How does product category description affect SEO?
-
Hi - we are a website that sells tours. We have category pages that list the tours in that category (by city, by length of time, theme, etc). At the top of each category page, before the buttons linking to the tours, there is a category description. It is a pretty long paragraph. We are redesigning the website and think it would look nicer to show 2-3 lines of text and then have a down arrow and 'read' more so people can click and it would expand to show the full category description if they want to read it and it won't take up so much room that way. My question is - will this affect SEA at all? Or because the text is still there, just hidden, it won't do anything? Our site ranks very high in organic searches on google and we do not want to do anything that will hurt SEO. thanks.
-
Hi Shirapn
I think it is perfectly acceptable to use an accordion to 'read more'. However, according to Rand Fishkin, who did a study on this a couple of years back, the page with the hidden text will not rank as highly as it did with the page visible. They will not treat the hidden text with the same weight as it would if it were visible.
https://moz.com/blog/google-css-javascript-hidden-text
It is far better to have the text visible. One of the ways around this would be to have a couple of lines at the top of the page and then add the rest of the text under the category content.
I hope that helps - watch the above video - it's very clear.
Nigel
-
You can remove category description from top and keep in bottom due to Your mobile version doesn't have category description on both position. According first mobile indexing, Google is reading your mobile version at this time. There is no issue with practice you are looking for the same.
-
added
-
To know more about your query, you need to tell us the name of your website.
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
-
Mobile site scrolls past content straight to the products. Can this affect our seo?
As our content can be quite long at the top, we introduced js anchor scroll going straight to the products, by passing the banner and the content at the top. Can this have an issue on seo?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JH_OffLimits1 -
Ecommerce: A product in multiple categories with a canonical to create a ‘cluster’ in one primary category Vs. a single listing at root level with dynamic breadcrumb.
OK – bear with me on this… I am working on some pretty large ecommerce websites (50,000 + products) where it is appropriate for some individual products to be placed within multiple categories / sub-categories. For example, a Red Polo T-shirt could be placed within: Men’s > T-shirts >
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AbsoluteDesign
Men’s > T-shirts > Red T-shirts
Men’s > T-shirts > Polo T-shirts
Men’s > Sale > T-shirts
Etc. We’re getting great organic results for our general T-shirt page (for example) by clustering creative content within its structure – Top 10 tips on wearing a t-shirt (obviously not, but you get the idea). My instinct tells me to replicate this with products too. So, of all the location mentioned above, make sure all polo shirts (no matter what colour) have a canonical set within Men’s > T-shirts > Polo T-shirts. The presumption is that this will help build the authority of the Polo T-shirts page – this obviously presumes “Polo Shirts” get more search volume than “Red T-shirts”. My presumption why this is the best option is because it is very difficult to manage, particularly with a large inventory. And, from experience, taking the time and being meticulous when it comes to SEO is the only way to achieve success. From an administration point of view, it is a lot easier to have all product URLs at the root level and develop a dynamic breadcrumb trail – so all roads can lead to that one instance of the product. There's No need for canonicals; no need for ecommerce managers to remember which primary category to assign product types to; keeping everything at root level also means there no reason to worry about redirects if product move from sub-category to sub-category etc. What do you think is the best approach? Do 1000s of canonicals and redirect look ‘messy’ to a search engine overtime? Any thoughts and insights greatly received.0 -
Joomla SEO
With so many articles on the web talking about how difficult Joomla is to work with in regards to SEO, I'm curious as to what techniques / changes you guys make when using Joomla with your SEO / inbound practices? Any extensions that you love? An extensions that you hate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DougHoltOnline0 -
Recommendations for other good SEO forums?
I learn so much from reading the Moz forum everyday. I would like to expand my learning and start following some other SEO forums as well. What are your recommendations for additional SEO forums?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregB1230 -
Google alerts for products and categories?
I get daily Google alerts for our site and a competitor's site. I have noticed that I am getting multiple alerts a day from Google about products and product categories on the competitor's site. Every now and then there's an actual alert for a linking blog post or something else. How is Google noticing new product on this site but has never done the same for ours? Is there some kind of strategy involved here that I don't know about? The site is http://bit.ly/Q0o2ob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot0 -
Joomla Plugins for SEO
Any input on which Joomla plugins could help us to facilitate the SEO on a client's site? Wordpress has some simple all-in-ones but we're not as familiar with Joomla and it doesn't look like that's the case. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MackenzieFogelson0 -
Duplicate description problem in Wordpress.
Webmaster tools is flagging up duplicate descriptions for the page http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-acts. The page is one page in the wordpress page editor and the web designer set it up so that I can add new live acts from a seperate page editor on the left menu and that feeds into the page 'live-acts'. (it says under template 'live-acts-feed'. The problem is as I add more acts it creates new url's eg http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-acts/page/2 and http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-acts/page/3 etc... I use the all in one SEO pack and webmaster tools tells me that page 2/3/4/ etc all have the same description. How can I overcome this? I can't write new descriptions for each page as the all in one SEO pack will only allow me to enter one for the page 'live-acts'.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
What are the bing only SEO tactics?
Recently we realised that our client's SERPs were almost always lower on Bing.com and Bing (canada) when comparing with Google.com and Google.ca We want to know if there's different ranking or blocking factors for Bing and if someone had similar expriences. It would also be appreciated if you have releavent and trusted information on this topic, from blog posts, forums, etc. What are your thoughts on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RichardPicard0