Category Page Content
-
Hey Mozzers,
I've recently been doing a content audit on the category and sub-category pages on our site. The old pages had the following "profile"
Above The Fold
Page Heading
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / Products
600 words+ of content duplicated from articles, sub categories and productsMy criticisms of the page were
1. No content (text) above the fold
2. Page content was mostly duplicated content
3. No keyword structure, many pages competed for the same keywords and often unwanted pages outranked the desired page for the keyword.I cleaned this up to the following structure
Above The Fold
H1 Page Heading 80-200 Word of Content (Including a link to supporting article)
H2 Page Heading (Expansion or variance of the H1 making sure relevant) 80-200 150 Words of Content
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / ProductsThe new pages are now all unique content, targeted towards 1-2 themed keywords. I have a few worries I was hoping you could address.
1. The new pages are only 180-300 words of text, simply because that is all that is needed to describe that category and provide some supporting information. the pages previously contained 600 words. Should I be looking to get more content on these pages?
2. If i do need more content, It wont fit "above the fold" without pushing the products and sub categories below the fold, which isn't ideal. Should I be putting it there anyway or should I insert additional text below the products and below the fold or would this just be a waste.
3. Keyword Structure. I have designed each page to target a selction of keywords, for example.
a) The main widget pages targets all general "widget" terms and provides supporting infromation
b) The sub-category blue widget page targets anything related and terms such as "Navy Widgets" because navy widgets are a type of blue widget etc"
Is this keyword structure over-optimised or exactly what I should be doing. I dont want to spread content to thin by being over selective in my categoriesAny other critisms or comment welcome
-
Thank you, your clarification backed up my theory for most things. The changes I am making also impact design to hopefully increase conversion and userbility at the same time so I think ive got things right.
Cheers for your time.
-
The one overall suggestion is to test your new layout for conversion. Content is good, but is not 100% needed in the amount you have on what seems to be ecommerce category pages. Focus on the conversion and having some content.
1. The new pages are only 180-300 words of text, simply because that is all that is needed to describe that category and provide some supporting information. the pages previously contained 600 words. Should I be looking to get more content on these pages?
No, I've seen categories with less content rank very well. Remember, names of products and other supporting text on the page is content as well. Don't worry about the length.
2. If i do need more content, It wont fit "above the fold" without pushing the products and sub categories below the fold, which isn't ideal. Should I be putting it there anyway or should I insert additional text below the products and below the fold or would this just be a waste.
Nope. Not unless the user needs it.
3. Keyword Structure. I have designed each page to target a selection of keywords, for example.
**a) The main widget pages targets all general "widget" terms and provides supporting **information
b) The sub-category blue widget page targets anything related and terms such as "Navy Widgets" because navy widgets are a type of blue widget etc"
Is this keyword structure over-optimised or exactly what I should be doing. I don't want to spread content to thin by being over selective in my categoriesWhat you are doing sounds reasonable in theory. Stick with that and keep in mind that you only need to worry about specific terms like navy widgets if there is more than one navy widget and there is a high volume of demand for that. There is a lot that goes into this, but try to keep the category page focused to 1-2 terms.
-
Its an eCommerce platform the blog side is a feature where introducing separately so no worries on that front. These will only be one copy of these category pages but they are essential to be indexed and they generate our revenue.
-
Most blog platforms offer the ability to not index various conglomeration pages (category, author etc.) I would recommend using those options so only the actual article page gets indexed.
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
-
Building a new page: What on-page SEO would you build in?
Hi all, Building a new page for a fairly competitive keyword. Need to make sure the on-page SEO is pretty top notch, because link building (including internal links) will be difficult. I've optimised the meta description, the alt tags and image names, and included the keyword in the Title Tags. Not a great deal I can do with regards to optimising for mobile or considering migrating to the AMP project because this is handled externally. What else would you suggest? Cheers in advance, Rhys
On-Page Optimization | | SwanseaMedicine1 -
Can you canonical from one domain page to a different domain page
We are a boating site and have our main site with all it's products. We have an engine section within our main site. But we also have an outside domain, specific to a certain manufacturer of engines. So we want our customers to still find the engine information for this manufacturer within our main site, as well as find the manufacturer targeted engine site in the SERPS. My question is this: Can I canonical those pages within our main site to pages on the outside domain? Or does are canonicals to be used only within the same domain? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | tdawson090 -
Which page to rank for a Keyword? Home Page or Deep Page?
So, we have a situation where there is one particular keyword we want to rank for. We have been up and down over the years, at our best probably position 4-5, and now at 20ish. Thats for our home page of course, which the majority of our linking is probably pointing at. We also have a sub page which is optimised for that particular service. The term is "web design brisbane".
On-Page Optimization | | MauriceKintek
So as you can imagine, Web Design is in itself a service and we offer others. Should we optimise our home page for it and remove the sub page?
Keep the sub page because its one our services and optimise both?
Do some kind of canonical thing?
Change our interlinking? All our competitors home pages seem to be the ones that rank, and it feels and looks better in results if its the home page, but if switching up to our sub page is better im all ears. Also if our sub page is somehow hurting or leaking SEO from the home page, id like to know as well. Would prefer to not have to provide a link, due to competition but if someone wants to know we can always PM.0 -
Old landing page modifications - should I change the content?
One of our most popular landing page is starting to be a little bit out dated, should I keep the old content and update with newer text or is it safe to completely replace the old content with the new content without losing our organic traffic on this page?
On-Page Optimization | | rusted880 -
On-page SEO reviews
Hi everyone 🙂 I was hoping someone could point me in a direction on where I could get my website's on-page SEO a review with recommendations. Title tags, meta description, code, H1s, content and so on... I know you can find most of what I'm asking online, but I would like a professional with a new set of eyes to help out. Thanks in advance for your time in helping!
On-Page Optimization | | AutoGlassRescue0 -
301 redirects from several sub-pages to one sub-page
Hi! I have 14 sub-pages i deleted earlier today. But ofcourse Google can still find them, and gives everyone that gives them a go a 404 error. I have come to the understading that this wil hurt the rest of my site, at least as long as Google have them indexed. These sub-pages lies in 3 different folders, and i want to redirect them to a sub-page in a folder number 4. I have already an htaccess file, but i just simply cant get it to work! It is the same file as i use for redirecting trafic from mydomain.no to www.mydomain.no, and i have tried every kind of variation i can think of with the sub-pages. Has anyone perhaps had the same problem before, or for any other reason has the solution, and can help me with how to compose the htaccess file? 🙂 You have to excuse me if i'm using the wrong terms, missing something i should have seen under water while wearing a blindfold, or i am misspelling anything. I am neither very experienced with anything surrounding seo or anything else that has with internet to do, nor am i from an englishspeaking country. Hope someone here can light up my path 🙂 Thats at least something you can say in norwegian...
On-Page Optimization | | MarieA1 -
User experience regarding dulpicate content and managing this content with google.
Hi long title i know! We are moving on to magento and have chosen to allocate a specific colour to each category using corresponding tabbed navigation for user experience.All products within each of the coloured tabs then inherit the repective colour, giving the products a category identiy within the store. This layout has had a positive feedback from our "testers" As a lot of our products are seasonal and can be represented in different categories there is a significant amount of duplicate content. ATM i see our options as being: Alter the site structure so that the category is not shown in the url, therefore eliminating our duplicate products. The downside of this is that the colour co-ordination of the categories would not work at product level as its the category path that assigns the colour. create canonical links for every duplicate, can this be damaging? keep the duplicates and do nothing let google decide the most important version of a product. any guidance would be appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0
