How to avoid content canibalizm? How do I control which page is the landing page?

[BeytzNet]

Hi All,

To clarify my question I will give an example.

Let's assume that I have a laptop e-commerce site and that one of my main categories is Samsung Laptops. The category page shows lots of laptops and a small section of text.

On the other hand, in my article section I have a HUGE article about Samsung Laptops.

If we consider the two word phrases each page is targeting then the answer is the same - Samsung Laptops.

On the article i point to the category page using anchor such as "buy samsung laptops" or "samsung laptops" and on the category page (my wishful landing page) I point to the article with "learn about samsung laptops" or "samsung laptops pros and cons".

Thanks

[EGOL]

"in my article section I have a HUGE article about Samsung Laptops"

Nice work!

"The category page shows lots of laptops and a small section of text."

OK... this is good... more text might be helpful

So, what's the problem?

Here is my opinion and you know that they say about opinions.  

I think that Google is going to rank the page that Google thinks is best for the searcher.  Some types of queries are made mostly by buyers.  Some types are made by people looking for information.

I have pairs of pages on my site just as you do.  I link between them just like you do.  My article pages are usually much stronger than my product pages but I usually see the product pages higher in the SERPs for product queries and the article pages for information queries.

Even if someone lands on an article page I still have an opportunity to route them to the product page with house ads and other types of obvious links.  Maybe my article will impress them and they will decide to buy from me because they read part or all of the article and decided to buy from me because I know enough to write helpful information.  I know for a fact that this happens because customers tell me.

So, if you see your article page ranking high be sure to make it very clear to people who land on that page that you are in the business of selling Samsung Laptops.   Most people would by happy to get any page to visible rankings in those SERPs.

Something else that I noticed is that if I place a link to one of my pages in the persistent navigation that is on every page of the site - that page often moves up nicely in the rankings.   You might consider doing that with your Samsung product page if you want to increase its strength in the SERPs.