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.
Body of text on category pages
-
Hello everyone, wonder if I can pick your brains about our company's website. We are a tea company - Canton Tea Co. We have been advised that it is really important to get more text onto the category pages on our website, as otherwise the page just consists of a list of products, and therefore provides Google with a ton of headers, tiny descriptions, and not enough text to allow the page to being easily indexed, therefore hurting our Google ranking for key search terms like 'Green Tea' which should lead to the Green Tea category page.
So we decided to add some text to the category page. The only place for this text to go was laid over the category header image. However, it looks pretty awful and unsophisticated having this text on top of the image - please see an example, our Green Tea category page, via this link: http://www.cantonteaco.com/loose-leaf-tea-1/type/green-tea.html
So I have three questions:
- How significant is the text on a category page such as this to that page's Google ranking?
- If we moved the text to an area that was hidden until clicked on, for example the 'Filter by' section that opens up when you click on it (see via URL above), would that negate the SEO benefit?
- Do you have any other ideas or opinions on how to resolve this?
Thank you!
Louise, Canton Tea Co.
-
URGENT: I checked the text on a few of your product pages, then searched for a snippet of your product description in quotes. Your descriptions are posted on other sites. And that text on your site for some products is verbatim identical to the product descriptions displayed on amazon.co.uk. That is deadly. Google is filtering several other websites where this same text appears verbatim. I see amazon with verbatim and four filtered results here. So, I would be sure that the text on my site is unique. If you are spreading it to amazon, rewrite what is on your site. If other people are stealing your text, that's a harder problem to solve.
=============================
If this was my site, I would do the following with the category page. I am not saying that everyone is going to agree with me, but this is where I would bet my money and time.
-- Include two to three sentences, in proper language, about each of the products. Give the visitor enough information so he/she can decide to click. Don't give me a whiff and make me click to taste it. People who buy tea are the kind of people who don't mind reading by hate clicking into fifteen pages just to get some idea about the product.
-- Personally, I would ditch the hover-over effect and get that text onto the page. You NEVER know how search engines are going to treat it. You never know how devices are going to treat it, or how old men like me, who enjoy their tea are going to react when it doesn't seem to work when I click on it. Also, I believe in getting all of my info out for the visitor. Don't make the visitor click to another page unless he is really interested.
-- I would show the rating on the page. Ratings are like bling. Flaunt them.
-
I see what you mean Louise, but you need to be careful with category pages that they aren't seen as Doorway pages, that Google is clamping down on. Read more here.
**1) How significant is the text on a category page such as this to that page's Google ranking? **
It's not just about text, it's about usability and how useful the page is. If the page is only there to collect traffic for a search term and then fire someone off to other internal pages, you might fall foul of penalties.
**2) If we moved the text to an area that was hidden until clicked on, for example the 'Filter by' section that opens up when you click on it (see via URL above), would that negate the SEO benefit? **
There is no direct SEO problem with having the content hidden behind a tab, because the content is still there and Google can see it in the code as well. However, this wouldn't be my preferred option on it's own as that doesn't do much for the page and is only there to try and combat some SEO issues.
**3) Do you have any other ideas or opinions on how to resolve this? **
Usability and more usability. Make sure the page bring more than just some text and links. Think about people landing on there and what else they would like to see that would be useful to them. If you search for your key phrases, who is winning in the SERP's? How do they combat this issue? A little competition analysis can go a long way.
You could also do with focusing on keywords that bring people to that page. Rather than just focusing on "Green Tea", you want the people who are looking to "buy green tea" or for "Green tea suppliers". If you get the wrong people to the pages, this can also be detrimental.
I hope this helps
-Andy
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
-
JSON-LD product page markup for multiple currencies?
I haven't found a working example of a single product page with one "Offer" in multiple "priceCurrency" and "price" We have product pages with a single product URL which will offer different prices in different currencies based on the user's IP. Some of the language of the page will be translated based on the IP (this will have href lang tag) but the URL will not change. (We're aware TLD is considered best practice, however, this is not an option at this time.) Is the best option to update the markup based on what the corresponding "country"? I'm uncertain how this may be handled by crawlers. Eg, For the product page https://www.example.com/product1 displaying USD "offers": {
Web Design | | sb1030
"@type": "Offer",
"url": "https://www.example.com/product1",
"itemCondition": "https://schema.org/NewCondition",
"availability": "InStock",
"priceCurrency": "USD",
"price": "7.99"} For the product pagehttps://www.example.com/product1 displaying EUR "offers": {
"@type": "Offer",
"url": "https://www.example.com/product1",
"itemCondition": "https://schema.org/NewCondition",
"availability": "InStock",
"priceCurrency": "EUR",
"price": "7.50"} Thanks for any input.0 -
Reason for robots.txt file blocking products on category pages?
Hi I have a website with thosands of products. On the category pages, all the products are linked to with the code “?cgid” in the URL. But “?cgid” is also blocked in the robots.txt file for some reason. So I'm thinking it's stopping all my products getting crawled by Google. Am I right here? Is there any reason why a website would want to limit so many URL's? I'm only here a week and the sites getting great traffic, so don't want to go breaking it!!! Thanks
Web Design | | Frankie-BTDublin0 -
How to fix non-crawlable pages affected by CSS modals?
I stumbled across something new when doing a site audit in SEMRUSH today ---> Modals. The case: Several pages could not be crawled because of (modal:) in the URL. What I know: "A modal is a dialog box/popup window that is displayed on top of the current page" based on CSS and JS. What I don't know: How to prevent crawlers from finding them.
Web Design | | Dan-Louis0 -
Website Home page suddenly disappeared after changing Hosting
HI All, My site was ranking very well and was in 1st page of google for most of my keywords. Last week we did some update to the site and moved it to new hosting and from then onwards I dont see my site home page in Google ranking . My Website Name is : royalevents.com.au. We used to be in 1st of Google for keywords like wedding Mandaps, Indian Wedding Mandaps etc, Would be great if some one helps us to figure out whats gone wrong .. I also did Webmaster Fetch as Google but nothing happened. Thanks
Web Design | | Verve-Innovation0 -
Should i not use hyphens in web page titles? Google Penalty for hyphens?
all the page titles in my site have hyphens between the words like this: http://texas.com/texas-plumbers.html I have seen tests where hyphenated domain names ranked lower than non hyphenated domain names. Does this mean my pages are being penalized for hyphens or is this only in the domain that it is penalized? If I create new pages should I not use hyphens in the page titles when there are two or more words in the title? If I changed all my page titles to eliminate the hyphens, I would lose all my rankings correct? My site is 12 years old and if I changed all these titles I'm guessing that each page would be thrown in the google sandbox for several months, is this true? Thanks mozzers!
Web Design | | Ron100 -
Multiple Local Schemas Per Page
I am working on a mid size restaurant groups site. The new site (in development) has a drop down of each of the locations. When you hover over a location in the drop down it shows the businesses info (NAP). Each of the location in the Nav list are using schema.org markup. I think this would be confusing for search robots. Every page has 15 address schemas and individual restaurants pages NAP is at the below all the locations' schema/NAP in the DOM. Have any of you dealt with multiple schemas per page or similar structure?
Web Design | | JoshAM0 -
ECWID How to fix Duplicate page content and external link issue
I am working on a site that has a HUGE number of duplicate pages due to ECWID ecommerce platform. The site is built with Joomla! How can I rectify this situation? The pages also show up as "external " links on crawls... Is it the ECWID platform? I have never worked on a site that uses this. Here is an example of a page with the issue (there are 6280 issues) URL: http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spare-parts?Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560081
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Best layout pages for SEO
Dear all, what would be the ideal layout of a webpage for SEO? How would a homepage and landingspage look like? Thanks in advance! Best regards, Ben
Web Design | | HMK-NL0