How do I keep content-refreshment manageble for large site with facetted product categories?
-
Dear MOZ'ers,
i hope you can help me with the following issue:As a fashion e-commerce site we have a category structure by gender: , brand, product-category and colour. We sell over 250 brands in 50 categories. Off course, we don't sell products in every category for all brands but, in general, we sell 3 or 4 product categories for a brand. Next to this, we also have unique content for brand-product-gender (in fact this is the most common in our site-structure, since fashion is really a gender-based product.) We are planning to leave the site category as it is. we rank well for specific products like 'blue mens sneakers'
My question is about copy, or more specific: to keep content-refreshment manageble.
At the moment we have a small text at the top of the page and long form content on the bottom (very low below the fold, near the footer, only shown when the product-lister is)
Because of seasonality in fashion, category text are regularly updated. As you can imagine, this is quit some work and pretty expensive.
So now my question is: on which page level should you advice to have long form content, or distinctive content at all?
On the one hand I'm really sceptical about the value of the text at the bottom, on the other hand I am afraid that, should I decide to remove content from lower hierarchy pages, I might give the wrong signal to search engines: making my site from content rich content modest. -
In an ideal world, you would have unique content everywhere - category, subcategory, product detail page, etc. Of course, that requires a lot of effort to maintain. So I think the answer really depends on your goals and your stats.
I would personally check my analytics to find patterns. First, I'd determine what level most organic traffic ends up landing on. Do they all land on your homepage? Do most of them end up on product detail pages because your long tail is better optimized? Are there higher level categories that seem to do the best? This will give you an idea of what is currently working for you as far as SEO, so you can begin to answer questions like, does the long form content in the footer help drive organic traffic at all for your particular website?
Next, I would check analytics to find out: only for organic traffic, what content levels did people see before they bought a product? I would assume that in most cases they need to hit the individual product detail page to add to cart, since they must select a size etc. - but depending on your site, maybe lots of people do a Quick View and add to cart from a modal, etc. Find out what your organic visitors are looking at to figure out which level - category, subcategory, sub-sub-category, product detail, etc. - the largest portion of organic visitors who actually bought something visited.
Finally, I would check analytics to find out only for non-organic traffic, what content levels did people see before they bought a product? Perhaps you're running some successful marketing campaigns, and these folks land straight on a particular sweet spot that organic folks aren't finding, and because the marketed-to visitors see exactly the information they need, they're buying more. This will also be helpful in determining what levels of pages to optimize.
Once you've determined what levels are converting best, set those as your priorities for unique content and driving traffic.
Unfortunately, e-commerce is a tough market to be in as far as SEO and content. There are so many distributors out there that to really compete organically you need an edge. The good news is, if you're doing the work to differentiate yourself enough to earn better organic rankings and gain visitors, you should also reap the benefits of the visitors themselves having a better user experience and becoming more likely to actually convert.
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
-
Filter By Category bad for seo?
Hello Everyone! I know that a single product should not have filter by color option since it will create duplicate content, and you have to use canonical tags to solve it. BUT how about sorting through products via category/brands?
On-Page Optimization | | Safxmed
Filter by category changes the URL of the General shop page (ex: hello.com/Shop/Category1022039 ). This page only displays the products within, no content/ descriptions etc unlike the original category page (ORIGINAL CATEGORY PAGE) Each of these category/brand already have their own individual pages (ex: hello.com/Shop/A). This is the page that will be optimized for content, FAQ, and ranking etc. Unlike in the url created when filtering through the categories. So technically I would have 2 URL for each Brand/Category. Would they compete with each other? What would you guys suggest. Please advise me on this. Thank You0 -
Content above the Fold, or Below
Hi, I have an ecommerce site with several categories that I consider good landing pages. In order to get better search results I add content to these pages, usually above the fold, then after the content products are listed. Example:https://www.carburetor-parts.com/Carburetor-Kits_c_568.html I worry that customers get to the page and since they don't see the products above the fold, they move on. Should I be putting content in the footer instead of the header and if so how does that effect SEO? This has been bugging me for a long time. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | MikeCarbs
Mike0 -
Need help in understanding why my site does not rank well for our best content?
Hi, We are a technology site from India (Digit.in) and we create a lot of original product review content (http://www.digit.in/mobile-phones/nokia-lumia-830-review-24655.html) but don't seem to rank even in the first 4 pages on Google results. Please let me know the reason for this and how to get this fixed. Thanks Arun
On-Page Optimization | | 9dot90 -
How much content does Google Crawl on your site?
Hi, We've had a debate around the office where some people believe that Google only crawls the first 150-200 words on a page and some people believe that they priority content that is above the fold and other people believe that all content has the same priority. Can you help us? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | mdorville
Matt0 -
Site Wide Link
I have just run up the link explorer on my site and discovered that every page home page link points back with the text home - I assume this is bad in terms of SEO , my site name is ccie and I assumed that it put the site wide link of ccie to the entire site, however it seems to be the breadcrumb default of home which is doing it/. www.rogerperkin.co.uk/ccie Should I be looking to change this so my top keyword points back from each page to the home page. I am running wordpress and assumed the site name was the home link on all pages. Can anyone advise the best practice? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | rogerp0070 -
One site with one product or multi product website
Lets suppose that i have 10 NICHE products under me. Should i make one site for each product or one site overall. If i make 1 site for each product i get several advantages Domain name has keyword Title tags etc will be dedicated to one keyword only. Disavantage - Backlinking for each domain will become tougher. Advantage of one site onl Good management Seo / backlinks becomes easier Blogging to attract traffic becomes easier Can target a lot of keywords through business blogging Disadvantages Can become messy with unimportant keywords gaining importance. SO WHAT DO YOU THINK??? One site per product or One site for all products?
On-Page Optimization | | hith2340 -
Rethinking company's monthly content production process.
I'm trying to rethink my company's content production process. I believe that we're stuck using a formula that works but can surely be improved. Our Current Process It essentially boils down to posting a certain number of content pieces per month for each client. After the pages are approved and live, there isn't much thought given to them. What We're Thinking After taking a step back, we realize now that a lot of these clients have sites with a tremendous amount of content that is rarely, if ever, revisited. In hopes of creating higher quality content and avoiding having to write that certain number of pieces per month, we're investigating alternative strategies to ensure each client has fresh content. What We're Looking Into Page Edits/Refreshes - I'm beginning to wonder if we can get similar gains by simply refreshing the content that already exists. We can include additional keywords and improve the content in a fraction of the time that it takes to produce a new piece. We're struggling to come up with a process for refreshing the content, however. Ideally we'd be implementing a process where content is revisited 6-12 months, but that still doesn't take care of the problem of creating too much new content. Simplified Version I believe that my company is creating too much content. Editing/refreshing seems like a better use of resources, but I have no idea how to implement a process and develop procedures. Questions What does your content production process look like? Do you produce a certain number a month, a quarter, as needed, etc? How do you go about refreshing your content?
On-Page Optimization | | SeoWebMechanix0 -
Optimizing Wordpress Categories
I’m trying to optimize the category links in the wordpress blog http://blog.reputationforward.com. I’m in the process of installing the Yeost SEO plugin and am going to revise the Category Title Tags, Meta Descriptions and slugs. I’m also in the process of using Tags so that I can get the posts that appear in a category to be specific to that category (currently the publisher is listing posts in multiple categories: See “Business Management Category”). But other than that, is there anything else I can do to optimize each category?
On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee341