Ecommerce On-Site SEO: Keywords in Category Descriptions

[BobGW]

Hello,

I'm doing on-site SEO for a client's ecommerce site.

Are 160 words enough for a category description?

I'm using the keywords once at the top of the description, and once at the bottom of the description, with the ones at the bottom reworded so that they are the keywords with a different word order.

I used to put the keywords in 3 times but it just feels like stuffing.

Is twice, worded differently the second time, enough for a category description?

Thanks.

[TomRayner]

It's pretty hard to give a 'right' amount here.

Of course, it's well documented that more content on a page has a strong correlation with improved rankings (and conversions).  To say that there is a golden threshold of characters, however, is impossible to say.

I'd rather bring up the point you make about stuffing.  That's probably the main thing to keep in mind when writing descriptions or content - don't make it look like you're gaming for a search engine, but keep it great for a user.  If you can use your keyword multiple times, that's great.  But, as you allude to, writing it for the sake of getting it on the page more often is a bad move.

If 160 words for a description is the absolute most you can say on a topic, without repeating yourself, then 160 is the right amount **in this case.  **Other times it might be more, and sometimes it might be even less; it really is dependent on the context.

You might be able to squeeze more content for a description by using things like an example of how a system/process works etc.  But I'd always remain focus on writing for a user, not a search engine, and to avoid stuffing where possible, as you rightly pointed out.

[MagicDude4Eva]

I honestly would not stuff keywords like that. Meta tag keywords and descriptions should hint at the actual content on page.

Our site-structure for eCommerce categories consists of the following (here is an example

• Meta tags with keywords and description
• Content lead-in (text below the banner)
• Subcategory links and content
• Content lead-out (text below pagination)

Each category has the same structure and our product team manages the actual content. This works very effectively.

[BobGW]

Gerd,

Could you say more? I'm not sure I completely follow you. I assume you think titles, h1, etc. should point to what's exactly on the page, and I agree, but don't you work in what's most searched for? In your case gaming is very searched for almost no matter what terms you use to describe it.

[BobGW]

Gerd,

Could you say more? I'm not sure I completely follow you. I assume you think titles, h1, etc. should point to what's exactly on the page, and I agree, but don't you work in what's most searched for?

[MagicDude4Eva]

True, there is obviously a lot more to SEO than just filling meta-tags. My example above was just something we do for categories and obviously elements such as TITLE, H1-H3 are important.

I would look at SEO in eCommerce holistically:

• Understand your product category taxonomy and related categories. Provide a mechanism to "boilerplate" tags important for SEO. This also should include microdata such as breadcrumbs.
• Provide a "fall-back" mechanism if your content team fails - i.e. if your product team introduces new categories without SEO meta-data, craft them from the information you know about the category (i.e. category title and generic keywords)
• Don't forget about pushing Sitemap data to Google - this will push your whole taxonomy and products into the index.
• Ensure that your search indexes (many people say don't but we have not found an issue with it).
• Pay attention to canonicals for both products and categories and ensure that all links are SEO friendly
• Craft your brand verbs (buy, sell, cheap etc) in searches and categories

I think it is more important to have a high index-ratio in search than stuffing keywords which result in irrelevant search results. Over 80% of our products get indexed through Google and since we have mostly user-generated content, we ensure that the meta-data for the products is good.

If your client has a product catalogue SEO becomes a lot easier, as data should be very structured, but it will be challenging since the same content is syndicated to many other competitors.

[BobGW]

Forgive me for not knowing, but what is a high index-ratio?

[CMC-SD]

160 well written words are certainly enough for Google to understand what the page is about. Adding more words could help bring in more long-tail, as you include variations on the keyword, modifiers, etc. But you don't want so many words that conversion suffers.

I find that for most keyword phrases, more than twice in ~150 words feels stuffed and unnatural.

[CMC-SD]

Meta-Keywords and Meta-Description no longer contribute to ranking, I thought -- and optimizing Meta-Description is less and less important as Google becomes more likely to use whatever the heck they want for the snippet.

[BobGW]

I agree. How many words do you guys recommend for a category? We could probably add up to 300-500 if we wanted in our case.

[CMC-SD]

We do what Gerd describes in his comment -- a short description at the top of the page, then the products in the middle of the page, and then additional description at the bottom of the page. Total word count ~500.

[BobGW]

Great, that sounds like an improvement. With that many words, appropriate keywords for the page can be used 3 times in various word orders.

If your keyword was "running shoes" and you have your words at the top, do you use your keyword once as "running shoes" at the top, and then in the bottom text include it once as "running shoes" and once as "shoes for running"

Or what have you found is effective? I don't like to keyword stuff.