Category listing page coming above product pages

[iboxsecurityltd]

A new SEO client we have taken on seem to be hitting most of the points right on with their site and SEO.

However one thing that is bugging me is that their category pages i.e. "Footwear" which title tag includes the brands they stock. Is almost always coming up above (if they are ever even found) the product individual pages.

Anyone seen this sort of things happening? Very frustrating.

[TomRayner]

There's a couple of reasons why this could be happening. Of course, the number of links, high authority ones at that, which are pointing to either of the pages may affect its ranking, but even if all things were even on that front, the content on the pages could be a ranking factor.

The category page for 'footwear' is likely to have a lot more user friendly content on it than individual product pages. The product pages will likely have a picture, short description, a price etc. This is pretty thin content, whereas the category page might include multiple bits of information, while also information on brands, shipping and so on.

If you want the client to start ranking their individual product pages, then they will need to add more content to those pages and encourage people to link to them.  Furthermore, you may want to "noindex" the category page so that it does not show up in the search engine results and potentially cannibalise the product pages.

However, I will say this: Having a rich category page might be easier to rank. It gives you more things to talk about, it can provide more information to the client base about the range of the stock and company information and it will naturally have more content on it than a product page.  This not only makes Google want to rank it well, but it could also encourage people to link to it more than a specific product. If you can rank or acquire link equity to that category page, then your entire domain may inherit some of the page's "strength", which could subsequently help the category pages to rank higher.

[Everett]

Even though you include a lengthy disclaimer, even hinting to someone new at SEO that you could/should noindex a category page on an eCommerce site is a little dangerous. Still, great answer Tom.