How do I keep content-refreshment manageble for large site with facetted product categories?
-
Dear MOZ'ers,
i hope you can help me with the following issue:As a fashion e-commerce site we have a category structure by gender: , brand, product-category and colour. We sell over 250 brands in 50 categories. Off course, we don't sell products in every category for all brands but, in general, we sell 3 or 4 product categories for a brand. Next to this, we also have unique content for brand-product-gender (in fact this is the most common in our site-structure, since fashion is really a gender-based product.) We are planning to leave the site category as it is. we rank well for specific products like 'blue mens sneakers'
My question is about copy, or more specific: to keep content-refreshment manageble.
At the moment we have a small text at the top of the page and long form content on the bottom (very low below the fold, near the footer, only shown when the product-lister is)
Because of seasonality in fashion, category text are regularly updated. As you can imagine, this is quit some work and pretty expensive.
So now my question is: on which page level should you advice to have long form content, or distinctive content at all?
On the one hand I'm really sceptical about the value of the text at the bottom, on the other hand I am afraid that, should I decide to remove content from lower hierarchy pages, I might give the wrong signal to search engines: making my site from content rich content modest. -
In an ideal world, you would have unique content everywhere - category, subcategory, product detail page, etc. Of course, that requires a lot of effort to maintain. So I think the answer really depends on your goals and your stats.
I would personally check my analytics to find patterns. First, I'd determine what level most organic traffic ends up landing on. Do they all land on your homepage? Do most of them end up on product detail pages because your long tail is better optimized? Are there higher level categories that seem to do the best? This will give you an idea of what is currently working for you as far as SEO, so you can begin to answer questions like, does the long form content in the footer help drive organic traffic at all for your particular website?
Next, I would check analytics to find out: only for organic traffic, what content levels did people see before they bought a product? I would assume that in most cases they need to hit the individual product detail page to add to cart, since they must select a size etc. - but depending on your site, maybe lots of people do a Quick View and add to cart from a modal, etc. Find out what your organic visitors are looking at to figure out which level - category, subcategory, sub-sub-category, product detail, etc. - the largest portion of organic visitors who actually bought something visited.
Finally, I would check analytics to find out only for non-organic traffic, what content levels did people see before they bought a product? Perhaps you're running some successful marketing campaigns, and these folks land straight on a particular sweet spot that organic folks aren't finding, and because the marketed-to visitors see exactly the information they need, they're buying more. This will also be helpful in determining what levels of pages to optimize.
Once you've determined what levels are converting best, set those as your priorities for unique content and driving traffic.
Unfortunately, e-commerce is a tough market to be in as far as SEO and content. There are so many distributors out there that to really compete organically you need an edge. The good news is, if you're doing the work to differentiate yourself enough to earn better organic rankings and gain visitors, you should also reap the benefits of the visitors themselves having a better user experience and becoming more likely to actually convert.
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
-
Reducing number of site pages?
Hi, I am looking through my site structure and I have a lot of pages left over from the days of article keywords. Probably 7 or 8 years ago, someone sold my husband on article key word pages. I have slowly gotten rid of a lot of them as they have fallen out out of the ranks. I would like to get rid of the rest, probably 5 or 6 pages. Will it hurt my rankings to delete pages and redirect them? My customers really like the simplicity of our site and I want to keep it that way, plus clean up flags that Moz is telling me is a problem. I think its easier to keep less pages top notch than have to worry with a lot of them. Especially since my customers aren't viewing them. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | CalicoKitty20000 -
With generic product like screws, for example what is best practice when writing descriptions? It's tough writing unique content for something when the only difference is lengths
With generic product like screws, for example what is best practice when writing descriptions? It's tough writing unique content for something when the only difference is lengths
On-Page Optimization | | Jacksons_Fencing1 -
Responsive site.com vs m.site.com
Hi All, My client's website have two urls like: site.com/a.html and **m.site.com/a.html. ** Will it hurt google rankings for this website because there are version of a website? Please help!
On-Page Optimization | | binhlai1 -
Some Content The Same
Hello. I am about to publish some landing pages that target different industries that we are trying to market to. X for Accountants
On-Page Optimization | | smithandco
X for Financial Advisors
X for Fitness Trainers
X for X While a good portion of the content is unique on each page "the benefits of using X for accountants" some of the content on the page is duplicate which explains more about how our software works (the features), this will be the same content on every page. Is this considered duplicate content? What should I be aware of in term of Google rankings and penalties? Thanks,
David0 -
Category Descriptions if Category Pages are Noindexed?
I have noindexed my category pages. Do I still need to write a description for my categories? I am using the plugin SEO Content Control to see what I can spiff up but I don't want to waste my time. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger0 -
Duplicate Content
Part of a site I am working on, features many different bags in all thicknesses colors and sizes. I'm getting an error when some pages have different content like different thicknesses. The only differences between the pages are a single digit - but in trash bags that makes it a whole different product! I can't do a canonical because it's not the same. For example: http://www.plasticplace.net/index.php?file=productdetail&iprod_id=274 and http://www.plasticplace.net/index.php?file=productdetail&iprod_id=268 Any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | EcomLkwd0 -
Is duplicate content harmful? Example from on my site
I'm not talking about content copied from another site but content unique to a site being used on several pages. I have a delivery tab that has precisely the same content as another product page. This content is on four product pages and the dedicated delivery page. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Brocberry0 -
Duplicate Content - Site Wide or Internet Wide?
Hello... I am creating a new website and i was wondering how you guys would define duplicate content? If my new site had the same page titles and descriptions as my existing site, would that be duplicate content? Or does duplicate content mean same titles and descriptions in the same site? I'm wondering if i can upload the same database (with page titles and descriptions and alt tags) to my new site or if that would be looked at as duplicate... Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Prime850