Product category content!? what should it include?

[jleandroperez]

Hello everyone!,

I consider myself a rookie... so... please, excuse me if this is super basic or dumb!. I'm working on a ecommerce web (family business!)... and i've got this doubt.

Say you've got architected your site this way...:

site.com/category
site.com/category/model_1
site.com/category/model_2

I'm mainly interested in getting the category webpages to rank high.

The problem i've got is... what to put in the CATEGORY webpage!. Suppose you sale office furniture... and the category is 'chairs'...  if you add content there, it won't be useful.

What do you suggest me to add there?.

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NOTE: My 'categories' webpage is split vertically, so you've got an image gallery on the left, and the product description on the right. So all of my product pages look a bit alike... and the 'category' itself has a placeholder on the right.

I suspect that's why i'm not getting good rankings!

THANKS in advance.

[stephenfishman]

Hi Jorge,

On our craft gallery site our category pages are most important because the products under them change.

We use the category pages to hold common information.  For instance, we have a category for handcrafted lazy susans.  On that category page we detail care, alternate sizes available and how they are made.

On a different category page we may have a glossary of terms used on the products page. This avoids duplicate content on those product pages.  It also sets the stage for linking from the product pages back to the common information. This ought to signal the importance of the category to google.

Best wishes

Handcrafter

[jleandroperez]

It seems i'm gonna need to redesign a little bit the website, to make it more SEO friendly.

As of now, my category webpage is split vertically... and on the left i've got thumbnails of the products, with short descriptions. And i simply load the 'div' on the right, onMouseOver / onClick.

Adding text content would impact usability... in the end, everything a customer needs to see are pictures + a couple lines of text. But ... Content is King, i guess.

THANKS for your reply!