In this situation, should I consolidate two pages into 1 for stronger SEO?

[DGAU]

Hi,

I have a site that has a categorized structure and products like this:
/categoryA
/categoryA/product1
/categoryA/product2
/categoryA/product3
/categoryB
/categoryB/product1
/categoryB/product2
etc.

The category pages have a list of the products within that category.
At the moment the category pages perform strongest SEO wise - ie these pages:
/categoryA
/categoryB

Sometimes I get down to only having 1 product in each categotry like this:
/categoryA
/categoryA/product1

My Question:
Q: In this case is it a good idea to direct / redirect all traffic to the single product page - ie /categoryA/product1 ?

BTW these are my reasons for thinking this this might be worthwhile:
• UX - User gets to the product page quicker with one less step
• Merging 2 pages with similar content together might somehow combine/consilidate the SEO strength and perform better in SERP.

thanks in advance

[Smileworks_Liverpool]

Hi DAGU,

This is an interesting question and one that requires research.  Google rank brain will identify words intent that are essentially the same.  You can see this with keywords by typing them into the search engine.  If you type in 'How much is a haircut' in bold you'll see in the entries to the SERP 'haircut prices' 'average costs' haircut cost 'hairdresser cost' etc.  So you know google considers these to be the same things.

So if you mention 'price', 'cost', 'average price' loads of times you're going to get slammed for keywords stuffing because these are variants on the same words.

Now with products it's a little more difficult but the same principle applies.  You need to find out what people (and google) considers to be in the same topic and where the edges of that topic are.  This takes testing and time and research.

But the best place to start is with googling.  On the highest ranking pages do they group the products together or have them on separate pages?  Also use your brain (I don't mean that in a derogatory way) but shut your laptop and think critically about what your customers want to see on each page and what type of customer might be looking for what product and why.

Even better go ask them!  But looking at successful pages will give you a good start.  Make sure you have your Mozbar on and discount the pages with very high DA or PA because they may be ranking because of factors not related to on page or smart information architecture but because they are just established players.  You want model the small players who are newer and doing it right.

There is basically a balance to be struck between the serp entry (very important for people looking for something specific) and the page content which needs to have the depth and comprehensiveness to rank.  And there's no tool out there except your own brain and your customers/staff that's gonna give you those answers.

Also don't be afraid to test.  I treat 'gummy smiles' with Botox so had that as part of my botox page.  I just took it out this morning and made a page dedicated to gummy smiles that includes laser gum contouring, crown lengthening and all sorts of other stuff.  Let's just see what happens.  You can always change it back if it doesn't work.

But be aware of volume.  If you've got one page for the "Nobel Biocare Straumann Titanium Implant" it's just not gonna pick up enough search and google's not going to get enough data from chrome to rank it. So I have it as a tab on my Dental Implants page and if someone does a search it it's marked up & H3 so it comes up as a hyperlink in blue.

Good luck.  But this is a critical thinking job and a research job so get googling and see what google considers the delimitations of your topics.  Spending two days just googling products and making notes will not be time wasted because you'll get a feel for it.  And once you start to get a feel for these things then you can start using your intuition and taking shortcuts.

Most of the stuff I do now I just wing it and do a few tests and pick a winner.  Because i've done so much painstaking research I feel I have a pretty good idea of what google's got in mind for my categories and topics.