Optimizing a product category vs. a bespoke content page

[Bee159]

Hi there, I work for a furniture retailer in the UK and I have a question about ranking for search phrases.

Say I'm looking to rank for the keyword phrases: 'Tempur mattress' and 'Tempur mattress liverpool' and I have a category at: www.mysite.co.uk/tempur/ which list all of our mattresses, would I be better trying to optimize this page for those key phrases or would I be better generating a new page, say, www.mysite.co.uk/tempur-mattress-liverpool.html

Thank you for your input.

[EGOL]

I get the best rankings when I have category pages that organize and link to a number of different product pages, each with generous amounts of unique, substantive text content and images.

If I am selling brass widgets, I will first build many different pages for the different types of brass widgets that I sell.  Each of those product pages will contain substantive content about that product, at least one photo - usually more, a buy button, and links to similar items (each with a photo, short description).

Then I will build a category page that has a photo of each item, a paragraph of text about it that is substantive enough to stand as a product description, a buy button, and a link to the full page description.

I believe that the above shows google that you have a large mass of diverse content about brass widgets, that consists of several substantive pages and a single page that summarizes your brass widget offerings.

I use this approach on info sites and on product sites.  The category pages are my most effective at rankings and pulling in traffic.