Best practices for ecommerce websites indicate that you should have a hierarchical structure with no more than 3 levels.<\/p>\n
This means that besides the homepage, the second most important pages of the site are the category pages.<\/p>\n
As you can see in the diagram below, authority and \u2018link juice\u2019 is stronger on category pages since these are located high in the hierarchy.<\/p>\n To take advantage of this though and have some real gains in terms of rankings and traffic, you need to do some SEO work to optimize those pages.<\/p>\n Failing to do so, may generate the opposite effect since Google will not consider them as important and your overall domain authority<\/strong><\/a> will be negatively affected.<\/p>\n Category pages can help you achieve higher rankings<\/strong><\/p>\n Another important reason why category pages are important is rankings.<\/p>\n Many ecommerce websites are unable to rank for individual product pages because the same products are available in bigger websites and they tend to gain the first places in the SERPS or because people don\u2019t use the individual product names to search but they use more general terms.<\/p>\n For example, let\u2019s assume that you are selling men\u2019s surfing wetsuits like the example below.<\/p>\n Users are more likely to search for \u201cmen surfing wetsuits\u201d and other related terms and not for the individual products.<\/p>\n Having category pages optimized for the general terms it\u2019s the best approach.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s see the 8 steps to follow to have well optimized category pages.<\/p>\n Category SEO starts by optimizing the URLs<\/strong><\/a>. As explained in the ecommerce site structure<\/strong><\/a> article, your category URLS should describe exactly what the page is all about without additional characters or unnecessary information.<\/p>\n For example, if you have a category for men\u2019s shoes<\/em> your URL should be: https:\/\/example.com\/mens-shoes<\/em><\/p>\n Keep your URLS clean, short and to the point and make sure that the user can tell from the URL alone what the category is all about.<\/p>\n Category URL optimization for WooCommerce<\/strong><\/p>\n If you are using WordPress and Woocommerce as your ecommerce CMS, it is mandatory to have a category slug. The default slug is product-category<\/em>.<\/p>\n You can either use it as is or you can change it provided that all your products can be grouped together.<\/p>\n For example, if you are selling ebooks, the default URL for the SEO category would be:<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.example.com\/product-category\/SEO <\/em>but since all the products you are selling are ebooks, you can change the product category slug to ebooks<\/em> and your URL will become<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.example.com\/ebooks\/SEO<\/em> which is better.<\/p>\n Note:<\/strong> You can find these settings in Settings -> Permalinks.<\/em><\/p>\n The category title is a great opportunity to give Google strong signals about the page and its contents.<\/p>\n When crafting your titles, take into account the following:<\/p>\n For example, do this<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Women’s Shoes: Boots, Heels, Sneakers & More | mybrand.com<\/em><\/p>\n instead of this:<\/p>\n mybrand.com | Women’s Shoes: Boots, Heels, Sneakers & More<\/em><\/p>\n You can also read my SEO Tips<\/a><\/strong> article for more information on how to best optimize your page titles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The description of a category page does not have a direct impact on the on-page SEO<\/strong><\/a> of the page but it does have an important role to play for getting a higher Click Through Rate (CTR), once you manage to achieve first page rankings for that page.<\/p>\n What you write in the meta description <\/em>field may be shown in the search results.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t provide for a unique quality description for every category page, your snippet may look like the example below i.e. text that does not make sense.<\/p>\n This is not good for your brand and certainly it does not encourage people to click it.<\/p>\n In your category descriptions try to summarize your products and offerings. If you offer free shipping, free returns etc. say so in the description to encourage users to click on your entry.<\/p>\n Here is a better example than Zappos. If you were searching to buy mens shoes<\/em> and saw these two entries, which one would you prefer?<\/p>\n Your category pages should be optimized the same way as other pages or posts of your website and this includes optimizing the H1 tag and content of the page.<\/p>\n The category page should have only one H1 tag and this should be on top of the page. It can be the same as the TITLE of the page or different, but it should still contain your target keywords.<\/p>\n Below the H1 tag you can also add a few lines of content to give both users and search engine crawlers a good clue on what the page is all about.<\/p>\n If you want you can display the same content as the meta description.<\/em><\/p>\n Here is a very nice example:<\/p>\n When it comes to content, a lot of webmasters find it difficult to add text content to an ecommerce category page because it can break up the design of the page and draw the attention away from the most important elements of the page i.e. the products.<\/p>\n A good way to overcome this problem is to have a few lines of content below the H1 tag (as shown above) and then add some related text content at the bottom of the page.<\/p>\n As you can see in the example above, at the bottom of the category page they added a couple of paragraphs of optimized content and internal links<\/strong><\/a> to product sub-categories, which is great for SEO.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t forget that a category page is also a landing page<\/strong> <\/a>and it can be the first page users will see visiting from search engines, Facebook or AdWords.<\/p>\n This means that is should also include all those elements that are necessary to convince, encourage and keep users to your store so that they can eventually convert.<\/p>\n Everything that we discussed about ecommerce homepage SEO<\/strong><\/a>, are also applicable for category pages.<\/p>\n Things like:<\/p>\n Should find their place in your category pages.<\/p>\n Highlight attention to your most popular products<\/strong><\/p>\n If you have a lot of products in your category pages, make it easier for users to find what they want by showing them a list of the most popular (or best selling) categories and products.<\/p>\n This section should ideally be placed above the fold<\/strong><\/a> and below your main heading (h1), like the example below.<\/p>\n Besides displaying the right content, a properly optimized category page should also include images and other elements to help users find what they want in the least possible number of clicks.<\/p>\n Images<\/strong><\/p>\n Images are important and necessary for any ecommerce website. If you are selling physical products, images are the medium for potential customers to get to know your products.<\/p>\n Use only high quality optimized images \u2013 bad quality images can cost you customers.<\/p>\n Optimize your images for size and SEO \u2013 There are several ways to optimize the file size of the images<\/a><\/strong> without losing quality. For all images don\u2019t forget to set the ALT text correctly and also to use filenames that make sense.<\/p>\n![\"SEO](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/seo-site-structure-ecommerce-1024x536.png\")
![\"Example](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/optimized-category-page-ecommerce-1024x588.jpg\")
How to optimize your category pages<\/h2>\n
#1 – Optimize your Category URLS<\/h3>\n
#2 \u2013 Optimize your Category titles<\/h3>\n
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#3 \u2013 Optimize your Category META description<\/h3>\n
![\"Bad](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/bad-meta-description-example-1024x307.jpg\")
![\"seo](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/category-seo-meta-description-1024x170.jpg\")
#4 \u2013 Category H1 tag<\/h3>\n
![\"category](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/category-seo-h1-tag-1024x302.jpg\")
#5 \u2013 Category Text Content<\/h3>\n
![\"text](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/category-seo-text-content-946x1024.jpg\")
#6 \u2013 Conversion Optimization Elements<\/h3>\n
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![\"above](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/category-seo-above-fold-content-1024x633.jpg\")
#7 \u2013 Visual Components and Other Usability Elements<\/h3>\n
![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/image-size-study-1024x237.jpg\")
![\"category](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/category-search-options-1024x788.jpg\")
![\"category](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/category-seo-product-images-1024x479.jpg\")