What Makes Good Content for Category Pages

[BobGW]

Hello,

We're putting (roughly, depending on the category) 500 words under the products or categories under category pages.

We're having a writer do these who has to learn the products from scratch. With over 100 categories, it's not possible for the client to write 500 words for each one.

We're wondering,

1. What should go into a category description?

2. How do you prep a writer to write these, and is it possible to do so and get good content?

I'm afraid that we're writing just words for long tails, and I know on the product pages, home page, and articles that it has to be the best content, probably written by the client himself if he is knowledgable enough.

Open to your suggestions on what should be in these, how long they should be, and who should write them.

[TakeshiYoung]

I meant writing resources. Whoever's writing the content would do the content for the category pages as well. What I was saying is that if you don't have enough writing resources, you can also use partially templatized content.

[BobGW]

"If you really can't afford the resources for unique content"

What kind of resources? Who writes this quality content?

[TakeshiYoung]

On the sites I manage, I've done about 100-150 words per category page, with ~50 word snippets for each of the items in the category, and they've ranked well. If you really can't afford the resources for unique content, templatized content is better than nothing: "Welcome to the [blank] category where you can find products such as [blank] [blank] [blank] from merchants such as [blank]"