Schema markup concerning category pages on an ecommerce site
-
We are adding json+ld data to an ecommerce site and myself and one of the other people working on the site are having a minor disagreement on things. What it comes down to is how to mark up the category page. One of us says it needs to be marked up with as an Itempage, https://schema.org/ItemPage The other says it needs to be marked up as products, with multiple product instances in the schema, https://schema.org/Product
The main sticking point on the Itemlist is that Itemlist is a child of intangible, so there is a feeling that should be used for things like track listings or other arbitrary data.
-
Here's what I came up with: Validator Result.
Note that there's no guarantee this will pass muster with Google since they've said that the Product schema is for use on "a product page that describes a single product"
Here's an official response.
-
Are there any official decisions? I'm also considering adding schema markup to category pages. After running a competitor analysis I noticed this is something that I nor my competitor have in practice. So, I figured this will help my ranking for category pages. However, our product lists are frequently updated. So, would it be best if I went with https://schema.org/ItemPage, and if I went with https://schema.org/Product would I have to update the schema when there are changes in the product list.
-
Which did you end up going with?
-
The load time is not an issue really since it is just text data and only about 20 products. We have a nifty setup actually, we use Algolia to display the products on the category page, we are just making a double call to Algolia before the page render and taking their json array and modifying it into what is needed.
If you run this page through the Structured data testing tool, https://www.ebay.com/b/Fine-Jewelry/4196/bn_2408477 this is what one of us is proposing. See how the tool does not break each into a product node.
At the other time this is a page that the other is proposing, https://www.apple.com/shop/mac/mac-accessories It breaks the products into nodes. (albeit there are errors that can be fixed with the pricing)
I think this better illustrates the issue.
-
Logan when I grow up I want to be like you... jejeje is a joke but as, I see you are very active member of the community and always your answers are clear and concise.
Good for you
-
Hi there,
I haven't heard of using product markup on category pages until reading your question. It's a good idea and while researching I came across this other thread from a couple years ago: https://moz.com/community/q/google-rich-snippets-in-e-commerce-category-pages
My main concern is that most ecomm category pages have a lot of products showing by default, and if you've got a snippet of JSON+LD for each of those, you're going to hurt your page speeds. Just something to be mindful of and monitor if you do decide to go this route.
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
-
Category Page as Shopping Aggregator Page
Hi, I have been reviewing the info from Google on structured data for products and started to ponder.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alexcox6
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/products Here is the scenario.
You have a Category Page and it lists 8 products, each products shows an image, price and review rating. As the individual products pages are already marked up they display Rich Snippets in the serps.
I wonder how do we get the rich snippets for the category page. Now Google suggest a markup for shopping aggregator pages that lists a single product, along with information about different sellers offering that product but nothing for categories. My ponder is this, Can we use the shopping aggregator markup for category pages to achieve the coveted rich results (from and to price, average reviews)? Keen to hear from anyone who has had any thoughts on the matter or had already tried this.0 -
Making Filtered Search Results Pages Crawlable on an eCommerce Site
Hi Moz Community! Most of the category & sub-category pages on one of our client's ecommerce site are actually filtered internal search results pages. They can configure their CMS for these filtered cat/sub-cat pages to have unique meta titles & meta descriptions, but currently they can't apply custom H1s, URLs or breadcrumbs to filtered pages. We're debating whether 2 out of 5 areas for keyword optimization is enough for Google to crawl these pages and rank them for the keywords they are being optimized for, or if we really need three or more areas covered on these pages as well to make them truly crawlable (i.e. custom H1s, URLs and/or breadcrumbs)…what do you think? Thank you for your time & support, community!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | accpar0 -
Site Merge Strategy: Choosing Target Pages for 301 Redirects
I am going to be merging two sites. One is a niche site, and it is being merged with the main site. I am going to be doing 301 redirects to the main site. My question is, what is the best way of redirecting section/category pages in order to maximize SEO benefits. I will be redirecting product to product pages. The questions only concerns sections/categories. Option 1: Direct each section/category to the most closely matched category on the main site. For example, vintage-t-shirts would go to vintage-t-shirt on main site. Option 2: Point as many section/category pages to larger category on main site with selected filters. We have filtered navigation on our site. So if you wanted to see vintage t-shirts, you could go to the vintage t-shirt category, OR you could go to t-shirts and select "vintage" under style filter. In the example above, the vintage-t-shirt section from the niche site would point to t-shirts page with vintage filter selected (something like t-shirts/#/?_=1&filter.style=vintage). With option 2, I would be pointing more links to a main category page on the main site. I would likely have that page rank higher, because more links are pointing to it. I may have a better overall user experience, because if the customer decides to browse another style of t-shirt, they can simply unselect the filter and make other selections. Questions: Which of these options is better as far as: (1) SEO, (2) User experience If I go with option 2, the drawback is that the page titles will all be the same (i.e vintage-t-shirts pointing to the page with filter selected would have "t-shirts" as page title instead of a more targeted page with page title "vintage t-shirts." I believe a workaround would be to pull filter values from the URL and append them to the page title. That way page title for URL t-shirts/#/?=1&filter.style=vintage_ would be something like "vintage, t-shirts." Is this the appropriate way to deal with it? Any thoughts, suggestions, shared experiences would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Best way to implement canonical tags on an ecommerce site with many filter options?
What would be the best way to add canonical tags to an ecommerce site with many filter options, for example, http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com? Should I include a canonical tag for all filter options under a category even though the pages don't have the same content? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Should we move a strong category page, or the whole domain to new domain?
We are debating moving a strong category page (and subcategory, product pages) from our current older domain to a new domain vs just moving the whole domain. The older domain has DA 40+, and the category page has PA 40+. Anyone with experience on how much PR etc will get passed to a virgin domain if we just redirect olddomain/strongcategorypage/ to newdomain.com? If the answer is little to none, we might consider just moving the whole site since the other categories are not that strong anyway. We will use 301 approach either way. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Durand0 -
E-commerce site, one product multiple categories best practice
Hi there, We have an e-commerce shopping site with over 8000 products and over 100 categories. Some sub categories belong to multiple categories - for example, A Christmas trees can be under "Gardening > Plants > Trees" and under "Gifts > Holidays > Christmas > Trees" The product itself (example: Scandinavian Xmas Tree) can naturally belong to both these categories as well. Naturally these two (or more) categories have different breadcrumbs, different navigation bars, etc. From an SEO point of view, to avoid duplicate content issues, I see the following options: Use the same URL and change the content of the page (breadcrumbs and menus) based on the referral path. Kind of cloaking. Use the same URL and display only one "main" version of breadcrumbs and menus. Possibly add the other "not main" categories as links to the category / product page. Use a different URL based on where we came from and do nothing (will create essentially the same content on different urls except breadcrumbs and menus - there's a possibiliy to change the category text and page title as well) Use a different URL based on where we came from with different menus and breadcrumbs and use rel=canonical that points to the "main" category / product pages This is a very interesting issue and I would love to hear what you guys think as we are finalizing plans for a new website and would like to get the most out of it. Thank you all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | arikbar0 -
Splitting a Site into Two Sites for SEO Purposes
I have a client that owns a business that really could be easily divided into two separate business in terms of SEO. Right now his web site covers both divisions of his business. He gets about 5500 visitors a month. The majority go to one part of his business and around 600 each month go to the other. So about 11% I'm considering breaking off this 11% and putting it on an entirely different domain name. I think I could rank better for this 11%. The site would only be SEO'd for this particular division of the company. The keywords would not be in competition with each other. I would of course link the two web sites and watch that I don't run into any duplicate content issues. I worry about placing the redirects from the pages that I remove to the new pages. I know Google is not a fan of redirects. Then I also worry about the eventual drop in traffic to the main site now. How big of a factor is traffic in rankings? Other challenges include that the business services 4 major metropolitan areas. Would you do this? Have you done this? How did it work? Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MSWD0 -
Does a page on a site with high domain authority build page authority easier? i.e. less inbound links?
Is this also why people build backlinks to their BBB profiles, Yellowpages Profiles, etc. i.e. why do people build backlinks to other pages that link to them? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to just build that backlink directly to your target?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg0