Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. Ecommerce On-Site SEO: Keywords in Category Descriptions

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Ecommerce On-Site SEO: Keywords in Category Descriptions

    On-Page Optimization
    4
    12
    6650
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • BobGW
      BobGW last edited by

      Hello,

      I'm doing on-site SEO for a client's ecommerce site.

      Are 160 words enough for a category description?

      I'm using the keywords once at the top of the description, and once at the bottom of the description, with the ones at the bottom reworded so that they are the keywords with a different word order.

      I used to put the keywords in 3 times but it just feels like stuffing.

      Is twice, worded differently the second time, enough for a category description?

      Thanks.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • BobGW
        BobGW @BobGW last edited by

        Great, that sounds like an improvement. With that many words, appropriate keywords for the page can be used 3 times in various word orders.

        If your keyword was "running shoes" and you have your words at the top, do you use your keyword once as "running shoes" at the top, and then in the bottom text include it once as "running shoes" and once as "shoes for running"

        Or what have you found is effective? I don't like to keyword stuff.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • CMC-SD
          CMC-SD @BobGW last edited by

          We do what Gerd describes in his comment -- a short description at the top of the page, then the products in the middle of the page, and then additional description at the bottom of the page. Total word count ~500.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • BobGW
            BobGW @CMC-SD last edited by

            I agree. How many words do you guys recommend for a category? We could probably add up to 300-500 if we wanted in our case.

            CMC-SD BobGW 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • CMC-SD
              CMC-SD @MagicDude4Eva last edited by

              Meta-Keywords and Meta-Description no longer contribute to ranking, I thought -- and optimizing Meta-Description is less and less important as Google becomes more likely to use whatever the heck they want for the snippet.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • CMC-SD
                CMC-SD last edited by

                160 well written words are certainly enough for Google to understand what the page is about. Adding more words could help bring in more long-tail, as you include variations on the keyword, modifiers, etc. But you don't want so many words that conversion suffers.

                I find that for most keyword phrases, more than twice in ~150 words feels stuffed and unnatural.

                BobGW 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • BobGW
                  BobGW @BobGW last edited by

                  Forgive me for not knowing, but what is a high index-ratio?

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • MagicDude4Eva
                    MagicDude4Eva @BobGW last edited by

                    True, there is obviously a lot more to SEO than just filling meta-tags. My example above was just something we do for categories and obviously elements such as TITLE, H1-H3 are important.

                    I would look at SEO in eCommerce holistically:

                    • Understand your product category taxonomy and related categories. Provide a mechanism to "boilerplate" tags important for SEO. This also should include microdata such as breadcrumbs.
                    • Provide a "fall-back" mechanism if your content team fails - i.e. if your product team introduces new categories without SEO meta-data, craft them from the information you know about the category (i.e. category title and generic keywords)
                    • Don't forget about pushing Sitemap data to Google - this will push your whole taxonomy and products into the index.
                    • Ensure that your search indexes (many people say don't but we have not found an issue with it).
                    • Pay attention to canonicals for both products and categories and ensure that all links are SEO friendly
                    • Craft your brand verbs (buy, sell, cheap etc) in searches and categories

                    I think it is more important to have a high index-ratio in search than stuffing keywords which result in irrelevant search results. Over 80% of our products get indexed through Google and since we have mostly user-generated content, we ensure that the meta-data for the products is good.

                    If your client has a product catalogue SEO becomes a lot easier, as data should be very structured, but it will be challenging since the same content is syndicated to many other competitors.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • BobGW
                      BobGW @MagicDude4Eva last edited by

                      Gerd,

                      Could you say more? I'm not sure I completely follow you. I assume you think titles, h1, etc. should point to what's exactly on the page, and I agree, but don't you work in what's most searched for?

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • BobGW
                        BobGW @MagicDude4Eva last edited by

                        Gerd,

                        Could you say more? I'm not sure I completely follow you. I assume you think titles, h1, etc. should point to what's exactly on the page, and I agree, but don't you work in what's most searched for? In your case gaming is very searched for almost no matter what terms you use to describe it.

                        MagicDude4Eva BobGW 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • MagicDude4Eva
                          MagicDude4Eva last edited by

                          I honestly would not stuff keywords like that. Meta tag keywords and descriptions should hint at the actual content on page.

                          Our site-structure for eCommerce categories consists of the following (here is an example😞

                          • Meta tags with keywords and description
                          • Content lead-in (text below the banner)
                          • Subcategory links and content
                          • Content lead-out (text below pagination)

                          Each category has the same structure and our product team manages the actual content. This works very effectively.

                          BobGW CMC-SD 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • TomRayner
                            TomRayner last edited by

                            It's pretty hard to give a 'right' amount here.

                            Of course, it's well documented that more content on a page has a strong correlation with improved rankings (and conversions).  To say that there is a golden threshold of characters, however, is impossible to say.

                            I'd rather bring up the point you make about stuffing.  That's probably the main thing to keep in mind when writing descriptions or content - don't make it look like you're gaming for a search engine, but keep it great for a user.  If you can use your keyword multiple times, that's great.  But, as you allude to, writing it for the sake of getting it on the page more often is a bad move.

                            If 160 words for a description is the absolute most you can say on a topic, without repeating yourself, then 160 is the right amount **in this case.  **Other times it might be more, and sometimes it might be even less; it really is dependent on the context.

                            You might be able to squeeze more content for a description by using things like an example of how a system/process works etc.  But I'd always remain focus on writing for a user, not a search engine, and to avoid stuffing where possible, as you rightly pointed out.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • 1 / 1
                            • First post
                              Last post

                            Got a burning SEO question?

                            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                            Start my free trial


                            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.

                            • See all categories

                            Related Questions

                            • Asmi-Ta

                              Icon Alt description

                              icons alt images alt attributes

                              How effective is to add alt tags to icons?

                              On-Page Optimization | | Asmi-Ta
                              0
                            • Safxmed

                              Filter By Category bad for seo?

                              on page optimization filter by category

                              Hello Everyone! I know that a single product should not have filter by color option since it will create duplicate content, and you have to use canonical tags to solve it. BUT how about sorting through products via category/brands?
                              Filter by category changes the URL of the General shop page (ex: hello.com/Shop/Category1022039 ). This page only displays the products within, no content/ descriptions etc unlike the original category page (ORIGINAL CATEGORY PAGE) Each of these category/brand already have their own individual pages (ex: hello.com/Shop/A). This is the page that will be optimized for content, FAQ, and ranking etc. Unlike in the url created when filtering through the categories. So technically I would have 2 URL for each Brand/Category. Would they compete with each other? What would you guys suggest. Please advise me on this. Thank You

                              On-Page Optimization | | Safxmed
                              0
                            • mattl99

                              Product Descriptions (SEO)

                              So I would like a few opinions. How long should a product description be? Enough to get the point across? 100 words? 800 words? Over detailed? Any advice would be appreciated.

                              On-Page Optimization | | mattl99
                              0
                            • abisti2

                              How unique should a meta description be?

                              I'm working on a large website (circa 25k pages) that presently just replicates each page title as a meta description. I'm thinking of doing a 'find and replace' in the database so I change: to where the preceeding and following text would be the same in each case eg Is this unique enough? Obviously the individual keyword would make it technically unique each time....and manually changing them would take the rest of my life 🙂

                              On-Page Optimization | | abisti2
                              1
                            • vital_hike

                              Phone number for SEO

                              We have had an interesting question from a client. They have asked if removing their phone number from their website would have an affect on their rankings. Our immediate answer was 'No' but it may affect the Brand, Usability and Customer experience by restricting the methods of contact. This then made us think that perhaps then it could have an effect in the long term. This situation is also complicated by the fact that they do not have a Google Local Plus account for operational, sensitivity reasons (they don't want to openly publicise their address) We believe that there shouldn't be any negative affect but thought we would open a discussion. Thanks in advance for any comments/ideas.

                              On-Page Optimization | | vital_hike
                              0
                            • AndieF

                              ECommerce Filtering Affect on SEO

                              I'm building an eCommerce website which has an advanced filter on the left hand side of the category pages. It allows users to tick boxes for colours, sizes, materials, and so on. When they've made their choices they submit (this will likely be an AJAX thing in a future release, but isn't at time of writing). The new filtered page has a new URL, which is made up of the IDs of the filter's they've ticked - it's a bit like /department/2/17-7-4/10/ My concern is that the filtered pages are, on the most part, going to be the same as the parent. Which may lead to duplicate content. My other concern is that these two URLs would lead to the exact same page (although the system would never generate the 'wrong' URL) /department/2/17-7-4/10/ /department/2/**10/**17-7-4/ But I can't think of a way of canonicalising that automatically. Tricky. So the meat of the question is this: should I worry about this causing issues with the SEO - or can I have trust in Google to work it out?

                              On-Page Optimization | | AndieF
                              0
                            • 2bloggers

                              Do Parent Categories Hurt SEO?

                              I have parent categories and subcategories. Will it be harder for the subcategories to rank well because they have a parent category? The URL is longer, for one. I am just wondering if I should not have parent categories. I have one category page doing really well and I am trying to boost the others (most of which are subcategories) and this is a concern for me. Thanks! Edit: I also have a category that has 2 parent categories. I want it automatically in those 2 categories and one of its own. By itself it is very important keyword. Is this ok or should I have it be a parent category?

                              On-Page Optimization | | 2bloggers
                              0
                            • Jungles

                              SEO for luxury brands!?

                              Hi all, It is widely known fact that you will be a bit in trouble if you will need to do SEO for luxury brand that is not willing to sacrifice design, layout etc. for SEO purposes. So basically - there is no content to optimize and there is almost no keywords to rank! 😉 Just wondering - how would be the best to approach such kind of terrible situation? Regards, Jungle

                              On-Page Optimization | | Jungles
                              0

                            Get started with Moz Pro!

                            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                            Start my free trial
                            Products
                            • Moz Pro
                            • Moz Local
                            • Moz API
                            • Moz Data
                            • STAT
                            • Product Updates
                            Moz Solutions
                            • SMB Solutions
                            • Agency Solutions
                            • Enterprise Solutions
                            Free SEO Tools
                            • Domain Authority Checker
                            • Link Explorer
                            • Keyword Explorer
                            • Competitive Research
                            • Brand Authority Checker
                            • MozBar Extension
                            • MozCast
                            Resources
                            • Blog
                            • SEO Learning Center
                            • Help Hub
                            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                            • How-to Guides
                            • Moz Academy
                            • API Docs
                            About Moz
                            • About
                            • Team
                            • Careers
                            • Contact
                            Why Moz
                            • Case Studies
                            • Testimonials
                            Get Involved
                            • Become an Affiliate
                            • MozCon
                            • Webinars
                            • Practical Marketer Series
                            • MozPod
                            Connect with us

                            Contact the Help team

                            Join our newsletter
                            Moz logo
                            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                            • Accessibility
                            • Terms of Use
                            • Privacy

                            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.