How to properly link to products from category pages?

[BeytzNet]

Hi All,

We have an e-commerce website and the category pages are built so that there is a product image and below it there is the title. Both the image and the title are in a href (each on its own).

I encountered the following unfinished discussion here at MOZ:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/how-to-optimize-achor-text-links-on-ecommerce-category-page#post-93758

The discussion states that its improper.

The question is - if it is wrong then why? (maybe because Google will give its weight to the image anchor instead of the text anchor since it is higher in the page).

The other question is how to resolve the matter?
Should I add nofollow to the image href?

Thanks

[X-com]

Hi Noamflint, we develop a lot of e-commerce websites and I want to fill you in how we tackled this problem several months ago and how.

We deleted the anchor of the image! In our code it looks something like:

The New iPad

As you see at the moment there is no anchor on the image, but our clients do want this. because of usabilty. and people just love clicking images.

We solved this with CSS:

div { position: relative; padding-top: 30px; display: block; }

div h3 { position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; display: block; }

div h3 a { width: 200px; height: 230px; display: block; }

div img { width: 200px; height: 200px; display: block; }

This code above is pseudo of course, but i hope you see what we are trying to accomplish. The anchor tag is positioned absolute in the parent div. With the dimensions on it, the link is above the image, so when people hover the image. they automatically hover the link. Clicking in it, takes them to the detail page.

You should try it! Maybe it will help you out.

[BeytzNet]

Thank you for the answer.

I'm not too strong with css besides for the basics,

what you mean is that the anchor will be displayed beneath the image for the user even though the code is placed before the image and also that clicking on the image will actually be like clicking on the anchor since its size includes the image???

Brilliant, it will also give more "engagement credit" to the anchor instead of splitting it (actually ppl usually clicking on the image).

By the way, do you put all of your products on the page as H3?

Thanks

[AlanMosley]

Dont use no-follow, you will just leak link juice.

One way around this, is to use a anchor # in your url for the image. like page.html#someterm

This will in fact give you link text relevancy for both, google will see this as 2 different pages.

Make sure you have alt text for the image.

This tataic and well as what x-com may in the future be seen as over optimization, so it may be tter to do somthing like this

Your link text

You can just link the whole lot in the one link.

Or move your text to above the image.

[BeytzNet]

Dear Alan,

If Google will see it as two pages I'm guessing I will need to add a canonical to the # version. Is that the case?

What about having the image with a javascript link? (location.href) or is that suspicious?

[BeytzNet]

Is there a way to do so and having the link appearing beneath the image?

I don't want to change the design

[AlanMosley]

I should not of said 2 pages, but it has been shown that both links will give link text relevancy.

The javascript link will be followed, it will not help

[TakeshiYoung]

That's what the css code above does, it puts the link beneath the image visually when users look at the site, while keeping the link above the image in the actual code.

[X-com]

It is pretty much as if the anchor flows over the entire image.

I did this a while back on a dutch telecom website called typhone dot nl. Check it out, it's on the frontpage (the offer blocks all have it)

The H3 is just there as an example. If I just got an H1 above all products, i use h2's, if there is a h2, i use h3's. and so on.

[X-com]

Yeah of course, you can style the link any way you want. Even hide it although I wouldn't recommend that hehe.

I made this jsfiddle for you: http://jsfiddle.net/D7vMG/1/

good luck trying it yourself!

[BeytzNet]

THANKS!!! I've been working on it since your first reply

Last question (I'm a bit rude now) -

I also have price beneath "The New Ipad" anchor. Currently it is not in the href and I'm thinking of keeping it this way (which would mean it will be in the H3 but not in the href).

Also, the href's are simple href's not surrounded by h3's, What do you think? Changing them? (keeping the price outside the href but inside the H3)

It seems correct but changing would mean of a lot of anchors will be changed on the entire website... scarry

[X-com]

I would do something like this: http://jsfiddle.net/D7vMG/3/ (do you see the z-indexes? it makes sure the anchor is higher positioned then the paragraph.)

You can of course use only the <a>-tag and not a heading. In that case you can put the position: absolute on the a-tag.</a>

<a>Hope it helps! Good luck!</a>

[BeytzNet]

Works amazing!!!!!

Thanks a lot for all of your help.

[X-com]

No problem, glad I could help!

[Everett]

Also see this page for more information on using named anchor links (i.e. page.html#image) to avoid the "first link counts" issue. This is what Alan Mosley is recommending. I think it is much safer than using CSS to try and "trick" search engines. You can put the image on product pages in a named anchor like #image.

Resources:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/3-ways-to-avoid-the-first-link-counts-rule

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-first-link-counts-rule-and-the-hash-sign

[BeytzNet]

Dear Everett,

Can you supply the link to the article?

Thanks