Content on product category pages - does Google care?
-
Hi All,
I've always been unsure about the importance of content on product category pages. Nobody reads it. If you search for "living room chairs", you're just going to want to see a big list of living room chairs - not read content about living room chairs, how to choose one, etc. On virtually any ecommerce site, category pages have a paragraph or two of total bla-bla. Does this have any impact on search rankings?
More specifically, will Googlebot see content on how to choose a living room chair and say "Yes! This is really helpful content"? Or, will it realize that the searcher intent on this keyword is really just to see a list of chairs, and ignore this content - or at least downplay its importance?
WDTY?
-
A lot of e-commerce solutions don't really give you much scope (out of the box) to add a great deal of text content to the product category pages but I can assure you, it's well worth the effort to do so as that copy can make all the difference to your rankings. A fair percentage of your traffic is likely to arrive from top/mid-funnel searches such as 'dining room chairs', for example, and having a paragraph of text, which gives a quick overview of the product range, gives you an opportunity to include the keyword in copy AND provide further information about the products and service you offer in relation to this product, should they require it.
After all, we can skim/skip the copy if it's present and start viewing the products themselves, but give people the choice.
Personally, I'd want to show at least some introductory copy on a category page as I've seen the benefits it can deliver (and the detriment of not having any present on the page).
If you are able to deliver your potential customers directly to a page which shows off a representative cross-section of products which match their search then you stand a chance of converting them into actual customers. Yes, you could have a separate landing page for 'living room chairs' and then provide a link to the product category but that's effort and gives the visitor another opportunity to go elsewhere. Show them what they want as quickly as possible and the best way I've found to do that (when dealing with product categories similar to this) is with additional copy around the product content.
-
Nobody reads it.
How do you know this?
If you search for "living room chairs", you're just going to want to see a big list of living room chairs - not read content about living room chairs, how to choose one, etc
I would never assume to know what my visitors want. I am a 70-year-old-introverted white guy who has lived in rural areas all of my life and... I could go on, but my point is that I am not in any position to judge what my visitors want and don't want because they are very different from me and there are so many of them.
will Googlebot see content on how to choose a living room chair and say "Yes! This is really helpful content"?
This could be an entirely separate article on a separate page of the website.
Or, this content could be at the bottom of a category page but offered to the visitor near the top. Sometimes people don't think about how many different options there are and are befuddled when they land on a page with more options than they were prepared to consider.
You are placing your bet on just tossing up a bunch of chair images because that is easy. Yes?
But you are here asking the question "is that what Google wants me to do".
I'd say you can
A) write this stuff on a separate page
B) write this stuff on the bottom of your category page,
C) you can do both with unique content.
I am saying you should do both B and C (and do a damn good job on the work), then publish and see what happens. You might be surprised.
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
-
Can I replace categories with a static page
Hello there. I want to replace all of WordPress categories with static pages so that users see a well designed and constructed presentation of all the articles within each topic instead of just a long list of excerpts. I've already done this with 2 categories and although it is hard work I can't help feeling it is a much better thing for my users. However, I'm concerned that I am embarking on this project without being totally sure that it makes sense from an Seo point of view, or whether there are any downsides I haven't thought of? My idea is that the WordPress categories are set to noindex and nofollow. Search engines should find all of my static category pages and all of the content within each category will be spidered from there instead. Just to be sure you know what I mean here is a link to a normal category - https://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/category/consumer/ and here is my static page replacement for it - https://www.whitegoodshelp.co.uk/consumer-rights-appliances/ Both pages contain links to all articles within the category except the one generated by WordPress is just a long paginated list, and my replacement is a proper category page, which is hopefully far more useful . Can someone please confirm that there are no downsides to this strategy? 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | Snowdune1 -
Duplicate content? - Ecommerce reviews loading the same products on every page
Hello there! I use a plugin on my ecom site that shows customer reviews - not product reviews but general shopping experience reviews. The plugin also loads links and short descriptions of products those customers bought. Having installed it site-wide, on every page there are short descriptions of the same products. Of course, as people leave new reviews the content changes (but it doesn't happen very often). So the question is: Is having links and short descriptions of the same products on every page harmful for SEO in this case? I'd be grateful for any insight into this matter.
On-Page Optimization | | thpchlk0 -
Duplicate content with tagging and categories
Hello, Moz is showing that a site has duplicate content - which appears to be because of tags and categories. It is a relatively new site, with only a few blog publications so far. This means that the same articles are displayed under a number of different tags and categories... Is this something I should worry about, or just wait until I have more content? The 'tag' and 'category' pages are not really pages I would expect or aim for anyone to find in google results anyway. Would be glad to here any advice / opinions on this Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia1 -
Best category page structure on MY ecommerce site? Advice please
Hi all, I run the site: http://goo.gl/YATL2i I have had this category set up like this for a while now - but wonder if its confusing to google, and potentially my users... let me start by saying my products are available in 3 formats (soon to be 4), so for example i have 3 pages for cctv systems: Analogue / SD cctv systems: http://goo.gl/SPkdYW hd sdi systems: http://goo.gl/uksRAD ip systems: http://goo.gl/UMHBd0 each of the above sub categories then have a further sub category of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 or 16 camera kit page... I am trying to figure out if it would be better to just have one "cctv systems" page, and use filters in the left menu so users can filter by format, number of cameras etc etc... but these filters would not navigate to other pages but simply limit the view on the one "cctv systems" page. If you think 1 page with filters is best - can you then advise what should i do with all the sub category pages i no longer need? 301 rediret to the main cctv systems page? Basically i currently have my site set up so cctv products are categorised by the format i,e SD, HD-SDI or IP... Which i thought was very important the user doesnt mix formats as it can not work - but am thinking maybe i should catorgorize by type i.e CCTV Camera, CCTV Recorders or CCTV Systems, and then use filters to drill further down in the categories. Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated. thanks
On-Page Optimization | | isntworkdull0 -
Will google regards www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 as the duplicate content?
Our site has some affiliates, and the affiliate id is the suffix following with the url "?xxxxxx". I can see Google Analytics regards www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 as the different page, but in fact they are exactly the same, the version www.example.com?331457 is the visit from our affiliate site. And yesterday I start up my Moz Pro membership, and in the crawl issues I see SEOMoz thinks www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 are duplicate content. Is this really an issue? Will the search engine thinks these two pages are duplicate content?? Thanks you guys My first question here, not too dumb I hope. -----------------Update---------------------- I should explain how our affiliates work. We are an eBook related software company, and anyone can apply an affiliate account on the transaction platform "RegNow" even without our permission because we have opened the affiliate door. When a visitor come to our order page from an affiliate site, the url will add the affiliate ID suffix "?xxxxxx", and it's combined in cookies. After the deal is done, the affiliate gets his commission. So no matter how I customize the url with URL Builder, there must be the suffix "?xxxxxx". It's the ID of our affiliate, or they will get nothing. So the key point is, will the suffix "?331457" makes Google think www.example.com and www.example.com?331457 are different pages and duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | JonnyGreenwood0 -
Does class and id names considered as text content by google
Does google and other search engines considers the class and id names as part of text content. Will it be included in the keyword density and treated as a content. For Example: <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="http://xyz.com" title="xyz" class="topmargin_rightside_middlenavigation_home"></a> Will google considers the words "topmargin rightside middlenavigation home" as part of the text. Also If i am supposed to use this class as many times on a page, will the keyword density affects.
On-Page Optimization | | Sulekha0 -
My website is saying I have duplicate page content and page title. How do I fix it?
Hi, I created a website on webstarts.com. After I launched it then ran a scan through SEO it says I have duplicate page content and page title. The 2 pages it is reading are technically the same page. www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com and www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com/index . I am unsure how to get rid of on of these as it keeps saying this is an error in the SEO scan. Could someone please advise me of what to do from here. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | bcarp880 -
Woah, my A-grade optimized pages that were on the first page have all vanished outside the top 50 in Google... is this Panda?
Yep as mentioned, I had some pages hit the top ten pretty quickly after ensuring they were A-grade for pretty uncompetitive keywords however, today, all bar 2 have just vanished from the top 50! All were ranking in Google.co.uk and I know we were predicting the Panda update to hit soon but WOW! My client is understandably a little upset, what on earch do I tell him and what should I do about it? Cheers! jT
On-Page Optimization | | Switch_Digital0