Where to Put Content For Product Pages - How To Structure Website?

[hfranz]

Currently we have 300+ products. We do not have a CMS or Ecommerce site at the time being for certain reasons. Currently our site is set up with content on almost every single page. The main catagory page, explains everything on the main page, then our products page has a lot of text too. But right now, it seems as if our main pages are only ranking.

In the near future I will be using a cms and purchasing a template. I noticed most Ecommerce style websites have just the product with the name and price, then when they click on the product it brings you to that page with a brief product description and some photos.

My question is, does each page need content? Or can just the product page itself have content?

For example, say we have a link to SHOES. Then the shoes page displays dress, casual and athletic. Then the athletic page brings you to a page with, running, tennis, cross training shoes, and so forth. Is it best to write content on this main catagory page? If so, how much?

Or should we focus on putting content on the actual page of the individual product? Along with pictures and specifications?

I know Content is Key and we are doing pretty well at that, however, I am starting to wondering if we have to much content or too similar content.

What is the best structure to try and recieve GREAT organic rankings?

[APICDA]

I am very much a novice and have had some success with cms systems.  I have found they offer a variety of options and are very intuitive.  Some even talk about trade offs regarding different styles and formatting issues.  There are a lot of great cms platforms out there for you to use, I am sure you will find one which will work great for you.   Dave

[RyanKent]

Cody, it was my understanding it does not matter how many directories deep a page is located, but instead how well it is linked to.

Using your first example (example.com/products/sports/tennis/tennisracket.html), if that page was linked to from the home page, it can perform very well on SERP. It would beat the second example if that was not linked to from the home page.

If a user actually had to click through all those links, then yes it would be inconvenient for the user and be buried content which would not be crawled as often.

[blu42media]

You are right about the ecommerce layouts... typically product organization is by category then you can click in deeper for the product detail.  Categories are commonly nested as well... like your Shoes category branching to dress, casual, and athletic.

Most decent ecommerce platforms will allow a full description on the product detail page and a short description for display on the category page.  Furthermore, category pages themselves will often have a description/content field of some sort.  Obviously, you want to avoid duplicate content issues, but you can use the combination of the category descriptions and product short descriptions on your list pages for ranking on the category.  Then, you can use your product pages to rank as well.  Again, you can keep the content different between the short and long product descriptions.

I've seen sites handle the category pages without much content; however I don't think you can go wrong with the additionally ranked pages if you set them up correctly.

Also, check to see if you can get an ecommerce template that supports related products - this will help with your internal linking.  You can also check out up-sell/cross-sell areas of the product page as well.

Do you have a link we could check out for content suggestions?  That may give a better idea of why the product pages aren't ranking well for you.

John

[CodyWheeler]

Good decision on the CMS. You'll love it. Be sure to use it to give your product pages relevant URLs, Titles, and other good on-page SEO attributes. This will very much increase their likelihood of getting picked up. Also, if it has canonicalization features built in, these are often good for e-commerce sites. You'll have a lot of dynamically generated duplicate content across categories.

My advice to you would be to build your site to give your user's the best possible experience first, then worry about search engine rankings second.

Think to yourself - "If I were a user on this site, would additional content on what this page is about be helpful on this page?" If Yes, go ahead and do it. If No, you might want to leave it out.

If it were me, I don't know how much useful content you can put on a category page alone. It might even be distracting. At this point your goal is to get your users to clickthrough to the next step in the buying process. This usually doesn't mean reading something. It usually means clicking a picture or link, right? I might just leave that one alone, but that's totally your call. It depends on the situation.

Keep in mind that the further down in your hierarchy you put your product pages the lesser their importance is in the eyes of Google.

For example, if I have a tennis racket I am selling, the second of the examples below is going to appear more important, because it is closer to my root domain. The flatter you can make your site architecture while still providing a good user experience, the better results you are likely to see in the search engines.

example.com/products/sports/tennis/tennisracket.html

vs.

example.com/tennis/tennisracket.html

Hope this helps get your wheels turning.