Ecommerce: content on category pages

[zeepartner]

I have to optimize some online Shops and after Panda I really don't know what to think about thin content on product overview pages anymore... used to be that we could improve our rankings easily just by adding 1-2 sentences on such a page. This always worked for non-overly competitive terms.

Now It feels like it doesn't work any longer, but I couldn't put my finger on it and I don't have the resources to test.

Here's an example of what I mean: http://www.geschenkidee.ch/wandtattoos/aus_aller_welt.html 
I would add max. 3 lines of text directly over the product thumbnails.

What do you think? Is it worth adding some text on a product overview page or do I not even have to bother post-Panda?

[Confetti_Wedding]

hi Philipp,

We did something very similar recently. Our rankings had dropped significantly for a particular keyword. We added 2-3 paragraphs of well optimised text to the page (amongst other changes) and our ranking recovered within a couple of days and is now back on page 1.

I'd absolutely add some text to the page you shared but it seems to have other problems too - 298 links on the page for example. I'd look to cut those down too.

[zeepartner]

thanks Brendan.

What I'm wondering is if 2-3 lines not paragraphs can do the job as well. Due to usability-concerns the maximum space I can get are about 200 characters and I'm not sure if that can have the same positive effect.

Thanks for mentioning the link amount - we're trying to minimise those somehow...

[EricaMcGillivray]

Unfortunately, more text is what Google wants. Have you thought about adding maybe a featured product with a good review on it to both enhance the page & to add more content to it?

[zeepartner]

Hi Erica

Yes, we've considered the solution with featured products (for other reasons than SEO though). But it seems to me that it can be difficult to integrate the generic keywords for our category pages in the product review.

Anyways, that's definitely a solution I will take into consideration besides the general descriptive category text.