Google's perspective, they want to show the most relevant page to the search. Presumably, since the inner page has more of the relevant keywords in its URL, Google is saying it would rather send people there.
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
-
May integrating my main category page in the index page improve my ranking of main category keyword?
90% of our sales are made with products in one of our product categories.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
A search for main category keyword returns our root domain index page in google, not the category page.
I was wondering whether integrating the complete main category directly in the index page of the root domain and this way including much more relevant content for this main category keyword may have a positive impact on our google ranking for the main category keyword. Any thoughts?1 -
Ecommerce category pages & improving rankings
Hi Moz 🙂 I work on an ecommerce site & am getting stuck with how to improve rankings on category pages. I have a competitor who writes loads of content for their category pages under tabs & they perform very well. The content isn't particularly helpful, more about their range and what they offer. I have tested adding similar content under a tab to some of our category pages - with some performing well & others not as well. I know this isn't ideal, and I'd like some help with an alternative. Does anyone have tips on improving rankings on category pages? I don't have much control on the layout, this is controlled by our parent company which restricts us. I am researching writing user guides, but these will be on other pages not directly on the category page & the way we have to add them is a lot of manual work for our webmaster, so I can't get them up as quickly as I'd like. I have seen REI have a small bit of content at the top of their pages that link to guides e.g - https://www.rei.com/c/static-and-rescue-ropes But obviously their domain authority is so high already, that they don't need as much help as me 🙂 At the moment I have some new Chair pages I need to rank, these are competitive and any ideas would be great 🙂 Here are some examples: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/ergonomic-office-chairs http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/executive-office-chairs Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Article page canonicalization
Hey there, A client rents all kinds of party articles, like plates, bowles, etc. Currently, al his article pages have canonicals to their parent category pages, supposedly to have any pagevalue flow to these category pages, (which are much more relevant for SEO). Is there anyone who agrees with this method? I think a noindex,follow would be a better measure to prevent Google from accessing all these 'low value' article pages. Besides, a canonical should indicate that page A and B are (almost) identical, which they most certainly are not in this case. What are your thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adriaan.Multiply0 -
NoIndex Purchase Page
We ran a ScreamingFrog report of one of our websites and found that there are thousands of instances of a single page with a different URL parameter, for example: purchase.cfm?id=1234
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ErnieB
purchase.cfm?id=1235
purchase.cfm?id=1236
purchase.cfm?id=1237 and we do not need purchase.cfm to be indexed for any reason as there is practically no content on that page to begin with, but it's just part of the purchase steps in our website. What is the best way to deal with this for Google & SEO? Should we do a Meta NoIndex of this purchase.cfm page? Thank you.0 -
Home Page or Internal Page
I have a website that deals with personalized jewelry, and our main keyword is "Name Necklace".
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tiedemann_Anselm
3 mounth ago i added new page: http://www.onecklace.com/name-necklaces/ And from then google index only this page for my main keyword, and not our home page.
Beacuase the page is new, and we didn't have a lot of link to it, our rank is not so well. I'm considering to remove this page (301 to home page), beacause i think that if google index our home page for this keyword it will be better. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but i know that our home page have a lot of good links and maybe our rank will be higher. Another thing, because google index this internal page for this keyword, it looks like our home page have no main keyword at all. BTW, before i add this page, google index our main page with this keyword. Please advise... U5S8gyS.png j50XHl4.png0 -
Easy way to change wordpress category titles. Currently categories are appearing with the same title?!
I'm working on a wordpress adult dating review site and have started to set up categories for each of my main keywords. I have also started to add sub categories by county and town and so far have done so for the counties of 'Lincolnshire' and 'Derbyshire'. The problem is though that for each of my subcategories the page titles are appearing the same. For example: www.mysite.com/category/online-dating/lincolnshire/spalding (root category online dating) shows the title as 'Spalding'. www.mysite.com/category/adult-dating/lincolnshire/spalding also has the title 'Spalding' even though it's root category is different (adult dating). It's probably easier to go to http://www.top-10-dating-reviews.com to see how it's set up. If you click in the category text in the top menu and navigate to dating/derbyshire/alfreton for example and then adult dating/derbyshire/alfreton you'll notice the page titles are the same. I use all in one SEO pack and have rewrite titles checked with category titles set to %category_title% | %blog_title%. I also use category SEO updater. In order to prevent duplicate content issues how can I simply make the title of each category category root title/category subtitle(county)/category subtitle 2(town). The title of each category page would then read for example Online Dating Lincolnshire Spalding.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
There's a website I'm working with that has a .php extension. All the pages do. What's the best practice to remove the .php extension across all pages?
Client wishes to drop the .php extension on all their pages (they've got around 2k pages). I assured them that wasn't necessary. However, in the event that I do end up doing this what's the best practices way (and easiest way) to do this? This is also a WordPress site. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digisavvy0 -
Will Google Visit Non-Canonicalized Page Again and Return Its Page's Original Ranking?
I have 2 questions about canonicalization. 1. Will Google ever visit Page A again if after it has been canonicalized to Page B? 2. If Google will still visit Page A and found that it is not canonicalizing to Page B already, will the original rankings and traffic of Page A returned to the way before it's canonicalized? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | globalsources.com0