What is the right content for store category pages?

Store category pages are indispensable for e-commerce sites. Classic store category pages or service overview pages should serve the customer's specific buying interest. But how should the description of a category be structured and where should the product-related content best be placed? Do's & Dont's around the topic of store category descriptions.

The structure of a category page in stores can look different. In general, the product should be the focus and presented using attractive images or even videos. The positioning of images, text and material plays a decisive role here.

Where should the product category description be located?

Long(SEO) content should generally always be placed at the bottom of the page. If a long, bland block of text is at the top of the page, this can lead to frustration on the part of the reader or cause them to stop scrolling until the actual product appears. There is a risk here that the user experience will drop. It is therefore advisable to place only a short teaser with the target keyword at the top of the page.

URL structures & meta data:

Keywords placed in the URL are only marginally included in the ranking by Google. In general, it is correct to build URLs with a long-term view and in a structured way, as otherwise unnecessary redirects etc. will occur. However, great attention should be paid to appealing meta data, such as the meta title and meta description. The usual guidelines apply here. They should be appealing and contain the target keyword of the category page.

The "Make visible" project

On an e-commerce site, it is extremely important to place the product and product information at the top of the page. Only at the bottom of the page should a detailed, product-relevant text with suitable keywords be placed. It is important to ensure that this SEO text is product and purchase-related. If, for example, the text is vague or copied from Wikipedia, this will have a negative impact on the page, as Google will not be able to classify the purpose of the page. Does the user want to buy something or are they on a knowledge page? (Do/Know).

If you want to improve your content within the category pages, you should focus on short, meaningful descriptions. These descriptions only need the amount of content required to meet user expectations and to give Google enough signals about what the described pages are about.

Useful content: to the point

The content should always offer users added value and information about the product. Vague content harms the Google ranking. Short, concise description texts, explicitly tailored to the products and customers, have a positive effect on Google's ranking. Uninformative, long descriptions can be negatively evaluated by the algorithm and subsequent updates. The content of product category pages should be tailored to what users really want to know. As always, high-quality content combined with expert knowledge, trust-building and clarity are key. Content should be structured to provide the best possible customer experience while performing well in search results.

You should also ensure that only "useful category content" can be found on the product pages. This means removing text passages that are not meaningful. This clarifies for users and search engines what the page is about.

ALT texts:

Make sure that the alt texts of your images are adapted to both accessibility and Google image search. It makes sense to include the keyword of the page in the alt text. But be careful: It is useless to simply enter the target keyword for each image if the image has nothing to do with it in terms of content.

Content for content's sake

Copied content from other websites, so-called "duplicate content", is absolutely taboo and is classified by Google as "not trustworthy". As already explained, texts that are too long without clear content can also send mixed signals to Google about the intention of the content, the so-called "core intent". This will hinder rather than help the project. If you provide a lot of informative content about a category, along with product listings, Google's algorithms may begin to categorize the page's content as informative or transactional.

Keyword Stuffing:

If you add very long descriptions to ecommerce category pages, you also run the risk of keyword stuffing. It makes no sense to write a 500 word SEO text section for each page. Google will not necessarily automatically rank these pages well just because the keyword occurs frequently. On the contrary, if a website has such long texts stuffed with SEO keywords on every page, Google will be rather cautious in its evaluation. The solution to this problem is called"reasonable content", i.e. really specific, product-related texts that offer added value for the customer.

Complete redevelopment of the content:

Tinkering with a few category pages won't show what a comprehensive core update could do!

How you can check your content:

• Is my content as described above?
• Check all URLs for canonicals.
• Analyze which pages rank better, which worse and why? What is the word count? What is the structure of the page? What is the wording like? How often does the target keyword occur? Are there any images / videos?
• Check the page speed. This is particularly important for mobile and Chrome users.
• In order to identify errors or ambiguities on your own website, user surveys, A/B testing or the observation of user behavior, such as via a Hotjar analysis, offer good opportunities to identify problems more quickly and make the site more user-friendly.
• Short-term testing: make small changes to pages as a test and evaluate whether this has had a positive effect.
• Don't blindly follow the competition. Not everything they do will help your site.

VIDEO: In the video formats of the "Google Webmaster Central Office-hours Hangout" series, you will learn exciting insights into the work of Google and can ask your personal questions directly to internal Google experts. This series is about the content of store category pages and their evaluation criteria: