Ecommerce Category Pages
-
First, let's define the terminology for the various types of ecommerce pages. The terminology differs from organization to organization:
- Product Description Pages (PDPs): These pages have a single product, pricing, an "add to cart" button, reviews, and a product description.
- Product Listing Pages (PLPs): These are product category/subcategory pages that have product image links and text links to Product Description Pages (PDPs).
- Category Pages: These pages have subcategory image and text links to subcategory pages. No product images are displayed
- Hybrid Category Pages: these pages combine sub-Category Images and text at the top of the page and product listings below. Our CMS currently does not allow us to create hybrids.
This conversation revolves primarily around mobile.
Our ecommerce team is having discussions around the appropriate use of PLPs vs Category pages. After doing a quick audit of the mobile sites of some top ecommerce players, there is definitely a trend to use Category Pages at the top of the category and sub-category hierarchy and use PLPs at the very bottom. The logic from a usability perspective is to allow visitors to navigate a site without ever using the hamburger navigation. ex:
Baby (Category Page) => Car Seats (Category Page) => Convertible Car Seats (PLP)
The sites I audited all had hamburger menus.
A visitor would navigate from a home page image for "Baby," an image on the "Baby" page to "Car Seats", and an image on the "Car Seats" page to the Convertible Car Seats page. At that point, they would be able to shop for "Convertible Car Seats" on a PLP.
This appears to be excellent UX and easy to use navigation. Theoretically, good for SEO as well. In short, category and subcategory pages are being used as navigation to allow visitors to easily navigate to the bottom of the hierarchy and shop on the most narrow page in the hierarchy. Much easier to use than a hamburger menu, but it does entail more clicks.
The discussion revolves around allowing users to shop for product at a higher level in the taxonomy. For example, what if a visitor wants to shop all Car Seats? In the above taxonomy, we are precluding users from shopping in this manner. There is no "Car Seats" PLP. Our CMS has the ability to create both a Category Page and a PLP for "Car Seats". We could theoretically place an image on the "Car Seats" category page for "View All Car Seats", and allow users to click to a "Car Seats" PLP.
None of the major ecommerce players I've audited are adding a PLP option higher up in the hierarchy. That doesn't mean that it's not good UX.
Problems:
- From an SEO perspective, having a Category Page and a PLP for "Car Seats" would cause cannibalization - they would be competing for the same keywords.
- I am skeptical that canonicals would work. The pages are not near duplicate content. One page has category images, the other has product images. We could place content blocks on the page to make them more similar.
- We could noindex the PLP, but that's a waste of internal link juice.
Need advice:
- Will canonicals work in this situation?
- Should we trash this idea entirely? Does adding a PLP add value or confusion?
- Is noindex a good idea?
- Is there an option to target keyword variations with the PLP?
- Is there another solution?
-
Yeh, I thought you'd like it.
I have been working with a lighting eCommerce store and we have been looking at them a lot - they nail it with SEO
Regards
Nigel
-
Nigel:
Thanks - you pretty much confirmed my thoughts. At the moment, we don't have the ability to create hybrid pages - pages with category and product images. It's on the wish list. If it was up to me alone, we would only have PLPs at the bottom of the taxonomy. Our merchants group is pushing hard for PLPs.
BTW, Wayfair's SEO/UX is outstanding. Those folks are squared away. Any time I have an issue to resolve, it's wayfair.com and "view source".
-
Hi Satans_apprentice
You have to keep it simple and the addition of your PLPs, whilst looking pretty are adding a layer of complication to the structure that you don't need. I hate hamburger menus as well - you must remember to add a search bar at the top that does not need opening as well so people can get stuck in immediately.
You need - say,
Department>Category>Sub-Category - this is the natural structure for most eCommerce sites.
Baby>Car Seats>Convertible Car Seats.
Department, I would go with a menu structure at the top and Category images in the centre with some text at the bottom.(300) - you can then either add products to this or keep those for the categories and sub-categories.
Category - I would have a menu structure at the top, a grid of sub-categories with products beneath and a description (300) at the bottom.
Sub-category - I would have a menu structure at the top, a grid of products with a small description at the top and a bigger one (300) at the bottom
Look at Wayfair - they do really well in search and I think their site is really well organised using as it does a mixture of text menu, images and products. They also have really chunky descriptions on appropriate pages like 'Bedroom Lighting' - have a look at the bottom.
This is their lighting category:
https://www.wayfair.co.uk/lighting/cat/lighting-c234985.html
You don't say whether you have brands as well - this can add a layer of complication and possible cannibalisation, but as long as you add Meta and content, this type of cannibalisation has become more acceptable. The pages are hybrids in themselves and sit lower down in search, making them less of a problem.
Sale pages can also add complication and I always canonicalise these back to the brand.
Some sites have 'New-In' sections also - I canonicalise these back to the brands - or categories if you a non-branded website.
I hope this has helped to clarify your thinking.
Regards
Nigel
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
-
Why is Google displaying meta descriptions for pages that are nowhere contained in said page metas?
Certain search keywords are pulling up incorrect page titles and meta descriptions for our site. I've looked through our code, and the text used by Google in the search results is nowhere found inside our site. I've also looked at previous iterations of our site from over a decade ago and still haven't found it. I then searched specifically for the exact phrased incorrect meta descriptions and found a long list of spammy sites linking to our domain with the exact, incorrect meta description. Is this why Google is displaying the incorrect data, and how do I get Google to use the meta descriptions from my actual site?
Web Design | | Closetstogo0 -
Infinite Scroll and SEO - Is it enough to only link to the previous and next page in the pagination?
Hi all, We are implementing an eCommerce site where the results pages of the products will be visibile on one page (always loading new products when you scroll down the page). Now, I have read that the Google spiders cannot "load" new products scrolling down the page, hence the spider only sees the first few products of the results page. Our developer wants to implement a system where a users sees the first products on example.com/products Then scrolling down, he will see new products with the URL changing to example.com/page/2 and so on. Is it enough that we add a pagination link that goes from example.com/products to example.com/page/2 Then another link that goes from example.com/page/2 to example.com/page/3 and so on, so the Google spider can make his way through all the pages? Or is that too much deep linking and the spider wouldn't even crawl all the results pages? Any recommendations how to go about this? Many thanks in advance!
Web Design | | Gabriele_Layoutweb0 -
What to do with blog pagination / categories
On our new website we are going to have a blog that is custom built. However, you can browse the general blog with pagination. You can also nest into the categories or by month. Doing each will have a different link: Category: www.mywebsite.com/blog/web-guides/Month: www.mywebsite.com/blog/2014/january/ My question is what is the best thing to do with these pages. Rel Canonical them to the blog home? Or nofollow/noindex them? Will Google not see these as duplicate content pages?
Web Design | | vortexuk0 -
Duplicate Page Content mysite.com and mysite.com/index.html MOZ Dashboard
According to MOZ Dashboard my site shows Duplicate Page Content mysite.com and mysite.com/index.html .What i can do for that .redirect mysite.com/index.html to mysite.com .then how can i do that using .htaccess file .
Web Design | | innofidelity0 -
What is the BEST eCommerce platform ?
I'm using BigCommerce, but I will like to try a new platform. Do you have any recommendations?
Web Design | | BigBlaze2050 -
Are links from main page to inner pages will affect on ranking?
About 3 weeks ago I converted index.html to index.php. Both are 301 redirect to main url. Also I have about 70 links on main page pointing to internal pages. The Website is about 11 years old,and was on active link building . Is this conversion from html to php and also 70 links pointing to inner pages will affect on ranking?Since all links are passing juice to inner pages.
Web Design | | LosAngelesLimo0 -
Websites with only one "html file" and page href # is good for SEO?
I bought one website from templatemonster that contains only one HTML and the pages are generated by links (PROGRAMACAO) My website: www.nextformaturas.com.br This is good in term of SEO? or it is better an website with deveral pages with diferent contents? What are the pros and cons? I really lost on this.
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
Dynamic pages and code within content
Hi all, I'm considering creating a dynamic table on my site that highlights rows / columns and cells depending on buttons that users can click. Each cell in the table links to a separate page that is created dynamically pulling information from a database. Now I'm aware of the google guidelines: "If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few." So we wondered whether we could put the dynamic pages in our sitemap so that google could index them - the pages can be seen with javascript off which is how the pages are manipulated to make them dynamic. Could anyone give us a overview of the dangers here? I also wondered if you still need to separate content from code on a page? My developer still seems very keen to use inline CSS and javascript! Thanks a bundle.
Web Design | | tgraham0