Ecommerce, Adding Content To Categories/Product Pages
-
In an eCommerce store, when is it appropriate to add quality category pages content and when is it more appropriate to add content to the actual product pages instead?
-
Yeah adding more information that's specific to a particular product is good for capturing long tail SEO traffic and they rank much quicker as well relative to competitive terms
-
Some good information here. I think both product and category content are important in this niche. I think James' category page comment applies to me too.
Could you say something about capturing long tails? I thought that was a main reason to add content to the category and product pages
-
I think James makes a good point. Leveraging a higher-authority category page may be way easier and quicker than trying to do the same on less-authoritative product pages.
-
Hi Bob,
I think quality content that contributes to the momentum and goals of your sales funnel is appropriate in both places and depends on the category and the product.
For example, We have category pages that are based around types of products, like "wireless microphones" and we also have categories that are built around specific brands, i.e. "Sennheiser." While the content on the wireless microphones page might center more on helping someone choose a microphone, the Sennheiser brand category page is going to contain information that helps consumers understand what sets Sennheiser apart from other brands.
Of course, once a visitor has drilled down to a specific Sennheiser wireless microphone (for example), the content on that page, then, will be much more specific.
I really think there's never a bad place to put great content...maybe just some places are more appropriate for certain types of content than others. I will say this, I firmly believe that the higher price the item, the more high-quality content end users expect before they'll be moved to buy.
That's probably not as definitive an answer as you were looking for, but it's just my take (since I too work almost exclusively in the e-commerce realm).
Cheers!
Dana
-
Good question, I think it varies based on the product. For feature rich products it makes sense to develop the product pages completely so the user has all the information they need to make a purchase decision. There's no point in ranking a category page if your product pages aren't ready to drive a sale.
On the other hand for other products like fashion I think product content is much less important. In this space I think people tend to "browse" more and enjoy more of an editorial experience. In this case I think incorporating editorial content at the category level is likely to differentiate your category page and if done right can actually drive incoming links.
Another big factor is the Return on Effort, it can be substantially quicker to add meaningful content to a category page versus a ton of product pages.
Just my $.02
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
-
Creating Content for over 50,000 Pages
Hi, Our site is a football (soccer) statistics sites. We gather information on upcoming games and post results of past games. At the moment we have over 50,000 pages of results each having in-game data displayed. The main problem I have is none of these match data pages has any text.Mostly tables of stats. Could anyone suggest a way of creating unique content for these pages? If I created some generic a paragraphic of text that changed based on stats and figures would this be seen as duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | jtatsubana0 -
My home page URL http://seadwellers.com/ redirects to http://www.seadwellers.com/. Is this a problem?
"The URL http://seadwellers.com/ redirects to http://www.seadwellers.com/. Do you want to crawl http://www.seadwellers.com/ instead?" I was given this when I tried to crawl my home page using MOZ software. I was not aware of this, do not know if it could be a problem concerning any aspect of SEO, etc? :
On-Page Optimization | | sdwellers0 -
Duplicate Content - Category Pages 2+
I have my Wordpress SEO settings to deindex past page 1 of each category. However, Google Webmasters is selling me I have 210 pages with duplicate title tags. My site tanked last weekend and I don't know if it was Google Panda or what. I have been getting some fantastic backlinks and it seems like they just decided to disregard all of them as I am completely off the SERPs. Is this duplicate content a contributing factor? How can I get google to deindex my category pages past page 1? (I do need the first page to index as that does bring me organic traffic) Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | 2bloggers0 -
Should Ltd be added to business names in page titles or not?
For example if a page title contained the company name is it advisable to have the page title as: Blue Cups | Company Name Ltd or Blue Cups | Company Name We have a feeling that searchers are not likely add the Ltd whilst performing searches.
On-Page Optimization | | Liveleigh0 -
Duplicate Page Content Should we 301 - Best Practices?
What would be the best way to avoid a Duplicate Page Content for these type of pages. Our website generates user friendly urls, for each page..
On-Page Optimization | | 365ToursSafaris
So it is the same exact page, just both versions of the url work.. Example: http://www.safari365.com/about-africa/wildebeest-migration http://www.safari365.com/wildebeest-migration I don't think adding code to the page will work because its the same page for the incorrect and correct versions of the page. I don't think i can use the URL parameter setting because the version with /about-africa/ is the correct (correct as it it follows the site navigation) I was thinking of using the htaccess to redirect to the correct version.. Will that work ? and does it follow best Practices ? any other suggestions that would work better ?0 -
View all Page for Product Overview Pages
Hi everybody! We have an ecommerce site with product overview pages, where sometimes there are hundreds of products listed. Usually, we just display 30 and have a button where users can click to see 30 more - or all products listed at once. This is the overview page (as indexed in google): http://www.geschenkidee.ch/aussergewoehnliches.html
On-Page Optimization | | zeepartner
And this is the view-all page: http://www.geschenkidee.ch/aussergewoehnliches.html#all What should I do here? The product overview page will hardly generate more traffic by listing all products (because the overview page will rank for generic keywords, while the product keyword searches will be referred to the specific product pages themselves). I was originally thinking of using rel=canonical pointing to the view-all page. But this would just lead to longer load time. Should we just leave those overview pages or is there a best practice for how to deal with such pages? Thanks for your thoughts on this!0 -
Page Analysis on our asp.net site is showing the following for HTML Text - //
paintball-online.com This is consistent on every page, despite these pages having text. I assume the SEOMoz tool is working just fine and we have a coding issue that may be hindering our SEO efforts. Any ideas/suggestions? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Istoresinc0 -
How could I avoid the "Duplicate Page Content" issue on the search result pages of a webshop site?
My webshop site was just crawled by Roger, and it found 683 "Duplicate Page Content" issues. Most of them are result pages of different product searches, that are not really identical, but very similar to each other. Do I have to worry about this? If yes, how could I make the search result pages different? IS there any solution for this? Thanks: Zoltan
On-Page Optimization | | csajbokz0