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
-
Content Regurgitators
Hey, There are few websites such as http://bestthenews.com/ which regularly copy and paste articles from one of our sites onto theirs - along with all the links back to our site. The sites don't have a high spam score - but I cant imagine these sites serve any purpose (ie genuine readership) other than trying to boost their traffic. At the moment we haven't done anything about these, as they are backlinks after all - but could these sites have a negative impact and should we be asking them to remove? We have even had our content copied and pasted by AGDA (Australian Graphic Design Association) - which is OK as the site has great authority so the links are good, however it's still strange that a large reputable organization would just copy and paste articles without notifying us. Curious to here other experience / opinions on the matter. Cheers!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wearehappymedia1 -
Having a Size Chart and Personalization Descriptions on each page - Duplicate Content?
Hi everyone, I am coding a Shopify Store theme currently and we want to show customers the size comparisons and personalization options for each product. It will be a great UX addition since it is the number one & two things asked via customer support. But my only concern is that Google might flag it as duplicate content since it will be visible on each product page. What are your thoughts and/or suggestions? Thank you so much in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MadeByBrew0 -
Internal Links to Ecommerce Category Pages
Hello, I read a while back, and I can't find it now, that you want to add internal links to your main category pages. Does that still apply? If so, for a small site (100 products) what is recommended? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Rank drop ecommerce site
Hello, We're going to get an audit, but I would like to hear some ideas on what could cause our ranking drop. There's no warnings in GWT. We deleted 17 or so blogs (that had no backlinks pointing to these blogs and were simply for easy links) last summer thinking that they weren't white hat so we had to start eliminating them. At the same time, we eliminated a few sitewide paid links that were really strong. With all of this deletion, our keywords started to drop. For example, our main keyword went from first to third/fourth. With the deletions, our keywords dropped immediately a couple of spots, then with no more deletions, all of our keywords have been slowly dropping over the last seven months or so. Right now we are at the bottom of the first page for that same main keyword, and other keywords look similar. We have 70 linking root domains, of which: 15 are blogs with no backlinks that were created simply for the purpose of easy links. We didn't delete them all yet because of the immediate ranking drop when we deleted the last ones. One PR5 site has links to our home page scattered throughout it's lists of resources for people in different states in the US. It doesn't look like a standard paid link site, but it has many paid links in it's different pages. One PR4 site has our logo with another paid link logo at the bottom of one of it's pages. There are 2 other paid links from two PR4 sites that look editorial. There are other links on the sites to other websites that are paid. All links for these 2 sites look editorial. That's all the bad stuff. Other things that could be causing drop in rank - > Our bread crumbs are kind of messed up. We have a lot of subcategory pages that rel=cononical to main categories in the menu. We did this because we had categories that were exactly the same. So you'll drill down on a category page and you'll end up on a main category. To the average user, it seems perfectly fine. Our on-site SEO still has a few pages that repeat words in the titles and h1 tags several times (especially our #1 main keyword), titles similar to something like: running shoes | walking shoes | cross-training shoes where a word is repeated 2 or 3 times. Also, there are a few pages that are more keyword stuffed than we would like in the content. Just a couple of paragraphs but 2 keywords are dispersed in them three times each. The keywords in this content is not in different variations, it's exactly the keyword. We've still got a few URLs that are keywords stuffed with like 3 different keywords. We may have many 404 errors (due to some mistakes we made with the URLs in our cart) - if Google hasn't deindexed them all then we could have dozens of 404s on important category pages. But nothing is showing up in GWT. Our sitemap does not include any broken links. Google is confused about our branding it seems. I'm adding branding to the on-site SEO but right now Google often shows keywords as our branding when Google changes the way the title tag is displayed sometimes in the search engines. We don't link out to anyone. We have lots of content, almost no duplicate content, and some authoritative very comprehensive articles. Your thoughts on what to do to get our rankings back up?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Adding Extra Domains
There are domains available which match exactly to my main keywords which I am trying to rank for. For example my keyword is "Green apple" and there are domains like greenapple.com . Do you think from Google stand point of view it is ok if I buy domains like this and when visitors go to these domains, automatically direct them to my main website? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Armin6661 -
How does Google decide what content is "similar" or "duplicate"?
Hello all, I have a massive duplicate content issue at the moment with a load of old employer detail pages on my site. We have 18,000 pages that look like this: http://www.eteach.com/Employer.aspx?EmpNo=26626 http://www.eteach.com/Employer.aspx?EmpNo=36986 and Google is classing all of these pages as similar content which may result in a bunch of these pages being de-indexed. Now although they all look rubbish, some of them are ranking on search engines, and looking at the traffic on a couple of these, it's clear that people who find these pages are wanting to find out more information on the school (because everyone seems to click on the local information tab on the page). So I don't want to just get rid of all these pages, I want to add content to them. But my question is... If I were to make up say 5 templates of generic content with different fields being replaced with the schools name, location, headteachers name so that they vary with other pages, will this be enough for Google to realise that they are not similar pages and will no longer class them as duplicate pages? e.g. [School name] is a busy and dynamic school led by [headteachers name] who achieve excellence every year from ofsted. Located in [location], [school name] offers a wide range of experiences both in the classroom and through extra-curricular activities, we encourage all of our pupils to “Aim Higher". We value all our teachers and support staff and work hard to keep [school name]'s reputation to the highest standards. Something like that... Anyone know if Google would slap me if I did that across 18,000 pages (with 4 other templates to choose from)?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Eteach_Marketing0 -
Duplicate content showing on local pages
I have several pages which are showing duplicate content on my site for web design. As its a very competitive market I had create some local pages so I rank high if someone is searching locally i.e web design birmingham, web design tamworth etc.. http://www.cocoonfxmedia.co.uk/web-design.html http://www.cocoonfxmedia.co.uk/web-design-tamworth.html http://www.cocoonfxmedia.co.uk/web-design-lichfield.html I am trying to work out what is the best way reduce the duplicate content. What would be the best way to remove the duplicate content? 1. 301 redirect (will I lose the existing page) to my main web design page with the geographic areas mentioned. 2. Re write the wording on each page and make it unique? Any assistance is much appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
If a site is punished by google like -30, or -60, are the link from that site efficient?
Like this way, if I build a blog and in some situation, the blog is punished by google as some reason I don't know, all the rank dropped and got the -30 punishment. If I put a outbound link on the sidebar, or footer position. what it'll be for that link? A is punished, a link is put on the A website and link to B website what that link means to B punished got many ways Thank you
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | yifang01230