We’ve talked about optimizing product pages in our online shops. What we haven’t focused on are Product Category Pages.
What’s a Product Category Page?
If you’ve assigned your products to a category you’ve created – you have Product Category Pages.
Product Category Pages are often overlooked when we focus on improving our websites’ search engine optimization (SEO). These under-appreciated pages are part of nearly every e-commerce website. We tend to think of them as ways to organize our products (sort of like a digital filing system) so they are easily searched within the website.
The chances are very good that when you created the product categories on your website – you had a place to enter a description in addition to the name of the category and the “slug”. If you are anything like me – you either quickly entered something that briefly describes the kinds of products in that category, or you left it blank.
Either of those choices – is a missed opportunity to add a description that includes the keywords and phrases you want to rank for in the search engine results.
Another problem with underutilizing the category description – a search results page without a Call To Action (CTA) at the top of the page. Many website templates will display the Category Page Description at the top of the page when a site user clicks on the category. If that description is missing – it doesn’t show up – all they see is a grid of product images. That’s a good thing – but it is a missed opportunity.
On the other hand – if you did add something in the description field (no matter how random it is) when setting up the category, it will show up at the top of the Category Product page.
While looking for ways to improve the organization of my website – I came across this helpful article: SEO Category Pages
Optimizing Product Category Pages
This article takes a deep dive into the two types of category pages and the 12 ways to optimize them.
[1] Use Categories That Make Sense
[2] Build a Hierarchy with Category URLs
[3] Optimize Your Title Tages and Meta Data
[4] Create a Consistent Layout
[5] Be Concise and Clever with Your Copy
[6] Answer User Questions
[7] Add Product Reviews
[8] Think About the User Experience
[9] Use Eye-Catching Quality Images
[10] Internally Link Categories
[11] Use Structured Data
[12] Consider Conversion Rate Optimization
For more information:
5 Tips for Maximizing Your Search Engine Optimization
