Category Pages & Content

[BeckyKey]

Hi

Does anyone have any great examples of an ecommerce site which has great content on category pages or product listing pages?

Thanks!

[JordanLowry]

Duluth trading co has some good examples of product level page content. However there isnt a lot of category level content on most pages. But I think they have some good examples and ideas anyone can borrow from.

[VacasaSEM]

This post is deleted!

[maxbennettinc]

(**I'm really sorry for the awful formatting of this comment. I'm having a really hard time getting the formatting to cooperate at all. I swear it's not user error but then again I could be wrong). Great question, Becky. I hope more people respond with good examples (Duluth Trading did not impress me, sorry Jordan). We're always searching for examples of ecommerce sites that do great on-page optimization on their category and product pages. It seems easy to find ecommerce sites with great design and intuitive filtering but rarely any that do any "next-level SEO" - which therein probably lies the answer that you don't "SEO" a page or page template, it happens by good design and functionality. We realize that, but it's still an on-going hunt to find any ecommerce sites that do anything unique or clever with the optimization of their content.

On-page aspects we look for are as follows:

Internal Linking:

• how many
• what anchor text

External Linking:

• do-follow or no-follow
• how many
• what anchor text
• target="_blank"

Description Copy:

• how many words, format
• how many subheadings
• formatting of subheadings
• do they link in subheadings

Images:

• how many
• what size
• alt text
• file name
• title and/or caption

Headings:

• how many h1s, h2s, h3s
• how many characters
• how many keywords
• how many variations of keywords

Structured Data:

• what do they markup with schema
• any schema that we're not already doing

Social Buttons:

• what social do they offer sharing to
• any unique or clever social share enablement
• do they offer text link to phone (a favorite of mine)
• email to friend

I'm sure there's even more to consider but that was my top-of-mind list. If I find or think of any good examples I'll come back and comment. I'm sorry that I don't have any great examples but I did want to chime-in to say that I think your question is a great one. Thanks.

edit: Someone linked to ModCloth in the comments on the Moz FB page that posted your question in the feed. From a simply design perspective, which is not my forte, ModCloth impressed me. Also, The Tie Bar. I'm also really impressed with The Wirecutter and their sister-site, The Sweethome.

[BeckyKey]

Great thank you for the detailed response

I also wanted to find out what opinions were on hub pages/user guides over category page content - management don't want the content to detract from products, so are hub pages the solution?

My only concern is that all this new content, will also take time to rank so will it in fact help the category pages enough as adding content to the category page itself?

Thanks!

[Joe.Robison]

Some other examples that come to mind, since it seems that so many ecommerce site owners overlook this opportunity:

• Home Depot - note how this top level category page - http://www.homedepot.com/b/Building-Materials/N-5yc1vZaqns and also a sub-category such as http://www.homedepot.com/b/Building-Materials-Drywall/N-5yc1vZar3d include great images, helpful tools, the actual products for that category, and also descriptive text at the bottom. All a shining example of ecommerce category pages with great SEO
• REI doesn't try to optimize as much as Home Depot but they do a good job as well - https://www.rei.com/h/cycling
• This is a decent example of a B2B site including some optimization on a category page - http://www.coastalcreative.com/product-category/large-format-prints/
• A good example of a category page not feeling like one - http://www.chameleoncoldbrew.com/our-coffees/ready-to-drink/

Those come to mind first. It actually is hard finding ecommerce sites that do category page SEO perfectly!

[BeckyKey]

Hi

This is great, thank you for responding

Some really good examples!

Becky