Best practices for ecommerce product categories?

[peekpeeka]

I'm trying to optimise my ecommerce site's category/navigation structure so that it is:

• Intuitive for human users
• Keyword optimised, and
• Minimises duplicate content penalties

Here is my dilemma. Let's say my site sells widgets. Some people search for widgets according to size (big widgets, medium widgets) while others search according to colour (green widgets, blue widgets). My keyword research suggests that I should target some keywords that relate to size, others that relate to colour, yet others relating to material, etc.

I figured that I'd use one of these taxonomies as a category system, then set the others as filter elements. So my site's main navigation would say "Big Widgets | Medium Widgets | Small Widgets". If you click on any of them, or if you click on the "Widgets" supercategory, you'd reach a filter function allowing you to see only green widgets, or only plastic widgets, etc.

So far so good - from a user perspective. The problem with this method is that Google isn't going to index my filter results. So someone Googling "green widgets" or "plastic widgets" is unlikely to find my site, even though I have plenty of green/plastic widgets that they could have filtered for.

My next thought was to add some of these filter urls to my main navigation so they will be crawled. My filter mod generates urls for each filter (eg mysite.com/category?filter=k39;w24). So now I have a flashier navigation menu where clicking "Widgets" will pop out a panel allowing you to browse by size or by colour. I don't know whether users will find this helpful or redundant/confusing, but at least Google can see my filter urls.

But I've run into two more problems. My filter results aren't really pages, so I can't set things like H1s, meta descriptions and so on. There's very little I can do to keyword optimise them. Further, I now have duplicate content, because the same widget can show up under multiple filter urls.

And so I'm stuck here. I've thought about creating custom pages for each target keyword and manually listing products that pertain to each keyword. This will allow me to optimise the pages, but it's a lot of ongoing work (I have to update them whenever I get new stock), and I'm not sure my visitors will appreciate this - I suspect they would rather just browse/filter/search through my site than have to click through pages of manual curated content.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or advice on figuring out my category and navigation system!

[peekpeeka]

Thanks for the advice - I'll get to work on this

[David-Kley]

I wouldn't worry about that as much as making it easy and simple for your customers to navigate the site. Think of how you would describe the page to someone who hasn't seen it. You would probably mention the additional colors and styles. Optimize the site naturally and complete all the required items (page titles, meta, on page), and make sure that Google knows about all the pages in webmaster tools.

[peekpeeka]

Thank for the fast reply, David! I've done some technical SEO work on my product pages, but I'm at a loss when it comes to keyword targeting.

I've read that I should only have one page targeting each particular keyword, otherwise I would be diluting my efforts. That's virtually impossible when I have 1000 items that are more or less variations of "large green widgets" (I sell fashion, so you see why I would have many products of the same nature). Sure I can add in brand, material, notable features, etc, but there are only so many variations of this keyword that actually gets searched. Hence I figured I would keyword optimise for categories rather than individual products.

[David-Kley]

Are your individual product pages optimized? Getting a user to visit your site doesn't mean they have to come in through the main category page. You could have your Widget category page optimized around the widget (or types, styles colors) or a more general page that is optimized around the widget product and what it is for.

By optimizing the widget product pages, you may have an additional page on which to rank. What I mean is, is you are on the widget page only for green widgets, then optimize only around that phrase. If you have multiple color options or filters from within  that page, state that "this widget is available in black, green, blue" etc. Also make sure to have relevant related items shown so that if a user does happen upon that page, they know you sell more than one type. Optimizing the product pages can also be done quickly, as this can be completed when you are entering in the item details. If you add a lot of products all the time, create a template that you can use to quickly add details to any product, and then edit the details that only pertain to that specific item.

In your sitemaps, you can choose what filters get included in your index. If you are worried about duplicates, don't include them, or block the generated URL's in robots.txt