Doing an in-depth SEO audit is not easy. Knowing which pages to look at and which elements on those pages is crucial. This is a peek at our list of checkpoints for e-commerce category pages.
An in-depth e-commerce SEO audit should involve looking at all of the different types of pages separately, not using the same criteria to analyze all pages in the same way. We don’t structure category pages the same way as product pages and our product pages don’t look like blog articles either.
Each type of page should have it’s own checklist and these are a few of the things that we look for when analyzing your e-commerce category pages.
Title Tags
The is normally one of the #1 SEO factors on ANY page and your category pages are no exception.
Follow these guides:
- Aim for 55 characters (although the actual amount displayed is determined by pixel count) but remember that Google can use more than just 55 characters for ranking purposes.
- Make sure to include the category name and leave off the parent category if its in a hierarchy
Images
We don’t expect much here on category pages aside from your product images (and users don’t want much else). Most of the content on these pages should be made up of the products that populate the category, but having 1 banner image can be considered a best practice here.
Follow these guides:
- Product images need to have their ALT tag using the product name
- Product images should have their file name also descriptive of the product. Keep an eye out if your CDN renames he files.
- For the category banner image, make sure that the image file name has something to do with primary keyword phrase for that category. Same thing goes for the ALT text
H Tags
There is no rocket science to this one. Hopefully your category name has your basic keywords in it and this is very similar your page title as well.
The only useful insight here that we’ll provide right now is that if you happen to be using H2 tags instead of H1 tags you can assume this will make no difference. Google is most likely interested in the relative text sizing, general H tag designation, and position relative to the content here… rather than your particular use of the H1, H2, H3 hierarchy.
Category Descriptions
The use of category descriptions causes heated debates even to this day. A standard format that we used for years was 1-3 paragraphs at the top of the page, above the product listing grid.
Then another content block below the grid would contain several more paragraphs of text, with deep linking, largely for SEO purposes.
The upper section of text is most important. The lower text on the page is a little bit old school.
Recent comments from Googlers has suggested that you should avoid trying to convince Google that a product page is a top 10 article or that a category page is a product review page. This has knocked the additional lower text slightly down on our priority list lately.
Meta Descriptions
Category pages should have meta descriptions filled out. The best practices that we follow here are to either have an optimized meta description or a blank one, but duplicate meta descriptions are not allowed.
A category page with extremely high visibility in the SERPs should have a meta description that includes the company’s primary USPs (Unique Selling Proposition) telling the buyer not only details of the category page, but why they should buy from you.
Keep in mind that adding the meta descriptions are NOT for higher rankings. They are an attempt to get higher CTR (Click Thru Rates).
Category Page URLs
The interesting discussion point here is not so much about whether or not this is an important ranking factor or how it is used. The interesting discussion is that while you should be following a list of best practices we almost never suggest changing URL structures for existing e-commerce websites.
Why? There is a risk to existing rankings. In the past we have fared surprisingly well when it comes to doing redirects of important web pages, but we usually avoid this.
Overlapping Categories & Missing Categories
Looking at the category hierarchy of your website is an important part of the SEO process for an e-commerce website. This is because you can find some easy wins here and you’ll also lose out on a lot of traffic if your categories are not set up properly.
Overlapping categories will give the search engines more than one obvious target for some searches and it will disrupt your internal linking structure, resulting in less than optimal results. Each category page should be sufficiently differentiated from one another.
Missing categories are a type of low hanging fruit. You may already have a large group of products that can be grouped together and put into a new category which will bring in incremental organic search traffic.
But do not confuse product filters or faceted navigation as a category page. Most of the popular E-Commerce platforms tell search engines to ignore the filtered results for these reasons:
- All the filter variations can eat up your crawl budget
- The filtered page usually does not have unique, optimized Title tags, Meta descriptions or even H1 headings
Category pages are just a small part of the overall SEO audit process for an e-commerce website. It’s important to analyze the product pages, homepage, blog pages and beyond during the process. Get in touch with us if you are interested in an SEO audit for the e-commerce store that you manage.
