Product content length & links within product description
-
Hello,
I have questions regarding content length and links within descriptions. With our ecommerce site, we have thousands of products, each with a unique description. In the product description, I have links to the parent category and grandparent category (if it has one) in the main product text which is generally about 175 words. Then I have a last paragraph that's about 75 words that includes links to our main homepage and our main product catalogue page.
Is the content length long enough? I used to use text that was 500 words, and shortening it I still rank when launching new products, so I don't think an increase in text length will have any additional benefit. I do see conflicting information when I do searches, with some people recommending a minimum of 300 words and some saying to try and go a 1000 for category pages.
In regards to the links, I noticed a competitor has stopped following this format, so I'm unsure if I should keep going too. Is it too many links to have each of the products link back to the main catalogue and homepage? Is it good to have links with anchor text to the categories a product is in? There are breadcrumbs on the page with these links already. There are already have heaps of links on our pages (footer, and a right sidebar with image links to relevant categories), so my pages do get flagged for too many links.
Thanks!
-
A short product description on my sites is about 100 words and a unique photo with a generous caption - so about 150 words total.
Most products get a much longer description of at least 300 to 500 words and at least one unique photo. The short description described above is often upgraded after we receive a few questions about a product or after we get more experience using the product ourselves (we have experience using almost every product that we sell). When the descriptions are improved, the rankings often go up and the page starts pulling in traffic for long tail keywords. These are the two benefits that we see from improving product descriptions.
Better selling products and those that receive lots of questions can have even longer descriptions of 500 to 1000 words and more photos. Best selling products also usually have separate articles that explain how to select the product, how to use them, how to maintain/repair and more. We always have links to these articles within product descriptions. Our product pages and article pages often rank #1 and #2 in the SERPs. We also have lots of #1, #2, #3 positions as a result of our article pages.
These really long descriptions usually have the essential info in the first one or two paragraphs. Information after that has subheading to make it easy for shoppers to scan and skip/read parts of the description that they want.
If we have a product that gets a few returns we often add information about the product that caused people to return it. We would rather kill a few sales than incur costly returns.
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
-
Duplicate Content
When I say duplicate content, I don't mean that the content on a clients site is displaying on another site on the web or taken from a site on the web. A client has a few product pages and each product page has content on the bottom of the page (4-5 paragraphs) describing the product. Now, this content is also displaying on other pages, but re-worded so it's not 100% duplicate. Some pages show a duplicate content % ranging from 12% to 35% and maybe 40%. Just curious if I should suggest having each product page less than 10% duplicated. Thanks for your help.
On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Would you consider this to be thin content
I always struggle with these pages I have on my site going back and forth debating what I want to do with them. On one side Google was content, yet at the same time its all about user experience. http://www.freescrabbledictionary.com/word-lists/words-that-start-with/letter/h/ I used to have all my words listed on one page which could have been well over 10,000. Now I pagination them as you can see. I debate writing a header of content for these pages, but honestly users just want the words. Get in, get what you need and get out. What is the recommendation on these pages. Should I write content? Should I not?
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0 -
Acquired Old, Bad Content Site That Ranks Great. Redirect to Content on My Site?
Hello. my company acquired another website. This website is very old, the content within is decent at best, but still manages to rank very well for valuable phrases. Currently, we're leaving the entire site active on its own for its brand, but i'd like to at least redirect some of the content back to our main website. I can't justify spending the time to create improved content on that site and not our main site though. What would be the best practice here? 1. Cross-domain canonical - and build the new content on our main website? 2. 301 Redirect Old Article to New Location containing better article 3. Leave the content where it is - you won't be able to transfer the ranking across domain. Thanks for your input.
On-Page Optimization | | Blenny0 -
Duplicate Content
I'm currently working on a site that sells appliances. Currently, there are thousands of "issues" with this site, many of them dealing with duplicate content. Now, the product pages can be viewed in "List" or "Grid" format. As Lists, they have very little in the way of content. My understanding is that the duplicate content arises from different URLs going to the same site. For instance, the site might have a different URL when told to display 9 items than when told to display 15. This could then be solved by inserting rel = canonical. Is there a way to take a site and get a list of all possible duplicates? This would be much easier than slogging through every iteration of the options and copying down the URLs. Also, is there anything I might be missing in terms of why there is duplicate content? Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | David_Moceri0 -
Duplicate Page Content
Hi there, We keep getting duplicate page content issues. However, its not actually the same page.
On-Page Optimization | | HamiltonIsland
E.G - There might be 5 pages in say a Media Release section of the website. And each URL says page 1, 2 etc etc. However, its still coming up as duplicate. How can this be fixed so Moz knows its actually different content?0 -
Meta Description Question
Hi, Lets say you have a 1000 pages, is it ok to generate a template meta description and flip the keywords depending on the page? For example: Red Shoes page: Buy Red Shoes at amazing prices. We have a large range of Red Shoe sizes available. Blue Shoes page: Buy Blue Shoes at amazing prices. We have a large range of Blue Shoe sizes available. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Bondara0 -
Page content length...does it matter?
As I begin developing my website's content, does it matter how long or short the actual text found in the is? I heard someone say before "a minimum of 250 words", but is that true? If so, what is the maximum length I should use?
On-Page Optimization | | wlw20090 -
Using rel="author" on product descriptions
Unique and effective product descriptions can be one of the most expensive investments that go into building a retail website. I would consider them part of the "intellectual property" of a company. These descriptions are also one of the most often pirated types of content. Some product descriptions have been grabbed and used by hundreds of pirates. When people grab your product descriptions it creates a duplicate content problem, it also starts cutting off your long-tail traffic. The discussion topic here is.... Have you heard of anyone using rel="author" on product pages with substantive content? Do you think there is any value in doing that? Is this an abuse of rel="author" Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | EGOL1