How to rank 1000s of subcategories [E-commerce]

[Superinks]

Hi guys, I run an eCommerce store that has 1000s of subcategories, yes it's a lot but my niche requires that many.

Using Traffic Travis, SEOmoz and other tools I can say that these are Easy/Very Easy to get ranked for. (Sounds good, but it's not that easy)

If I'm honest my site has on site SEO done however I don't have unique content on each of the sub categories as it would take to much time, should I spend my time adding unique content to each one?

I also need to increase page authority to my inner pages, how can I achieve this?

My competitors on each subcategory are linking to there other subcategory should I do the same? I'm just not sure how deep linking works.

My niche is printers/ink that's why I need lots of subcategorys however I'm just lost on what to do at the moment and I really need to increase sales!

Thanks for reading.

[BenRWoodard]

For top level categories we are trying to make very unique content.  For similar subcategories there may be a little overlap in product description on the category page but we try to make sure they are atleast 70% unique. It's a subjective call, not a perfected science with that.

Taking the best sellers first is definitely the way to go about doing it.

I don't monitor page authority as much but our rankings have increased and stuck for rather competitive SERPs.  There are a ton of other variables that went into our increased rankings so to say that adding unique content to a page "caused" a ranking increase would have to be tested out.  I know it helped, just not sure to tell you how much.

You look more authentic to Google and Bing if you have unique quality content.

[BenFox]

Write unique content for your top 100 pages. Wait a month to see the results and then decided whether it will take too much time to write all those pages.

[Superinks]

Are you making 100% unique content? Or are you taking bits from similar categories and adding to it, it's really hard to do 1000+ with unique content. I might just focus on best sellers and see how I get on.

Has your page authoirty increased because of the content? Also have your ranks increased?

Thanks!

[BenRWoodard]

I have been working on an ecommerce site with probably 10% of the categories you have but I have seen incredible value from taking the time (no matter how much it it) in adding unique content to the pages.  This will not only help you rank well but it will (as I have seen) give your product pages and sub category pages much more credibility.

My advice after having taken the time and still taking the time to do the (non glorious) work of a ton of on page optimization is to keep at it. Just grab yourself a big cup of coffee, a pair of good headphones and get to work.  After a while you'll get a system down and be able to go through it much faster or you can outsource it to someone who can then follow your system.

Most of all with ecommerce, keep at it.  Just plow through the incredibly monotonous tasks that it requires.  Set up the system/method you need to go through for each on page area and then teach someone to do it.