Im making a site selling tea. The default url structure would be;
mytea.com
(Home Page)
mytea.com/green
mytea.com/black
(Category Pages)
mytea.com/green/product1
mytea.com/green/product2
mytea.com/black/product3
mytea.com/black/product4
(Product Pages)
The Category Pages list about 10 teas. Each has an image and a paragraph of text.
Should I not use Product pages? All the information about each Product could be seen on it's Category Page. Presumably this will optimize for the Category terms or ‘black’ and ‘green’, more than the Product names?
Or should I have Product pages? Will this help with long tail searches? I could write some more content for the Product pages but the keywords will be similar to the Product’s text on the Category page.
If I didnt have Product pages, the Product’s title’s could still be in h2 tags on the Category page. In some ways this is less effective than them having h1 tags on their own page, but few pages should increase the page rank or each page.
Thanks a lot
Comments
Yes, have product pages
It's definitely worth having the specific product pages. If for nothing else, people who search for that specific product will have an easier time finding you.
And, yes, write more content for the product pages. This is your one opportunity to sell them on trying your tea.
Optimize the category pages for the big words: "Green Tea" or "Black Tea" or what have you.
Optimize the product pages for the long tail: "Antioxidant Green Tea" or "Mary Sue's Green Tea" (Mary Sue being the brand name)
Get multiple images. Show what the box looks like.
Do a video of brewing each tea. Time lapse. Show it being poured. Taste it. Talk about it. Let me experience it on your site.
Oh, and have a big add to cart button.
Cheers,
--Ben Finklea
Author, Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization
CEO, Volacci
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Hi Ben. Something else i just
Hi Ben.
Something else i just thought of is that product pages are probably better for 'you may also like ...' blocks.
If my category pages have h2 titles for the different products, and then the product pages have an h1 title of the same text, are search engines smart enough to get the hierarchical relationship of the pages? Im not going to get penalized for similar content am I? I can write some more content for the product pages but its going to be quite similar.
I dont know if my product page content is going to be too niche for long tail traffic. Keywords like anti oxidants and weight loss, etc will be covered on a dedicated 'health and weight loss' page. Ive also got a dedicated 'Regions' page for my source countries.
I could write some more sales based content, and in time maybe add reviews, but i dont know what SEO focus to have with this content.
For instance if i type in 'loose assam tea' into google's key word tool, none of the keywords seem particularly applicable to a product page. Things like 'caffeine free' would go in the health page or herbal tea category. Is the fact that google isnt giving me usable suggestions an indication that im going too niche?
Sorry ive gone on a bit in this post but i know you literally wrote the book so id love to get some advice.
Thanks
In case it makes a
In case it makes a difference, I actually have 8 category pages not 2, so the major types of tea do have their own page.
Anyone?
Anyone?
You might be getting a little
You might be getting a little too specific if your product pages seem to be too niche for long tail keywords. As Ben pointed out - use your primary keywords on the category pages and product pages for long tail - but not ridiculously obscure long tail.
Rather than starting with very specific terms in Google's keyword tool, start with your primary keyword and then analyse the results you get for the obvious long tail patterns contained in the results. Using your example, rather start with simply "tea" and see if the long list of suggested phrases contain any obvious patterns for "assam tea" that could be used. If not, search the tool for "assam tea" and then see if the terms are applicable to you.
I would also suggest trying wordtracker or wordstream's niche keyword tool.
Thanks Enzomaticus. My
Thanks Enzomaticus.
My categories are fairly specific. For instance i have a few sub-categories in the 'black' category.
teasite.com/black/assam
teasite.com/black/ceylon
teasite.com/black/darjeeling
teasite.com/black/house_blends
teasite.com/black/chinese_black
If i search for 'assam tea' with Google's keyword tool I get lots of keywords that will be on my site but aren’t sub-sections of ‘assam’. For instance I get ‘assam black tea’ ‘loose leaf tea’ ‘oolong tea’ ‘decaf tea’.
Their are a few products like ‘english breakfast tea’ and ‘earl grey tea’ that do make sense as children pages, but most don’t. Is there a best practice of weather to have child pages when in doubt? Will having child pages weaken by category pages by diluting the page rank?
Even if their are a decent number of searches for a particular product, how much more effective is it to give the product its own page rather than having it as a h2 heading on a category page?
Ive just signed up for wordtracker. I tried ‘Sencha Tea’ and already my products like ‘Sencha Rose Tea’ are too niche. I also tried ‘Assam Tea’ and again, none of the suggestions led themselves to being child pages. Maybe their will be long tail searches I haven’t thought of though.
Thanks
You do need to be careful
You do need to be careful about sub-categories for a number of reasons, not least of which is how you're going to present them to your clients and how they will navigate those categories. Going with black tea/assam you should probably limit yourself and start the focus on product pages at that point - I'm just not sure how many varieties of black assum tea you have so I can't guess at specifics. If you have several then they would definitely benefit from having their own product pages, optimized as Ben described above - don't leave them sparse because that won't help you at all.
Doing a quick run through wordtracker for black tea I see the pattern XYZ Black Tea is quite strong so those would be great for your product pages (if you only have one of each), or your subcategory if you absolutely need them. At that point your product page could be as simple as xyz Black assum tea - it keeps the pattern that's evident in the search behaviour. Don't forget that even your
too nichekeywords like Sencha Rose tea will still probably benefit your site category results for sencha tea and vice versa.If this were my site I would probably be doing something like this:
Black tea (main category)
black tea/assum black tea (sub category of tea or a product page if there is insufficient reason to drill down and create prod pages)
black tea/assum black tea/product page for a specific assum black tea
I
m running out the door, and out of town, for a day or so. Ill check in on the thread later to make sure my haste didn't confuse the situation too much.Each category under black
Each category under black teas (eg Assam, Darjeeling, etc) have 3-5 products. Generally each section (eg pure green tea, jasmine green tea, oolong tea, etc) has 3-5 products in it.
I therefore dont think it will be an issue for user navigation. Im using a hierarchical menu so it should all be very clear. Are their any other things to watch our for with product page potentially being too long tail?
I can write more content for each product page but i dont know how much seo value it will have. For instance all of my herbal teas are zero caffeine, but if i say this on every product page is this a bit like duplicating content?
Thanks again.
Anyone?
Anyone?
OK. I read an seomoz article
OK. I read an seomoz article where they recommend that you only makes specific pages that are as specific as searches. So if the most specific searches im likely to get are 'black assam tea' then ill make a pages thats myteasite.com/black/assam, and i wont have individual product pages.
Some products are the exception like 'earl grey' or 'english breakfast tea' so ill experiment with a read more link (although with better anchor text) that goes to a product page. I haven't done much analytics before but if i can figure out if people are landing on theses pages then i could consider wether to make product pages for more products.
I guess ill have to see what happens....