Search Engine Friendly E-Commerce Catalogs - The Category or Sub-category Pages
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Category and sub-category landing pages are not only a must have for usability purposes but a necessity for search engine visibility. The category pages are a way to break down your product offerings into a logical and meaningful classification. By classifying or grouping your products into categories, you will be able to help your user better locate the product they are looking for and help the searcher land directly on the page he or she is searching for.
For example, let's take a Web site that sells computer products and services. The company can break down their products into four main categories. The main categories can be hardware, software, consultation and warranties. Your goal, as an SEO, is to target the keyword phrases "computer hardware", "computer software", "computer consultation", and "computer warranties" respectively. Within these four main categories, you will most probably want to break down into several deeper sub-categories. For example, the hardware category can contain the following sub-categories: desktops, laptops, monitors, printers, scanners and so on. The software category can be broken down into the following sub-categories: education, business, financial, technical, entertainment, and so on. By now you can see why category and sub-category pages are a necessity for both the customers and search engines.
TITLE & META TAGS: The diagram below shows the important elements in constructing search engine friendly category and sub-category pages. Let's begin from the top of the page and go down. The title of the page should contain the category name, if you are on the category page or the sub-category name, if you are on the sub-category page. So if we are on the desktop page within the hardware section, you probably want to target the keyword phrase "computer desktops" for the title of that page. The meta tags can contain this information as well. For the meta description I like to use the following syntax; "Find [sub category name] at [store name]". And for the meta keywords I like to use the following syntax for the category pages; "[category name plural, category name singular, category name misspelling1, category name misspelling2, category name misspellingN]".
LOGO: The S.E. Friendly Shop logo can either be text based or a graphic. Most of the time this logo will be a graphic. When it's a graphic, I like to dynamically insert the alternative text to read [category name from store name]. The reason I do this is because when I check to see if the pages are indexed in the search engines, the search engines normally pull the top most content. If the top most content is the logo, and if the logo has the same alternative text on every page, the results will normally be filtered. Let me stress that this is just a 'pet peeve' of mine, and I do not think it has an effect on rankings.
HEADER TAG and TOP of PAGE: It is always recommended to have the category or sub-category name repeated in the header tag (<h1>) towards the top of the page. Then have a hand-written page description with keywords for that page in the description. This description should be written for your shopper but there is no reason not to include keyword phrases that the search engines want to see. Also towards the top of the page, you should place a "breadcrumb trail". A breadcrumb trail is a little text-based line that shows you the click path you took to get the your current page. So if I clicked from the home page to the computer hardware page and then to the computer desktop page, the breadcrumb would read "home -> computer hardware -> computer desktop". You should make breadcrumb text links to the appropriate pages. So the "computer hardware" part of the breadcrumb trail will link back to that page. Not only is this a great usability feature, but search engines love it also.
SIDE NAVIGATION: Repeated throughout the site and always in the same location on all the pages, your user should be able to find the site navigation. Consistent navigation will make for happier Web visitors and happier Web visitors are more likely to buy. Many e-commerce stores remove the side navigation from the checkout pages, in order not to distract the customer from the buying process. This side bar navigation should be HTML. It will act as a mini site map on every page. Search engines love it and so do your Web visitors.
PRODUCT DISPLAY/SUB-CATEGORY DISPLAY: In the middle portion of the page you should list out the products within that category or sub-category and also have a breakdown of more filter options. So when you are in the category page, it is a good idea to have text links in that middle portion to the sub-category pages. It is also important to have product on those pages for those consumers who are not sure what they want. The product information should contain simple text-based links to the product detail page. The link should contain the product name, a short product description underneath, and an eye-catching "buy now" or "more info" button. The product image should be clear, attractive and large enough to entice a user's action. The product image should contain alternative text with the product name and link to the product detail page. Filters for the category or sub-category pages can work to your benefit. Filtering by brand, price, size, or any other product attribute will give you a better shot at ranking well for more keyword phrases. For example, if you had a filter on laptops based on monitor size then you can rank well for keywords such as "15 inch laptop computers."
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