Ecommerce Traffic increase - moving from 500 to 1000 words/category
-
Hello,
We have found traffic to increase upon adding content to category descriptions. Our category pages are stronger than our product pages.
Our main categories (the fourty that are in the navigation) have 500 words on them, carefully written helpful content.
We are trying to decide whether to increase (for these 40 categories) to 1000 words per category. Do you think this would increase traffic ? Is it a good idea?
Thanks!
-
Ill just give a practical response based from my own ecom projects
Category optimisation DOES wonders for impressions and SEO. You've seen it work.
In my case, increasing the content length DID help get more impressions but not conversions (directly)
If it helps people to make choices for products, go for it. If you are just increasing the length just for the sake of SEO, that's where you will need to make a judgement call.
Consider your traffic data and conversion funnels that you have right now and make the decision based on that.
Hell, if I was asked this personally, Id just say go for it, test it and see what happens, but like Doug mentioned, it might make you lose money if you are already converting well and that's the last thing we want to happen
-
I'm not sure it's quite as black and white as that Bob.
It's not just about getting more search traffic, you want more traffic that converts, achieived the goals of the site. The last thing you want to do is to add more content to these pages, and find that your conversions/sales go down.
What's the engagement like on these pages? Do people read this content? What is the exit rate and bounce rate like on these pages? Segment the different types of traffic in your analytics to see how these pages may be affecting direct/referral traffic, new vs returning visitors etc.
What is the goal/purpose of the category pages. Does adding additional content help achieve the page and site goals? If the page's function is mainly navigational, to help people find what they are looking for, then you'll need to be careful that you don't compromise that. Make sure people can still find what they need to find!
You say you've got 40 different categories to play with. I'd look to conduct some tests so that you're not guessing. You can always look at increasing the amount of content on one or two of these and see how it affects things. You might want to carry out some split testing too to see what the impact is on your conversion goals.
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
-
Best SEO Structure For E-Commerce With Products Using Multiple Categories
Hi all, I am in the process of re-structuring my e-commerce website for better SEO and user experience. I have done some keyword research and would like some advice on how best to structure my site around those keywords. For example, my site (All Things Nature) sells a brand of wooden sculptures (Woodsculp) and I would like to rank for keywords related to that brand, the brand by animal, the brand by collection and the brand by release date.
Content Development | | nb2e4fg
Examples of keywords could be: Brand by Animal: Woodsculp Dogs, Woodsculp Cats, Woodsculp Elephants
Brand by Collection: Woodsculp Pets, Woodsculp Safari
Brand by Release Date: Woodsculp Christmas 2023, Woodsculp Summer 2022 I would create each of these keywords as a category so that they can be found by a search engine and by users. I would then structure as follows: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Elephants
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Collection -> Woodsculp Pets
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Collection -> Woodsculp Safari
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Release Date -> Woodsculp Christmas 2023
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp by Release Date -> Woodsculp Summer 2022 The only problem with this structure is it would take more than 3 clicks (4) for the user to reach a product. How critical is this for good SEO and user experience? Would I be better off getting rid of the ‘Woodsculp by Animal’, ‘Woodsculp by Collection’ and ‘Woodsculp by Release Date’ categories? Structure would look as follows: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Elephants
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Safari
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Christmas 2023 The only thing with this is there would be a lot of categories under the brand name which might make it more difficult for search engines and users to logically follow. Would I be better off getting rid of the brand category and replace them with the keyword categories? Structure would look as follows: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Animal -> Woodsculp Elephants
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Collection -> Woodsculp Safari
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp by Release Date -> Woodsculp Christmas 2023 This would organise things more logically but I would then lose the brand category (and the potential of the brand keyword ranking?) Would I be better off choosing one main keyword to use as a category and then use tags for the other categories? Categories: All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Dogs
All Things Nature -> Woodsculp -> Woodsculp Elephants Tags: Woodsculp Safari
Woodsculp Christmas 2023 The next issue I have is that I have products which could fall under several different categories. A product called Elijah Elephant, for example could fall under Woodsculp Elephants, Woodsculp Safari and Woodsculp Summer 2022. In previous e-commerce sites I have never assigned multiple categories to one product (I instead have used tags). Is it good practice to organise products under multiple categories for an e-commerce site? Thanks in advance for any help and advice.0 -
A good content calendar/organizer suggestion?
Does anyone have a good content calendar/organizer/software/etc to help plan delivering and pushing out content? I haven't ever used anything other than an actual calendar, and that doesn't seem to help all that much. Is there anything better out there? Any suggestions would be fantastic! Much appreciated, Ruben
Content Development | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
How Are You Handling Blog Posts/Author Pages when Employees Leave the Company?
What do you believe to be the best approach in handling blog content for employees once they have left the company? We don’t want to remove the blog posts so they need to stay, but then there are the author pages. This gets tricky because the CMS ties the blog post to the author. One approach might be to change the author’s name to the Company’s name to get around author pages for people no longer with the company. It’s kind of tricky because the blog posts won’t have the same credibility if they don’t have a person’s name/photo associated with the post. We could leave the blogger’s page and list him as a “Contributing Author” once he’s left the company. Thoughts?
Content Development | | RosemaryB0 -
Recommendations Content / Copywriter
We are based in the UK & have used alot of content / copywriters & so far have struggled to find someone we feel meets our needs? Can anyone recommend a content writing company or freelancer? Thanks
Content Development | | webguru20140 -
Great content/news articles - but struggling to drive traffic from them
We publish 2-3 great quality news stories/posts on our sites weekly, but are struggling to gain traffic from external sources for them, other than our own blog and socials. We have followings for each of our sites, but want to expand and get our posts found in other relevant blogs, features, releases etc. The posts are 'Top 10 Tips...', 'How To... in 6 Easy Steps', 'What Makes a Great...' etc. All great things that people want to read about and share. All this of course helps towards the SEO of the sites, but the posts aren't written for that, they are written to guide and inform. My question is, how are other people getting their great content found online, talked about and shared? I personally think that our posts are awesome; containing useful information that will help people. Isn't that what it's all about?
Content Development | | bricktech0 -
Any thoughts on QuickSprout and their Traffic U program?
Gotten a few emails recently about their latest promotion. Just wondering if anybody here uses that system (program, method,??) and can share their experiences?
Content Development | | GregB1230 -
How to optimize content pages with ecommerce?
Some content pages act as buyers guides for certain products for example Used Paddle Boards for Sale - http://www.islesurfboards.com/used-paddle-boards-for-sale.aspx this is a content page that gets huge amount of traffic and is pure content with no products on the page, but we also have a ecommerce section of the site that is Used Paddle Boards for Sale -http://www.islesurfboards.com/buy-used-paddle-boards-for-sale.aspx however this page just has a small paragraph and all the ecommerce product related to this section on the page. The content only page above gets all the traffic and rank and then they click over to the actual ecomm section wiht the products from a link on that page. Should i merge these two together so its just one page and put the content on the ecom page? If i do all the content with push the ecommerce products down which is not good so what does anyone recommend as a best practice? Also will this mess up the content pages rank is i merge them assuming i redirect? or Keep them seperate like i have with a content page regarding "used paddle boards for sale" and an ecommerce page that sells acutal "used paddle boards for sale"
Content Development | | isle_surf0 -
Wordpress Duplicate Pages/ URL's - Help !
Hi guys, I have been running SEOMoz for just over a month and slowly cleaning up one of my Wordpress Blogs. While going through the crawl reports I have noticed that I have duplicate pages showing on the crawl. For example, the main post would be; www.xxxxx.com/blog/post-title Then I see another URL which would be; **www.xxxx.com/blog/page/59 ** When I click on either URL it goes back to the actual post title URL. What's with these page URL's ? Isn't these two URL's showing duplicate content to the search engines ? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Content Development | | dcc0