Best SEO Structure For E-Commerce With Products Using Multiple Categories

[nb2e4fg]

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.
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?

1. 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.

2. 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?)

3. 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).

4. Is it good practice to organise products under multiple categories for an e-commerce site?

Thanks in advance for any help and advice.

[Nigel_Carr]

@Stevejcr @nb2e4fg

I'd strong advise not using tags that are rankable, especially if they replicate the sub-categories! No index them.

Also no index tags and categories in your blog. They can also damage inline pages.

Nigel

[Stevejcr]

When it comes to structuring an e-commerce website for SEO and user experience, there are several factors to consider. In your case, the goal is to rank for keywords related to the Woodsculp brand, its animals, collections, and release dates. Here are some suggestions:

Keep the brand category: Keeping the brand category will help users quickly find all products related to the Woodsculp brand. Also, having a dedicated brand category will help in ranking for brand-related keywords. However, you can optimize the brand category by adding subcategories such as Woodsculp by Animal, Woodsculp by Collection, and Woodsculp by Release Date.

Use a flat structure: A flat structure means that users can reach a product within three clicks or fewer. So, instead of having multiple subcategories, use a flat structure with the brand category and its subcategories directly under it. For example, All Things Nature > Woodsculp > Woodsculp Dogs.

Use tags: To ensure that products are discoverable from multiple angles, use tags. In your case, a product such as Elijah Elephant could have tags such as Woodsculp Elephants, Woodsculp Safari, and Woodsculp Summer 2022. This way, users can find the product regardless of which category they are browsing.

Assigning multiple categories: It's a good practice to assign products to multiple categories as long as it's relevant. However, make sure that the product doesn't appear in identical categories. In your case, Elijah Elephant can be assigned to Woodsculp Elephants, Woodsculp Safari, and Woodsculp Summer 2022, but it shouldn't appear under Woodsculp Elephants and Woodsculp by Animal.

Overall, creating a user-friendly and SEO-friendly e-commerce website requires a careful balance between organization and simplicity. You can consider working with an SEO expert or agency that specializes in e-commerce optimization to ensure that your site follows best practices and ranks well for your target keywords.

[Nigel_Carr]

@nb2e4fg

Hi There,

Pleasure - glad you found it useful. To answer your queries

1. Like I said it depends on the search volume:

Woosculp Dog (0 searches per month)
Woodsculp Elephants (0)
Woodsclup Safari (0)

So if this is the case and my searches are correct I would put them all on one page. At a push, if there are a lot, have an ajax filter as I described in the original post, so that users can slim the page down to just the animal they want. Same for Safari or frankly even season. It doesn't matter because all the 'juice' will be directed at Woodsculp.

If there are other brands with more searched for subcategories then you need to make a decision. Remember you will have all these animals on the page so the combination of Woodsculp+Animal will make it rankable, plus you will have the SEO text so you can mention them in there.

2. If you are going to have subcategories because they are searchable, (and my research is in the wrong country maybe?) Then the category would be Woodsculp Elephants (plural) There will be plenty of occurrences of the term Elephant (singular) on the page. It's also grammatically incorrect to name a page of elephants, elephant.

3. It doesn't matter how you display the category page. I prefer a top or sidebar, but some themes have categories in blocks on the page. It can be like this but I prefer just products in the main body of the page with sub cats/filters away to the top or side (plus in the menu)

4. You can put brand and sub-cat in the URL if you like (If you are having sub-cats because they are searchable) - but only if they will never move. Nothing worse than finding a product in one category then having to move it and change the URL. NEVER have a product in multiple categories with different URLs! One product/one URL

allthingsnature. com/woodsculp/dogs/ws012-woodsculp-scottie-dog

You will just make trouble for yourself down the line if products move category.

This is fine too

allthingsnature. com/product/ws012-woodsculp-scottie-dog

Personally I think the URL slightly helps SEO so having woodsculp and dog in there is great!

allthingsnature. com/product/woodsculp/dogs/ws012-woodsculp-scottie-dog

• Note 'dogs' not dog in the URL

You can remove the 'product' and 'product-category' slugs in WordPress using Premmerce, but do it before you launch - DO NOT do it after, or if you do, prepare for a ranking hit after you 301 them!

**actually you mentioned you are restructuring so you will have to 301 all the changes from original structure to what you are doing here (Brands, Cats, Products) . This will take time - up to 6 months to get them all ranking properly. You must do this otherwise you'll have a mess, so crawl the site using Screaming Frog and extract all URLs. Then make the changes and when you launch use a bulk redirection plugin to do them straight away. Don't leave it otherwise you'll get a mass of 404s (not found)

5. Sites are better for SEO with one product in one category, however, you can get away with some product being in 2 or 3 different categories. Just note that Google will see that and the clearer you can make the structure for Google, the better

If 'Woodsculp Pets' is the higher category (as opposed to Woodsculp on its own), broken down into subcats, Dogs, Elephants etc, then I don't see a problem (If there are enough searches for the sub cats)

Many sites have Gender, Category, Brand. Others just Category and Brand

So for example you could have a category view:

Wooden Animals
Dogs
Elephants

and a Branded View

Woodsculp Pets
Dogs
Elephants

We did this for a shoes website. In each case there is one URL for each product. See the two images.

https://carouselprojects.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Brand-Hierachy-600x318.png

Yes, noindex sale, best sellers etc - they just cause problems.

Good luck!

Nigel Carr - Retail SEO Specialist
Carousel Projects

[nb2e4fg]

@Nigel_Carr

Hi Nigel,

Firstly, thank you very much for taking the time to provide such a detailed response. I’m really keen to take on board your feedback and learn and apply this to my store.

Ranking for Categories/Subcategories

Ranking for ‘Woodsculp’ would be the ideal scenario but there is a lot of competition. The searches for all the subcategories mentioned (e.g. Woodsculp Elephants, Woodsculp Safari, Woodsculp Summer 2022) are strong.

On the subject of ranking categories, if for example ‘Woodsculp elephant’ was a ranking search, would it matter if I called the subcategory ‘Woodsculp elephants’? I did notice during keyword research that the singular and plural can have different ranks.

Products Under Main Category

With regards to listing every model on the Woodsculp category page, in the past I would normally not display every product at this level as there could be hundreds of them. Instead I would normally display the subcategories (Woodsculp Dogs, Woodsculp Elephants) in a grid format to allow customers to navigate to the relevant subcategories (and products) more easily (like the pyramid way of site structure?). I know you mentioned having the sidebar to be able to navigate to the subcategories.

Is displaying all products under the main category (in this case Woodsculp) standard e-commerce practice and the best way of displaying products for users and for SEO?

3. Product URL structure

In the past I would have structured my product URLs to include the subcategory. For example:

allthingsnature. com/woodsculp/dogs/ws012-woodsculp-scottie-dog

Would it be better to structure as:

allthingsnature. com/product/ws012-woodsculp-scottie-dog (wordpress allows either /product/ or /shop/ for the product permalinks).

4. SEO Title

I noticed that you added in the ‘Wooden Sculptures’ part in the SEO title, will adding extra words like this hurt ranking for ‘Woodsculp’ in any way?

5. Products in Multiple Categories

You mentioned earlier in your post that I could create a ‘Safari’ subcategory but you are saying that you would not put products in multiple brand categories?

So if I had a product ‘Woodsculp Scottie Dog’, I would be best off only placing it under one subcategory (presumably the one which ranks the highest) such as ‘Woodsculp Dogs’ as opposed to placing it under two, maximum three (Woodsculp Dogs, Woodsculp Pets etc.).

This seems a shame as I would certainly like users to be able to find that product if I was fortunate enough for them land on those category pages (Woodsculp Dogs, Woodsculp Pets) from a search engine result.

I’m confused by your last bit: ‘I would however have no problem having them in another type of category, say 'Wooden Animals’. Is that not exactly the same as having a category like ‘Woodsculp Dogs’? The only difference being that I’ve put the brand name in there as that phrase was a ranking keyword?

6. No Index Pages

Thanks for the suggestion of a non indexing sale page.

[Nigel_Carr]

@nb2e4fg

There are two ways of handling this imho and it all depends how strong the brand and the sub categories are. It depends if people actually search for the subcategories.

Your primary aim is to rank for the brand 'Woodsculp' because that presumably is the most frequently searched word used to find the brand.

So the first way is like this

Woodsculp
> Dogs
>Elephants

So the main page will be Woodsculp with every model listed.

You then put a sidebar in to point to a subcategory page of Dogs or Elephants.

The sub-category route would be.

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp/dogs

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp/elephants

• If Safari is also a 'thing' then create a subcat for that as well, but don't for Summer 2022 - that's not required. Just have them all on one page.

This would allow the subcategories to rank as well (If You Need Them To).

Note this risks the subcategories affecting the ranking of the main brand which is quite common with branded products. It depends how strong searches are for the dogs and elephants or whether they just search the brand.

The second way is using an Ajax/Filtered way of listing,

The filter sits in exactly the same place, maybe a side bar but goes to a non-ranking filter version of the page like this

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp?sub-cat=dogs

allthingsnature.com/woodsculp?sub-cat=elephants

The canonical (What Google sees) for all three would be allthingsnature.com/woodsculp

This means you don't set the subcategories to rank because Google doesn't read after the ?

Any other pages are produced via tags which are no indexed. This gives all the strength to the main brand page.

The first way you would write 300 word+ SEO content for the brand page. Make it really comprehensive, Maybe a short description at the top of the page with call to action and a fuller description under the listings.

SEO Title

Woodsculp - Wooden Sculptures - All Things Nature

Description

Shop for Woodsculp Wooden Scupltures including wooden Dogs and Elephants - Free Delievery ....... Other Calls to Action

Then have subcategories with a little content - focusing on the fact they are dogs or elephants.

SEO Title

Woodsculp Dogs - Wooden Sculptures - All Things Nature

&

SEO Title

Woodsculp Elephants - Wooden Sculptures - All Things Nature

Again, check the search volumes - if they are non existed use method 2 - filter/Ajax

The filtered page way you would only write content for the main brand but also write about Dogs and Elephants so you can rank for both types . Also write about Safari so that will rank as well. Christmas - you could have a separate page but noindex it so it doesn't compete. Also for Sale items - you can have a page for Woodsculp sale but no index it.

That's what I would do but it depends on the strength of the sub categories.

I would not put products in multiple brand categories - that is why I ask how important safari and Christmas are.

I would not have 'release date' categories - that's just designed to mess up SEO! If you must then use a non indexing filter as above.

I would however have no problem having them in another type of category, say 'Wooden Animals'.

Nigel Carr - Retail SEO Specialist
Carousel Projects