Creative ways to dramatically increase content on ecommerce category pages?
-
I need to signficantly boost the content on the category pages on my ecommerce website. Currently, they're pretty thin, with some only having approx 50 words of unique content. In the past, I've intentionally kept the content on these pages quite light, to keep the aesthetic a certain way. It's a fashion-based site, so it's very much about the visual.
However, with the introduction of Panda, I need to change this mindset. But, there must be slightly more creative ways to boost the content to stop the pages looking too text heavy. I'm not talking hidden text or anything, but ways to break it up in different blocks on the page to make it look natural/relevant, while keeping it looking great.
Anyone have any good ideas? Or, any links to ecommerce sites that have employed brilliant methods?
-
Good point, I think I probably need to err on the side of caution and not go overboard, as you say.
Yes, already planning things like product Q&As and reviews to help with the product pages.
Thanks for taking the time to answer.
-
That's probably fine, but you want to be a little careful about how much content is visible. There are perfectly legitimate, user-focused reason for having content that isn't immediately displayed, but you don't want to go overboard. The primary thing is that if someone looked at the page, they would think the way the content is displayed (or not displayed) on the page looks perfectly natural and good for users, not like you're trying to stick optimized content onto a page without displaying it. I'm suggesting your plan is to hide optimized content. I just think it's important that it be said.
Craig's suggestion of user reviews creating your original content is good if you can get them. It's not always so easy. It can be helpful on product pages. Though, it may not really help with your category pages as reviews are usually on product pages.
-
Thanks Kurt, appreciate your reply. I will be using both ideas to incorporate as much text content as possible!
For some of the category pages, it won't be possible to do this as the category only contains, say, 9 products. So, for these categories, I was thinking of using a secondary description below the products. Only the first paragraph will be visible, the rest appears on clicking 'read more' (but all content loads at once). Good or bad idea?
Appreciate any comments you may have!
-
Most ecommerce sites use user reviews to do this.
Encourage your customers to write reviews of the product, or to submit pictures of the product in use with a description of the photo or setting.
That way you'll gain real content from people talking about your product.
You can also engage in some contests to encourage user reviews and that will both help to sell your products and provide additional non-boilerplate content for your ecommerce pages.
-
I can think of two ways to add content and keep the site very visual:
- Use a content rotator. You can have a single area of the page which cycles through content so it isn't all being displayed at the same time. All the content in the rotator is in the code. With some smart coding, you can even make the content rotator itself very visual while including a decent amount of content.
- Setup popup overlays for the pictures of fashion...uh...stuff (not sure what kind of fashion site you have) and, instead of putting the content for the overlays on a separate URL, write it into the category page itself.
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
-
To create extra pages, or not to create extra pages?
I'm responsible for a site where we cater for all kinds of medical & legal problems. I recently conducted keyword research that shows a lot of questions being 'asked' in relation to the conditions we cater for. Naturally, I want to create content to answer these questions. We have a page for 'Cancer compensation' - the 'possible content' that answers questions won't necessarily help someone claiming compensation for cancer mistreatment, BUT someone who asks a question relating to cancer, answered in the 'possible content' may find the 'cancer compensation' page useful. SO! Do I: Add this content to the existing 'cancer compensation' page? Create individual pages of content answering each question, linking to the 'cancer compensation' page? or do I amalgamate all the answers into one heafty 'resource' page that sits elsewhere on the site? What do you think? Thanks in advance. John King
On-Page Optimization | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
I'm looking to put a quite length FAQs tab on product pages on an ecommerce site. Am I likely to have duplicate content issues?
On an ecommerce site we have unique content on the product pages (i.e. descriptions), as well as the usual delivery and returns tabs for customer convenience. From this we haven't had any duplicate content issues or warnings, which seems to be the case industry-wide. However, we're looking to add a more lengthy FAQs tab which is still highly relevant to the customer but contains a lot more text than the other tabs. The product descriptions are also relatively small. Do you think this will cause potential duplicate content issues or should it be treated the same as a delivery tab, for instance?
On-Page Optimization | | creativemay0 -
Thin content and tabs on page
I am reviewing a site, and the web designer used tabs to impart information. I think the tabs idea looks great, but it leaves the page looking thin. Here is a link to a product page, could anyone chime in please? http://www.aireindustrial.net/spill-berms/foam-berm-drive-over-berms.asp Thanks in advance for your opinion!
On-Page Optimization | | drufast10 -
Duplicate page content
what is duplicate page content, I have a dating site and it's got a groups area where the members can base there discussions in a category like for an example, night life, health and beauty, and such. why would this cause a problem of duplicate page content and how would I fix it. explained in the terms of a dummy.
On-Page Optimization | | clickit2getwithit0 -
Ecommerce category navigation structure -best practices
Hello, I've heard that there is a specific strategy for the best linkjuice distribution for categorizing an ecommerce site. How many links should there be on the home pages? Categories 1 deep? 2 deep? This client's customers don't like to go very deep, and they usually don't find our second page Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Is reported duplication on the pages or their canonical pages?
There are several sections getting flagged for duplication on one of our sites: http://mysite.com/section-1/?something=X&confirmed=true
On-Page Optimization | | Safelincs
http://mysite.com/section-2/?something=X&confirmed=true
http://mysite.com/section-3/?something=X&confirmed=true Each of the above are showing as having duplicates of the other sections. Indeed, these pages are exactly the same (it's just an SMS confirmation page you enter your code in), however, they all have canonical links back to the section (without the query string), i.e. section-1, section-2 and section-3 respectively. These three sections have unique content and aren't flagged up for duplications themselves, so my questions are: Are the pages with the query strings the duplicates, and if so why are the canonical links being ignored? or Are the canonical pages without the query strings the duplicates, and if so why don't they appear as URLs in their own right in the duplicate content report? I am guessing it's the former, but I can't figure out why it would ignore the canonical links. Any ideas? Thanks0 -
Would I be safe canonicalizing comments pages on the first page?
We are building comment pages for an article site that live on a separate URL from the article (I know this is not ideal, but it is necessary). Each comments page will have a summary of the article at the top. Would I be safe using the first page of comments as the canonical URL for all subsequent comment pages? Or could I get away with using the actual article page as the canonical URL for all comment pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BostonWright0 -
What is the best solution for printable product pages (duplicate content)?
What do you think is the best solution for preventing duplicate content issues on printable versions of product pages? The printable versions are identical in content. Disallow in Robots.txt? Meta Robots No Index, Follow? Meta Robots No Index No Follow? Rel Canonical?
On-Page Optimization | | BlinkWeb1