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
-
Duplicate Content - Bulk analysis tool?
Hi I wondered if there's a tool to analyse duplicate content - within your own site or on external sites, but that you can upload the URL's you want to check in bulk? I used Copyscape a while ago, but don't remember this having a bulk feature? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | BeckyKey0 -
Add multiple H2 tags on a single page. Good or Bad?
Can we add Multipal H2 tags on a single page, Is good or Bad. Here is an example - http://packforcity.com/things-to-do-in-new-york-city/
On-Page Optimization | | ross254sidney0 -
Duplicate Content on our own website
Our website sells tickets for events. We also have an news articles section with information about events / artists / venues. From time to time we release a product page and a related news article on a separate page. Some of the content in the news article would be perfect for our product page. Essentially its our product page we want too rank. Would it harm our SEO if we had some of the same content on both of these pages?
On-Page Optimization | | Alexogilvie0 -
Content with changing URL and duplicate content
Hi everyone, I have a question regarding content (user reviews), that are changing URL all the time. We get a lot of reviews from users that have been dining at our partner restaurants, which get posted on our site under (new) “reviews”. My worry however is that the URL for these reviews is changing all the time. The reason for this is that they start on page 1, and then get pushed down to page 2, and so on when new reviews come in. http://www.r2n.dk/restaurant-anmeldelser I’m guessing that this could cause for serious indexing problems? I can see in google that some reviews are indexed multiple times with different URLs, and some are not indexed at all. We further more have the specific reviews under each restaurant profile. I’m not sure if this could be considered duplicate content? Maybe we should tell google not to index the “new reviews section” by using robots.txt. We don’t get much traffic on these URLs anyways, and all reviews are still under each restaurant-profile. Or maybe the canonical tag can be used? I look forward to your input. Cheers, Christian
On-Page Optimization | | Christian_T2 -
Good references/studies on mark up?
I'm looking to do some study in impact across the board on structured data and would like to know if anyone has any good studies on CTR, possibly rankings and overall performance. Any awesome links would be helpful 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | William.Lau0 -
Is This A Reason To Move Content?
Dear All, I am questioning my initial decisions when I planned a site due to reading lots of info on moz. Although what I have read has made me question what I have already done, I can't find anything that is specific to my exact case, so here goes. I recently built a shopping cart in OpenCart. I want the site to have lots of information on the products it sells. I have populated each category with at least 1000 words of content that is specific to the products in that category, also I have some information pages that have no products in them at all, just copy. So the shopping site actually has a few pages that look like a static website and a few that look like a normal shopping cart. My thought behind this was I wanted the pages with lots of info to rank and become authoritative, in some way elevating the whole site. I have recently put a blog on the site, and a combination of that, and reading Moz has lead me think that I should move all the content from the category pages to the blog, and deep link each blog post to it's relevant products and category. From what I have read it would be easier to get the blog ranking and acknowledged as an authority rather than 30 category pages. Also each 1500+ word category page will make at least 3-4 nice blog posts, and each post can be focused on a single keyword rather than a large category page that has maybe 3-4 keywords it's trying to rank for. Also the blog is much better optimised than a standard OC category page (even using extensions with them). The only negative I can see is moving the content, but the site is less that 2 months old, and the amount of link juice it has is negligible. Does google cut new sites a bit of slack in these situations of moving content around, or will I be seen as 'up to something' by google? I guess my question is, am I barking up the right tree? Or is the old adage 'a little information is dangerous' true in this case, and I just about to make a load of work for the sake of it with no real benefit. However, if I am to make such a dramatic change to the sites architecture I think the time is now, before things start gaining juice & rank. I hope I have explained my situation clearly and I thank anyone who can offer me any advice. Great forum, Thank you, Ian
On-Page Optimization | | cookie7770 -
Category page canonical tag
I know this question has been asked a few times on here but I'm looking for very specific advice. Currently when you go to a category, say http://www.bronterose.co.uk/range.html, a canonical tag is added to the head of the page. There are plenty of "variant" pages which carry the same tag, for example: /range.html?p=2
On-Page Optimization | | crichardson9
/range.html?p=3
/range.html?dir=asc&order=price
/range.html?dir=asc&limit=all&order=price Is it wise to push the "link juice" for each of these variant pages to the top level page? Or should each variant page have its own unique canonical tag? After reading many blog posts, guides and papers I'm truly confused! Any general guidance or recommendations would be much appreciated. Chris.1 -
Footer copyright year statement. good or bad
Hi, I see a lot of sites with a year copyright statment in the footer like Copyright 2011 - DomainName.com or Copyright 2002 - 2012 - Domainname.com since new year a lot of sites (founded before 2011) still have 2011 instead of 2012 in the footer. Do you think the date gives any signals to google? Should someone update the date or remove it completely? I would tend to remove it completely since the page date for google is submitted in the HTTP header. But maybe the info could be of any use for the user. Any best practices?
On-Page Optimization | | Autoschieber0