35 Categories + sub-categories for online store, can it hurt SEO?
-
this is my online store http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com
I experiencing new site architecture for better buyer experience. I found this solution for setting up categories:
http://filtration-montreal.mybigcommerce.com
I ask this questions many times about my site architecture, I find this solution, using around 35 categories and sub-categories.
Is it O.K. or it can hurt SEO to have to many categories.
See example on this trial version of BigCommerce:
http://filtration-montreal.mybigcommerce.com
I will use the top horizontal menu for the most popular furnace filters sizes.
Also, I want to use this cascading dropdown option in the header
http://www.asp.net/ajaxLibrary/AjaxControlToolkitSampleSite/CascadingDropDown/CascadingDropDown.aspx
where I wiil setup 3 options to select:
filter width
filter lenght
filter depth
What is your opinions, I'm I on the right path?
Thank you,
BigBlaze
-
Ce n'est rien Jean.
I have a suggestion for you for a site to look at. I suggest it because they too have a lot of products to put online. Also, many of their products differ only by dimension. It might be helpful for you to study how they organize these thousands of products. This Website has one awards for marketing so it's a really good example of e-commerce marketing products that could be very boring, but they make them interesting:
Dana
-
Hi Dana,
Thank you for your precious help. I had many questions and you are always ready to help.
French is my native language, so I don't always get everything clear. For example, the Hub page was hard to figure out and I never really understand how I could creat one in BigCommerce.
Also, when talking about navigation and sorting, do you make reference to my Categories/Top menu ( navigation) and sorting ( DropDown menue)?
If you think you have any recommendation to give or positive advice on my online store, I will be happy to learn from you
Thank you,
BigBlaze
-
Hi BigBlaze,
In general, I think the architecture I see on your sample site looks perfectly acceptable to me. It looks like you are only going down to one subcategory after that, which is a good thing. I think when too many categories becomes a problem is when the categories go 3 and 4 deep with subcats of subcats of subcats. Once your content or products get buried that deep, it's hard for search engine bots to keep crawling. I think if you can keep you architecture as flat as possible and still make it easy for people to find what they seek, you will do just fine. I think adding the filter width, length and depth as sorting options is good. Just remember that there is navigation and then there is sorting. Giving your visitors several clear and even redundant ways to find things is good.
Hope that helps!
Dana
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO - New URL structure
Hi, Currently we have the following url structure for all pages, regardless of the hierarchy: domain.co.uk/page, such as domain/blog name. Can you, please confirm the following: 1. What is the benefit of organising the pages as a hierarchy, i.e. domain/features/feature-name or domain/industries/industry-name or domain/blog/blog name etc. 2. This will create too many 301s - what is Google's tolerance of redirects? Is it worth for us changing the url structure or would you only recommend to add breadcrumbs? Many thanks Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska1 -
Best Web-site Structure/ SEO Strategy for an online travel agency?
Dear Experts! I need your help with pointing me in the right direction. So far I have found scattered tips around the Internet but it's hard to make a full picture with all these bits and pieces of information without a professional advice. My primary goal is to understand how I should build my online travel agency web-site’s (https://qualistay.com) structure, so that I target my keywords on correct pages and do not create a duplicate content. In my particular case I have very similar properties in similar locations in Tenerife. Many of them are located in the same villa or apartment complex, thus, it is very hard to come up with the unique description for each of them. Not speaking of amenities and pricing blocks, which are standard and almost identical (I don’t know if Google sees it as a duplicate content). From what I have read so far, it’s better to target archive pages rather than every single property. At the moment my archive pages are: all properties (includes all property types and locations), a page for each location (includes all property types). Does it make sense adding archive pages by property type in addition OR in stead of the location ones if I, for instance, target separate keywords like 'villas costa adeje' and 'apartments costa adeje'? At the moment, the title of the respective archive page "Properties to rent in costa adeje: villas, apartments" in principle targets both keywords... Does using the same keyword in a single property listing cannibalize archive page ranking it is linking back to? Or not, unless Google specifically identifies this as a duplicate content, which one can see in Google Search Console under HTML Improvements and/or archive page has more incoming links than a single property? If targeting only archive pages, how should I optimize them in such a way that they stay user-friendly. I have created (though, not yet fully optimized) descriptions for each archive page just below the main header. But I have them partially hidden (collapsible) using a JS in order to keep visitors’ focus on the properties. I know that Google does not rank hidden content high, at least at the moment, but since there is a new algorithm Mobile First coming up in the near future, they promise not to punish mobile sites for a collapsible content and will use mobile version to rate desktop one. Does this mean I should not worry about hidden content anymore or should I move the descirption to the bottom of the page and make it fully visible? Your feedback will be highly appreciated! Thank you! Dmitry
Technical SEO | | qualistay1 -
Site Category structure detrimental to SEO?
Hi Guys, I am hoping that you may be able to help with an internal debate on whether our currently category structuring could be damaging from an SEO point of view. Our site sells t shirts primarily and as such we have a large product base of around 7000+ products. Our category structure currently works like so: Mens/T-Shirts/Movie&TV/TV/ Which I think is fairly typical, though this where it gets interesting, within this end category of "/TV/" there are around 120 categories that are used from a filtration point of view to contain items for each specific show etc, IE Mens/T-Shirts/Movie&TV/TV/Breaking_Bad, Mens/T-Shirts/Movie&TV/TV/Game_of_Thrones. The vast majority of these categories have between 1 and 3 products within them and the rest higher. Multiply this by the large amount of categories that we have on site and these end level "Band Title" categories amount to around 13,000+ categories in the directory. If at this point we put the filtration element aside, what is the communities opinion of the benefits or drawbacks of having the category structure like this? Thanks in advance for any feedback.
Technical SEO | | timsilver0 -
Multiple sub domain appearing
Hi Everyone, Hope were well!. Have a strange one!!. New clients website http://www.allsee-tech.com. Just found out he is appearing for every subdomain possible. a.alsee-tech.com b.allsee-tech.com. I have requested htaccess as this is where I think the issue lies but he advises there isn't anything out of place there. Any ideas in case it isn't? Regards Neil
Technical SEO | | nezona0 -
Pintrest SEO
Has any testing been done to determine if Pintrest helps a website ranking?
Technical SEO | | StreetwiseReports0 -
How can i increase my website traffic
Hello, my boss has decide a build website we have more than 12500 products in ourwebsite its mtscellular.com, im new as seo but im confused and need help i want to know how somebody help me to increase my website traffic
Technical SEO | | jimmylora0 -
Geotargeting by IP and SEO
Hi, Part of our site displays localized results based on the user's IP (we get the zipcode based on IP). For example a user in NY would get a list of NY based stores, while a user in CA would get a list of CA based stores. So if CA Googlebot comes to our site, it will get results based on Mountain View CA. Given the pages are generated based on your zip, I'm not sure how we'd indicate to Google that we have results for lots of locations and not just the Googlebot IP locations. (users can change their zipcode, but by default we use geolocation). Our landing pages contain localized content and unique urls with the zipcode etc, but it isn't clear how Google will find results for KY etc.
Technical SEO | | NicB10 -
Ecommerce SEO with 130 keywords
Hello everyone, My name is Davys and I'm what you call a newbie...so the question may sound stupid....But where we go. In this campaign I will be targeting around 130 to 150 keywords to my store. So here is the technical question. What is the right way of indexing 150 keywords? Should I attempt to have all 150 going to www.mysite.com or should I break it down into smaller pages if I can put it that way. Like www.mysite.com/pages/bikiniwax for example. Even if I break it down, what is the right amount of keywords that I should SEO per page? Or do 150 pages? Please helppppppppppppppppppppp.... 🙂 Thanks a lot for your help.
Technical SEO | | Davys0