Content on ecommerce categories - good or bad?
-
We have a case with a client where they previously had content on top of their most important ecommerce categories. The content was well integrated and should in my opinion enhance the category experience, but after doing some A/B testing they proved to only decrease the conversion rates when sending traffic directly to those categories.
Around that topic I have two questions:
- Is it a bad thing to put the content BELOW the categories?
- I need examples of categories where content and products are very well integrated and enhances the category experience - any tips?
-
Content that adds value to the user experience is never bad - more content, more reasons to rank, better information for the user to take action.
Ecommerce websites are more difficult to handle though - the goal is usually to convert to a sale and sometimes content can get in the way of that happening. If you've A/B tested and found that conversions are greater without it, then good for you! You've identified a barrier to your visitors and eliminated it for better conversions.
What needs to be weighed is the amount of conversions - does the content bring in more, new traffic and eventually converts? I.e. is the conversion volume greater with the content than without it. If no, then stick with the A/B test results.
Putting content down the page may help you rank, but is it helping your visitors? You don't want to shove content onto a page just because you think it belongs there - is it beneficial to the user? If no, can you put that content somewhere else where it is beneficial to the user?
Amazon is common SERP to beat, let's take a look at one of their category pages: http://www.amazon.com/Outlet/b/ref=sv_gb_3?ie=UTF8&node=517808
We see that they do include a small snippet of text at the top, to describe the category. Then they give the user what is expected, a lot of products to view; and at the bottom they have a longer category description (sometimes reviews and related category information). This is a common way to structure category pages. But, your market may be different so it may be worthwhile to brainstorm how your page structure would most benefit your users.
-
Nothing beats A/B testing. You may have a great idea but ultimately A/B testing will prove if that works for particular site and customer flow.
1. It is not bad at all. But it depends on what you call content. Some content can make wonders and some may not. Reviews or Testimonials would work best. Do not do just for pure SEO but add value to user experience. I would not add just a keyword heavy text.
2. See the Best buy example below. They have content which helps to choose right cellphone and support plans. Also there is list of Top sellers. It is both merchandising and content simultaneously as helps to show user what is more popular.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/electronics/mobile-cell-phones/abcat0800000.c?id=abcat0800000
3. Keep in mind mobile shoppers. If your content is text heavy can turn off some customer depending on how it is showing up on mobile device.
Here is another example from newegg.com. They have added customer reviews at bottom. which very clever. This can help you decide at the same time adds keywords for SEO.
http://www.newegg.com/Gaming-Desktop/PromotionStore/ID-2125620?name=Gaming-Desktop
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
-
Will I have duplicate content on my own website?
Hello Moz community, We are an agency providing services to various industries, and among them the hair salon industry. On our website, we have our different service pages in the main menu, as usual. These service pages are general information and apply to any industry.We also have a page on the website that is only intended for the hair salon industry. On this page, we would like to link new service pages: they will be the same services as our “general” services, but specialized for hair salons. My questions relate to duplicate content: Do we have to make the new individual service pages for hair salons with completely different text, even though it’s the same service, in order to avoid having duplicate content? Can we just change a few words from the “general service” page to specifically target hair salons, and somehow avoid Google seeing it as duplicate content? Reminder that these pages will be internal links inside of the hair salon industry page. Thank you in advance for your answers, Gaël
On-Page Optimization | | Gael_Regnault0 -
Why ranks my site so bad?
hello together, i think, that you read questions like this very often, but i hope someone has some good ideas for me. https://goo.gl/3iOmcqy with the keyword "sophos sg 210" we rank very bad. But i don't know why 😞 We have trust elements, a very good "avergage time on page" unique content... But i don't know, what can we make better 😞 Thx you so much
On-Page Optimization | | enbitcon0 -
Duplicate page titles and Content in Woocommerce
Hi Guys, I'm new to Moz and really liking it so far!
On-Page Optimization | | jeeyer
I run a eCommerce site on Wordpress + WooCommerce and ofcourse use Yoast for SEO optimalisation I've got a question about my first Crawl report which showed over 600 issues! 😐 I've read that this is something that happens more often (http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success). Most of them are categorized under:
1. Duplicate Page Titles or;
2. Duplicate Page Content. Duplicate Page Titles:
These are almost only: product category pages and product tags. Is this problem beeing solved by giving them the right SEO SERP? I see that a lot of categories don't have a proper SEO SERP set up in yoast! Do I need to add this to clear this issue, or do I need to change the actual Title? And how about the Product tags? Another point (bit more off-topic) I've read here: http://moz.com/community/q/yoast-seo-plugin-to-index-or-not-to-index-categories that it's advised to noindex/follow Categories and Tags but isn't that a wierd idea to do for a eCommerce site?! Duplicate Page Content:
Same goes here almost only Product Categories and product tags that are displayed as duplicate Page content! When I check the results I can click on a blue button for example "+ 17 duplicates" and that shows me (in this case 17 URLS) but they are not related to the fist in any way so not sure where to start here? Thanks for taking the time to help out!
Joost0 -
ECommerce Filtering Affect on SEO
I'm building an eCommerce website which has an advanced filter on the left hand side of the category pages. It allows users to tick boxes for colours, sizes, materials, and so on. When they've made their choices they submit (this will likely be an AJAX thing in a future release, but isn't at time of writing). The new filtered page has a new URL, which is made up of the IDs of the filter's they've ticked - it's a bit like /department/2/17-7-4/10/ My concern is that the filtered pages are, on the most part, going to be the same as the parent. Which may lead to duplicate content. My other concern is that these two URLs would lead to the exact same page (although the system would never generate the 'wrong' URL) /department/2/17-7-4/10/ /department/2/**10/**17-7-4/ But I can't think of a way of canonicalising that automatically. Tricky. So the meat of the question is this: should I worry about this causing issues with the SEO - or can I have trust in Google to work it out?
On-Page Optimization | | AndieF0 -
Index Page Content
Mozers, I am of the believe and as a person who puts the utmost emphasis on the index page of any website I am trying to rank, especially with a new domain ... insuring content is relevant, structured, optimized and we have some link juice flowing in. I find once we get the index page ranked, Google's little bots then start to index and rank accordingly the rest of the website ... and we start producing results. We also develop websites (dare I say its where we expertise in) and unexpectantly the client has asked us to carry out SEO work additionally to their web development. Problem lies here, their index page, has absolutely no written content at all, just one large image with a logo (Fashion Website) ...Which I identify as a huge issue as per my explanation is paragraphs one or two. I am sure withe the many more qualified SEO experts and gurus within the SEOmoz community, you have also come across this issue So a few questions, if you don't mind adding advice. 1 - Am I putting too much emphasize on content within the index page, in terms of indexing and actually ranking ...yes I appreciate that terms within the website will be ranked against other pages other than the index page, but will it harm us for having no content at all within the index page 2 - If so, and yes is the answer to above, how do we handle it, we have spoke with the client and he is pretty adamant that he want the index page as is, he has been through out the whole website building process. As suggested, any advice would be really appreciated, its a difficult market to rank within a it is, and i can only see this index page making the task a lot more difficult Cheers John
On-Page Optimization | | Johnny4B0 -
E-Commerce Site - Duplicate Content
We run an e-commerce site with about 250,000 SKUs. Certain items, such as a micro USB car charger, will be applicable to several different phones. Example: http://www.wirelessemporium.com/p-165787-samsung-galaxy-proclaim-illusion-sch-i110-heavy-duty-car-charger.asp http://www.wirelessemporium.com/p-165856-sony-xperia-ion-4g-lte-att-heavy-duty-car-charger.asp As one can imagine with so many items, unique content for each item description page can be a challenge. What would be the best way to address this on a large scale?
On-Page Optimization | | eugeneku0 -
Duplicate content with a trailing slash /
Hi, I 've pages like this: A) www.example.com/file/ B) www.example.com/file Just two questions: Does Google see this as duplicate content? Best to 301 redirect B to A? Many thanks Richard PS I read previous threads re the subject, it sounded like there was a bug in SEOMoz but I was not absolutely clear. Apologies if this is going over old ground.
On-Page Optimization | | Richard5550 -
Lists of Product Links: What is good, what is bad?
I am a web designer but a bit of an SEO noob (trying to get better at both). I am working with one particular client on a site I inherited with existing structure. This client has about 10 products on 2 pages. On every page there is a product list that is basically the same list sorted in 2 ways: 1st by product, 2nd by usage. These all link to internal anchors so this might be an example on www.site.com Cleaner X1 - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x1
On-Page Optimization | | mparry9
Cleaner X2 - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x2
Cleaner X3 - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x3
...
Cleaner For Brick - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x1
Cleaner For Marble - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x2
Cleaner For Stone - links to www.site.com/cleaners.php#x3 Obviously this adds about 20 links on every page on the site (including the actual pages these products are on). What are your thoughts on this? Good idea or bad to have on the site? Should I remove the redundant links on the actual page that product falls on...or is this bad and should be removed altogether?0
