Duplicate block of text on category listings

[Peter264]

Fellows,

We are deciding whether we should include our category description on all pages of the category listing - for example; page 1, page 2, page 3...

The category description is currently a few paragraphs of text that sits on page 1 of the category only at present.  It also includes an image (linked to a large version of it) with appropriate ALT text.

Would we benefit from including this introductory text on the rest of the pages in the category?  Or should we leave it on the first page only?  Would it flag up duplicate signals?

Ideas please!

Thanks.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

It's all about the content at the end of the day. The more content you can get out there for the products, the better off you will be. Just be careful not to spin content. Keep it as clean as possible

[Peter264]

One of the category has over 65 pages.  You're suggesting writing something unique for each page?  It can be done...

[Andy.Drinkwater]

No need to robots out any pages because this is a wasted opportunity to get more content in there. No, you shouldn't have the same content on multiple pages, but you can use these to have something fresh and unique relating to the main product.

How many pages are you talking about in total?

[Theo-NL]

I would suggest to noindex,follow all the pages beyond page 1. This way the paginated pages will not show up as individual results in Google, but still pass on link juice to the items themselves.

This way the only thing you'd have to worry about is whether putting that category description up is helpful on these pages for your visitors, rather than have to worry about the search engines as well (the page won't be indexed anyway).