Firstly, most online store owner understands the benefits of SEO. Higher rankings mean more traffic and more sales.
But are you optimising every area of your store?
While many e-commerce owners focus on optimizing product pages and content marketing initiatives like a blog, they neglect category pages.
That’s a shame because these pages are much more than a navigational tool shoppers use to find products. They are powerful pillar pages that can rank in their own right.
By improving the SEO of your e-commerce category pages, you can increase traffic to dozens or even hundreds of different products at once.
Below, S-media shares a 12 methods I use to help category pages rank in Google—strategies you can start implementing immediately.
Use Categories That Make Sense
A key part of my e-commerce category page SEO strategy isn’t actually about SEO at all. It’s about how you structure the categories themselves.
The first thing you need to do is organise your products into logical categories that make sense to your users. Otherwise, shoppers will leave your store in droves. In fact, poor navigation or layout is the joint top reason users leave e-commerce sites.
Start by grouping products into very broad categories (men’s clothes, women’s clothes, children’s clothes, etc.). Then break each category down further (jeans, t-shirts, swea
ters, activewear, etc.). Finally, you can create very specific long-tail category pages like women’s yoga leggings.
Build a Hierarchy With Category URLs
Getting your e-commerce pages indexed by Google can be challenging, but you can prevent or resolve some of these issues with a well-organised URL structure.
An e-commerce hierarchy is critical for a couple of reasons:
It helps search engines understand the structure of your website.
It improves your website’s usability and UX, increasing customer satisfaction. By creating a hierarchy, you can enhance SEO for your category pages and make it easy for users to find the products.
Additionally, a poor URL structure can make Google more likely to miss content, or it may retrieve the same page several times and impede crawling.
Optimise Your Title Tags and Meta Data
Meta data refers to your title tags and meta descriptions which are integral to SEO for category pages.
Title tags are a vital on-page SEO factor. They tell search engines what your page is about and determine your page’s title in the SERPs, which is what users see when deciding which website to visit.
A well-written title tag should be:
Relevant to the page content.
Short and sweet (under 60 characters).
Descriptive and keyword-rich.
You’ll also want to optimise content with the right keywords and phrases.
Meta descriptions give search engines a summary of your page and help convince searchers to click through to your site.
To create meta descriptions:
Keep it brief (155 characters or less).
Use relevant keyword-enhanced descriptions, but don’t keyword stuff.
Update your meta descriptions regularly.
Create a Consistent Layout
When potential customers visit your website, you want to ensure they have a positive experience that leads them to become paying customers. However, research shows consumers aren’t always satisfied with their online experience.
What can you do to improve customer satisfaction? One way to do this is to create a consistent layout across all your category pages.
When every category page is structured the same, it’s easy for shoppers to quickly navigate your site. They know what to expect, where to look for items, and how to filter product options.
Here’s how to do it:
Select a basic color scheme.
Use the same header and footer on all site pages to create recognizable branding for your store and improve navigation.
Try to stick to the same fonts throughout your site.
Organize your products the same way on all site pages.
Place calls-to-action (CTAs) in the same place on every page.
If in doubt, err on the side of functionality over design.
A consistent layout will save you a lot of work, too, since it will make creating new category pages very easy — especially if you save your design as a template in WordPress.
Be Concise And Clever With Your Copy
A common e-commerce category page SEO mistake is going overboard with the amount of copy on your pages. You don’t want to distract shoppers, so limit yourself to a few hundred words at most.
Stick to an enticing headline, a short introduction, a call to action, and then salient information that helps shoppers make a purchase.
Don’t talk about the history of your product or the market in general, provide actionable advice that moves them further down the purchase funnel. This can include information like:
Product USPs (unique selling points)
How you choose products
How you source materials.
Make your content as scannable as possible, too.
Answer User Questions
Do you want another way to add more keyword-rich copy to improve SEO for category pages? Then start answering customer questions in an FAQ section. This is a great way to build trust and increase conversion rates, especially if you’re able to answer genuine questions shoppers ask your customer support team rather than the questions you think customers want answered. It also gives you an opportunity to rank in the People Also Asked (PAA) section of Google.
Add Product Reviews
There’s no reason to restrict reviews to product pages. You can prime shoppers with social proof by including customer testimonials on your category pages and improve conversion rates as a result. Research by Power Reviews finds that ratings and reviews are the most important factor impacting purchase decisions, above price, shipping, and even recommendations from family and friends.
They don’t have to ruin the flow of your category page, either. Look at how Manta Sleep seamlessly adds a scrolling feed of customer reviews on its category pages.
Think About the UX
User experience (UX) is crucial, no matter what page of your website a visitor is on. However, it’s vital on category pages, which are often core landing pages.
Here are a few tips for ensuring a great UX on your category pages:
1. Make sure the page loads quickly. Category pages are often image-heavy, so optimize your images and use a content delivery network (CDN) if necessary.
2. Use clear, descriptive headlines and subheadings. Doing this helps visitors quickly understand what to expect on the page and whether it’s relevant to their needs.
3. Ensure the page is well-organized and easy to navigate. Use clear sectioning, helpful filters, and sorting options so visitors can find what they’re looking for.
4. Include relevant product details – for example, colors, sizes, volume, etc.
5. Add faceted navigation to make large category pages more browseable.
Use Eye-Catching Quality Images
Research by Etsy finds 90 percent of shoppers say photo quality is extremely important or very important when making a purchase decision. So improve your e-commerce category page SEO by including as many high-quality images as possible.
How can you create eye-catching images? Follow these tips:
Show the product in context or in use.
Shoot multiple angles
Make sure the feature and thumbnail images are engaging
Internally Link Categories
Category pages and internal linking go hand in hand. These pages contain dozens of internal links by default. After all, every product you link to is an internal link.
But don’t discount the power of linking to other category pages, too. You can create a “Popular categories” or “Editor’s picks” section within your page layout to provide a space to manually link to other relevant categories.
Breadcrumbs offer another way to link category pages with the rest of your website. These also make it easy for search engines to index your content and for users to navigate your site.
Make sure you are adding links to category pages from your home page and within blog posts.
Use Structured Data
Structured data is a standardized format that classifies some or all of a page’s content. You’re probably familiar with certain types of structured data like rich snippets and local business structured data — and there are several types of structured data you can use to improve your e-commerce category page SEO, too.
These include:
FAQs: data about frequently asked questions
Breadcrumbs: a set of hierarchical site structure links
ItemList: a list of items like your products
Store: a list of store information like shipping details and opening times
Review: reviews of an item
Adding structured data can improve how your website appears in the search results.
Consider Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion rate optimization is the art and science of turning website visitors into customers. It’s the process of changing and testing the impact of different on-page elements on your conversion rates.
When it comes to improving category page conversion rates, you should test the following elements:
Headings
Body copy
Images
Calls to action
Colors
Product review placement
Don’t stop when you see an improvement. It doesn’t matter how many conversion features you add to your page, you can always eke out more conversions. That’s why continuous conversion rate optimization testing is so important.
To conclude, don’t let category pages become the forgotten child of your e-commerce SEO efforts. While these may not get the attention of your product and landing pages, they play a crucial role in letting your users get to their final purchases. By increasing internal links, improving hierarchy, and adding conversion optimization elements like FAQs and product reviews you can boost your website’s rankings, improve the user experience, and increase conversion rates.
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