20-30% of our ecommerce categories contain no extra content, could this be a problem
-
Hello,
About 20-30% of our ecommerce categories have no content beyond the products that are in them. Could this be a problem with Panda?
Thanks!
-
It's not an exact science in regard to any one signal, however yes, the more you can reinforce the ability to strengthen topical focus, the less likely Panda would find category pages to be weak.
-
No worries Bob. Ignore my original suggestion then.
Alan has some good suggestions for you to follow
-Andy
-
Thanks Alan, this is perfect.
So if we had at least a couple of good paragraphs on every category page, and a few extra very appropriate internal links pointing to each of those category pages then we would be in good shape as far as Panda and category strength. Correct?
-
Hi Andy,
Sorry for the confusion. This is an ecommerce site. I edited the original question to be clear.
-
I'm assuming that this is a Wordpress site (more info would be useful) and a common issue is category pages causing problems due to them showing the same excerpts over and over. No indexing them gets around this.
if I have misread the type of issue this is, then of course, this doesn't apply. With this being posted in blogging and content, this was my assumption.
A URL to look at would I'm sure confirm more of the problem.
-Andy
-
Andy,
why would you noindex/follow category pages? Thats like saying "hey - we have X products for this category - so it's really a high value and important page we deserve ranking for. Except hey - we don't have the willingness to boost the trust signals on the category page itself, so don't bother."
That in turn negatively impacts the site's ability to gain maximum ranking signals for any products in those categories (at least in highly competitive fields).
So I'm curious why you'd take that path.
-
It could be Bob. I always advise that category pages are noindex / follow to avoid issues.
if you are using Wordpress and Yoast, this is just a setting.
-Andy
-
If a category page has almost no content (other than photos and product names), then that's a potential "thin content" issue, though the way your question is worded, I'm not confident my interpretation is actually what you meant by "no content beyond".
If product names don't reference the category name, and if there's a lack of any descriptive content on the category page, that's likely even more of a problem - thin content and lack of topical reinforcement of the category itself.
A general rule (barring other issues or considerations) is to have at least a couple paragraphs of unique, descriptive paragraph based text that reinforces the topical focus of each category page. There are numerous ways to split that content out across a category page, and in highly competitive categories, more content may be needed if not enough products exist in the category.
Other factors that can help mitigate this to a certain degree include (but aren't necessarily limited to):
- hierarchical URL structure (nested URLs so product detail pages are seen at the URL as being "beneath" their category
- Proper nested breadcrumbs to reinforce that hierarchical structure
- Strong internal linking a) within categories this would include pagination code (rel-next/rel-prev). b) outside a category this would include links and highly refined relevant content elsewhere on the page linking to the category page.
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
-
Duplication content management across a subdir based multisite where subsites are projects of the main site and naturally adopt some ideas and goals from it
Hi, I have the following problem and would like which would be the best solution for it: I have a site codex21.gal that is actually part of a subdirectories based multisite (galike.net). It has a domain mapping setup, but it is hosted on a folder of galike.net multisite (galike.net/codex21). My main site (galike.net) works as a frame-brand for a series of projects aimed to promote the cultural & natural heritage of a region in NW Spain through creative projects focused on the entertainment, tourism and educational areas. The projects themselves will be a concretion (put into practice) of the general views of the brand, that acts more like a company brand. CodeX21 is one of those projects, it has its own logo, etc, and is actually like a child brand, yet more focused on a particular theme. I don't want to hide that it makes part of the GALIKE brand (in fact, I am planning to add the Galike logo to it, and a link to the main site on the menu). I will be making other projects, each of them with their own brand, hosted in subsites (subfolders) of galike.net multisites. Not all of them might have their own TLD mapped, some could simply be www.galike.net/projectname. The project codex21.gal subsite might become galike.net/codex21 if it would be better for SEO. Now, the problem is that my subsite codex21.gal re-states some principles, concepts and goals that have been defined (in other words) in the main site. Thus, there are some ideas (such as my particular vision on the possibilities of sustainable exploitation of that heritage, concepts I have developed myself as "narrative tourism" "geographical map as a non lineal story" and so on) that need to be present here and there on the subsite, since it is also philosophy of the project. BUT it seems that Google can penalise overlapping content in subdirectories based multisites, since they can seem a collection of doorways to access the same product (*) I have considered the possibility to substitute those overlapping ideas with links to the main page of the site, thought it seems unnatural from the user point of view to be brought off the page to read a piece of info that actually makes part of the project description (every other child project of Galike might have the same problem). I have considered also taking the subsite codex21 out of the network and host it as a single site in other server, but the problem of duplicated content might persist, and anyway, I should link it to my brand Galike somewhere, because that's kind of the "production house" of it. So which would be the best (white hat) strategy, from a SEO point of view, to arrange this brand-project philosophy overlapping? (*) “All the same IP address — that’s really not a problem for us. It’s really common for sites to be on the same IP address. That’s kind of the way the internet works. A lot of CDNs (content delivery networks) use the same IP address as well for different sites, and that’s also perfectly fine. I think the bigger issue that he might be running into is that all these sites are very similar. So, from our point of view, our algorithms might look at that and say “this is kind of a collection of doorway sites” — in that essentially they’re being funnelled toward the same product. The content on the sites is probably very similar. Then, from our point of view, what might happen is we will say we’ll pick one of these pages and index that and show that in the search results. That might be one variation that we could look at. In practice that wouldn’t be so problematic because one of these sites would be showing up in the search results. On the other hand, our algorithm might also be looking at this and saying this is clearly someone trying to overdo things with a collection of doorway sites and we’ll demote all of them. So what I recommend doing here is really trying to take a step back and focus on fewer sites and making those really strong, and really good and unique. So that they have unique content, unique products that they’re selling. So then you don’t have this collection of a lot of different sites that are essentially doing the same thing.” (John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trend Analyst at Google. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=kQIyk-2-wRg&feature=emb_logo)
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PabloCulebras0 -
Are online tools considered thin content?
My website has a number of simple converters. For example, this one converts spaces to commas
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ConvertTown
https://convert.town/replace-spaces-with-commas Now, obviously there are loads of different variations I could create of this:
Replace spaces with semicolons
Replace semicolons with tabs
Replace fullstops with commas Similarly with files:
JSON to XML
XML to PDF
JPG to PNG
JPG to TIF
JPG to PDF
(and thousands more) If somoene types one of those into Google, they will be happy because they can immediately use the tool they were hunting for. It is obvious what these pages do so I do not want to clutter the page up with unnecessary content. However, would these be considered doorway pages or thin content or would it be acceptable (from an SEO perspective) to generate 1000s of pages based on all the permutations?1 -
Our organic homepage traffic just recently spiked from about a typical under 20 per weekend to about 820 -- what could be causing this?
Website: http://www.myinjuryattorney.com Our homepage typically receives under 20 organic visitors per weekend, but I just checked traffic this morning, and it was at a whopping 821 for just Saturday and Sunday. It's already at 212 this morning. I'm heavily assuming this is fake traffic as there were about 818 drop offs after visiting the homepage, an 84.41% bounce rate, and an average session duration of 5 seconds. Our typical metrics -- last weekend for example, were: 13 visitors to the homepage, 38% bounce, and an average session duration of 1 minute 26 seconds. Does anyone know who or what could be causing this? Could it be a competitor using negative SEO of some sort? Thank you in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | marketingdepartment.ch1 -
Does Duplicate Content Actually "Penalize" a Domain?
Hi all, Some co-workers and myself were in a conversation this afternoon regarding if duplicate content actually causes a penalty on your domain. Reference: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-duplicate-content-wont-hurt-you-unless-it-is-spammy-167459 Both sources from Google do not say "duplicate content causes a penalty." However, they do allude to spammy content negatively affecting a website. Why it came up: We originally were talking about syndicated content (same content across multiple domains; ex: "5 explanations of bad breath") for the purpose of social media sharing. Imagine if dentists across the nation had access to this piece of content (5 explanations of bad breath) simply for engagement with their audience. They would use this to post on social media & to talk about in the office. But they would not want to rank for that piece of duplicated content. This type of duplicated content would be valuable to dentists in different cities that need engagement with their audience or simply need the content. This is all hypothetical but serious at the same time. I would love some feedback & sourced information / case studies. Is duplicated content actually penalized or will that piece of content just not rank? (feel free to reference that example article as a real world example). **When I say penalized, I mean "the domain is given a negative penalty for showing up in SERPS" - therefore, the website would not rank for "dentists in san francisco, ca". That is my definition of penalty (feel free to correct if you disagree). Thanks all & look forward to a fun, resourceful conversation on duplicate content for the other purposes outside of SEO. Cole
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
Need help please with website ranking problem!
I am currently struggling with our site www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk to rank our PVC banners page http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html On the UK search I have the following positions. hfe-signs.co.uk/banners.php
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobAnderson
signfirm.com/banners.html
bigvaluebanners.co.uk/PVC_Banners_High_Quality_Cheap_Outdoor_PVC_Mesh_Full_Colour_Banner/
bannerprintingandroid.co.uk/pvc-banners/
printedbannersandsigns.co.uk/
your-print.co.uk/pvc-banners-special.html
bannerbuzz.co.uk/pvc-banners
bannerbuzz.co.uk/
auraprint.co.uk/products/banners/
vinylprinting.co.uk/pvc_banners.html
banners.co.uk/CustomBanners-BlankBanners.htm
use - http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html I can't decide if it is url structure of the site, to many links on the left hand nav diluting power, keywords, etc but it does not look right that we are so far down, at least 2 of the pages above us have no content at all and some have no links or social either. Any help would be appreciated.0 -
What are your views on recent statements regarding "advertorial" content?
Hi, Recently, there's been a lot said and written about how Google is going to come down hard on 'advertorial' content. Many B2B publishers provide exposure to their clients by creating and publishing content about them -----based on information/ content obtained from clients (for example, in the form of press releases) or compiled by the publisher. From a target audience/ user perspective, this is useful information that the publication is bringing to its audience. Also, let's say the publishers don't link directly to client websites. In such a case, how do you think Google is likely to look at publisher websites in the context of the recent statements related to 'advertorial' type content? Look forward to views of the Moz community. Thanks, Manoj
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ontarget-media0 -
How do you optimize a page with Syndicated Content?
Content is syndicated legally (licensed). My questions are: What is the best way to approach this situation? Is there any a change to compete with the original site/page for the same keywords? Is it okay to do so? Will there be any negative SEO impact on my site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | StickyRiceSEO0 -
What do you think of our new category page?
Hey Mozzers! We have come up with a new layout design for a category page and would love to have your opinion on it, specifically from an S_E_O perspective Here is our current page: http://www.builddirect.com/Laminate-Flooring.aspx Our new page (pending approval): http://www.builddirect.com/testing/laminate-flooring/index.html Just to brief you in on the key differences b/w old and new layout: Left text link menu is removed in new layout
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Syed1
New layout looks funny with JS disabled - long vertical line up of products(Perhaps important keywords/ content in new layout appears way down?)
Lot of 'clunk' has been removed (bits of text, links, images, etc) Thanks for checking this out.0