Content on product category pages - does Google care?

[BarryBuckman]

Hi All,

I've always been unsure about the importance of content on product category pages. Nobody reads it. If you search for "living room chairs", you're just going to want to see a big list of living room chairs - not read content about living room chairs, how to choose one, etc. On virtually any ecommerce site, category pages have a paragraph or two of total bla-bla. Does this have any impact on search rankings?

More specifically, will Googlebot see content on how to choose a living room chair and say "Yes! This is really helpful content"? Or, will it realize that the searcher intent on this keyword is really just to see a list of chairs, and ignore this content - or at least downplay its importance?

WDTY?

[EGOL]

Nobody reads it.

How do you know this?

If you search for "living room chairs", you're just going to want to see a big list of living room chairs - not read content about living room chairs, how to choose one, etc

I would never assume to know what my visitors want.  I am a 70-year-old-introverted white guy who has lived in rural areas all of my life and... I could go on, but my point is that I am not in any position to judge what my visitors want and don't want because they are very different from me and there are so many of them.

will Googlebot see content on how to choose a living room chair and say "Yes! This is really helpful content"?

This could be an entirely separate article on a separate page of the website.

Or, this content could be at the bottom of a category page but offered to the visitor near the top.  Sometimes people don't think about how many different options there are and are befuddled when they land on a page with more options than they were prepared to consider.

You are placing your bet on just tossing up a bunch of chair images because that is easy.  Yes?

But you are here asking the question "is that what Google wants me to do".

I'd say you can

A) write this stuff on a separate page

B) write this stuff on the bottom of your category page,

C) you can do both with unique content.

I am saying you should do both B and C (and do a damn good job on the work), then publish and see what happens.   You might be surprised.

[Hurf]

A lot of e-commerce solutions don't really give you much scope (out of the box) to add a great deal of text content to the product category pages but I can assure you, it's well worth the effort to do so as that copy can make all the difference to your rankings. A fair percentage of your traffic is likely to arrive from top/mid-funnel searches such as 'dining room chairs', for example, and having a paragraph of text, which gives a quick overview of the product range, gives you an opportunity to include the keyword in copy AND  provide further information about the products and service you offer in relation to this product, should they require it.

After all, we can skim/skip the copy if it's present and start viewing the products themselves, but give people the choice.

Personally, I'd want to show at least some introductory copy on a category page as I've seen the benefits it can deliver (and the detriment of not having any present on the page).

If you are able to deliver your potential customers directly to a page which shows off a representative cross-section of products which match their search then you stand a chance of converting them into actual customers. Yes, you could have a separate landing page for 'living room chairs' and then provide a link to the product category but that's effort and gives the visitor another opportunity to go elsewhere. Show them what they want as quickly as possible and the best way I've found to do that (when dealing with product categories similar to this) is with additional copy around the product content.