Ecommerce On-Site SEO: Keywords in Category Descriptions
-
Hello,
I'm doing on-site SEO for a client's ecommerce site.
Are 160 words enough for a category description?
I'm using the keywords once at the top of the description, and once at the bottom of the description, with the ones at the bottom reworded so that they are the keywords with a different word order.
I used to put the keywords in 3 times but it just feels like stuffing.
Is twice, worded differently the second time, enough for a category description?
Thanks.
-
Great, that sounds like an improvement. With that many words, appropriate keywords for the page can be used 3 times in various word orders.
If your keyword was "running shoes" and you have your words at the top, do you use your keyword once as "running shoes" at the top, and then in the bottom text include it once as "running shoes" and once as "shoes for running"
Or what have you found is effective? I don't like to keyword stuff.
-
We do what Gerd describes in his comment -- a short description at the top of the page, then the products in the middle of the page, and then additional description at the bottom of the page. Total word count ~500.
-
I agree. How many words do you guys recommend for a category? We could probably add up to 300-500 if we wanted in our case.
-
Meta-Keywords and Meta-Description no longer contribute to ranking, I thought -- and optimizing Meta-Description is less and less important as Google becomes more likely to use whatever the heck they want for the snippet.
-
160 well written words are certainly enough for Google to understand what the page is about. Adding more words could help bring in more long-tail, as you include variations on the keyword, modifiers, etc. But you don't want so many words that conversion suffers.
I find that for most keyword phrases, more than twice in ~150 words feels stuffed and unnatural.
-
Forgive me for not knowing, but what is a high index-ratio?
-
True, there is obviously a lot more to SEO than just filling meta-tags. My example above was just something we do for categories and obviously elements such as TITLE, H1-H3 are important.
I would look at SEO in eCommerce holistically:
- Understand your product category taxonomy and related categories. Provide a mechanism to "boilerplate" tags important for SEO. This also should include microdata such as breadcrumbs.
- Provide a "fall-back" mechanism if your content team fails - i.e. if your product team introduces new categories without SEO meta-data, craft them from the information you know about the category (i.e. category title and generic keywords)
- Don't forget about pushing Sitemap data to Google - this will push your whole taxonomy and products into the index.
- Ensure that your search indexes (many people say don't but we have not found an issue with it).
- Pay attention to canonicals for both products and categories and ensure that all links are SEO friendly
- Craft your brand verbs (buy, sell, cheap etc) in searches and categories
I think it is more important to have a high index-ratio in search than stuffing keywords which result in irrelevant search results. Over 80% of our products get indexed through Google and since we have mostly user-generated content, we ensure that the meta-data for the products is good.
If your client has a product catalogue SEO becomes a lot easier, as data should be very structured, but it will be challenging since the same content is syndicated to many other competitors.
-
Gerd,
Could you say more? I'm not sure I completely follow you. I assume you think titles, h1, etc. should point to what's exactly on the page, and I agree, but don't you work in what's most searched for?
-
Gerd,
Could you say more? I'm not sure I completely follow you. I assume you think titles, h1, etc. should point to what's exactly on the page, and I agree, but don't you work in what's most searched for? In your case gaming is very searched for almost no matter what terms you use to describe it.
-
I honestly would not stuff keywords like that. Meta tag keywords and descriptions should hint at the actual content on page.
Our site-structure for eCommerce categories consists of the following (here is an example
- Meta tags with keywords and description
- Content lead-in (text below the banner)
- Subcategory links and content
- Content lead-out (text below pagination)
Each category has the same structure and our product team manages the actual content. This works very effectively.
-
It's pretty hard to give a 'right' amount here.
Of course, it's well documented that more content on a page has a strong correlation with improved rankings (and conversions). To say that there is a golden threshold of characters, however, is impossible to say.
I'd rather bring up the point you make about stuffing. That's probably the main thing to keep in mind when writing descriptions or content - don't make it look like you're gaming for a search engine, but keep it great for a user. If you can use your keyword multiple times, that's great. But, as you allude to, writing it for the sake of getting it on the page more often is a bad move.
If 160 words for a description is the absolute most you can say on a topic, without repeating yourself, then 160 is the right amount **in this case. **Other times it might be more, and sometimes it might be even less; it really is dependent on the context.
You might be able to squeeze more content for a description by using things like an example of how a system/process works etc. But I'd always remain focus on writing for a user, not a search engine, and to avoid stuffing where possible, as you rightly pointed out.
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
-
Help finding someone to handle crashing site/site optimization.
I need someone who can handle website/WordPress issues as they come up.For example, my site has gone down 4 times tonight, and my host can't figure it out. They also keep recommending that I optimize my site, but I don't know how. I need a go-to web person for this sort of thing. Any recommendations?
On-Page Optimization | | cbrant7770 -
Site Wide Links
Howdy Moz! So our agency has been around for long enough to have a few sites we've built that have our credit in their footer resulting in a site wide link. Mostly just our name. We've heard that Google does not particularly like site wide links, should we go through and remove some of these old links?
On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia0 -
Keywords in site maps. Can there be too many? Can they be considered to be stuffed?
Hi everyone,
On-Page Optimization | | TheJewelleryEd
I'd appreciate some insight on a keyword stuffed site map I've seen on a site similar to ours (we don't have this kind of menu ourselves).
https://www.1stdibs.com/sitemap/jewelry/stone/pink-diamond/
This is accessed from a site map. Do you think it's too blatant / keyword stuffed? I haven't done this with our site, but am interested to see a big reputable site doing something so clearly just for SEO.
Would it work? Or would search engines dislike it? I'd really appreciate your thoughts.
Thank you.0 -
2000 Active pages 404 on LIVE Ecommerce site - what will google do now?
Hi All, One of my ecommerce site having more than 20,000 pages from that one of the categories having 2000 pages showing 404 and still taking time for developer to fix this issue and may be they will be able to fix after 2-3 days so is this okay with google or google will take any action during this period? Thanks! Dev
On-Page Optimization | | devdan0 -
On Site Errors
HI Folks I'm monitoring a small Australian site bluetea.com.au . Currently I have a SEO specialist who does month onsite maintenance work for this site. However each month I continue to see errors in webmaster tools... as an example, currently webmaster tools suggest we have 21 short meta dic and 26 duplicate title tags..... Examples given are Short Meta Discp /cleaning-products-and-our-health/toxic-cleaners/ /colour-consultant/fushia-door/ /portfolio/parisian-apartment-black-kitchen/parisian-apartment-black-kitchen/ Duplicate title tags <a id="zip_0-anchor" class="zippedsection_title"></a>concrete-kitchen | Blue Tea Kitchen Designs
On-Page Optimization | | PHD/kitchen-trends-and-material-innovation/concrete-kitchen-2/
/kitchen-trends-for-2013/concrete-kitchen/<a id="zip_1-anchor" class="zippedsection_title"></a>Potts Point Kitchen | Blue Tea Kitchen Designs
/portfolio/potts-point-kitchen/
/portfolio/potts-point-kitchen/pott-point-kitchen/My SEO tells me that he has solved all these issues but after one or two months they still remain in webmaster tools... can anybody help me understand why?Thank you
0 -
If I want to rank well on one keyword would it be better to optimize multiple pages on the website for the keyword or should I only optimize one page for that keyword?
If I want to rank well on one keyword would it be better to optimize multiple pages on the website for the keyword or should I only optimize one page for that keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | CustomOnlineMarketing0 -
Is having the word catalog in an ecommerce site url detrimental to seo.
IS: www.example.com/catalog/category%/product% better than www.example.com/category%/product% category and product are dynamic values that change with the diff. categ. and products displayed while catalog is constant.
On-Page Optimization | | no6thgear0 -
Title Keyword Question
I'm writing up keywords for new pages on a website. There are a number of variations on the way we can say what we're looking for, and I don't want to post the specific keywords but I'll give an example using fruits. Let's say I want to optimize for Granny Smith apples, McIntosh apples, Jonathan apples, etc. Could my title be Apples - Granny Smith, McIntosh, Jonathan and my page will come up when someone searchs "Granny Smith apples" or "McIntosh apples" etc. or do the words have to be repeated in order. Obviously I will also be repeating these in the description and on the page I'm optimizing. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | crlana0