SEO Growth Hacks: Category pages

Category pages provide a simple but effective growth hack for search engine optimization (SEO). This hack will increase your ranking position in Google Search, Bing and other search engines. But it also works great for improving your AdWords quality score. And last but not least, it will increase your conversion rate.

Many websites use Wordpress or Magento and have pages for categories. These pages list links of the blog articles or in case of e-commerce, an overview of products. Since in principle this is duplicate content these pages do not rank high.

But with a small hack these pages can become highly relevant and valuable landing pages. They will rank higher in organic search, are great for paid ads and will convert better.

First published on https://www.silkdrive.com/growth-hacks-for-seo-category-pages/

Is coding required?

This hack works for any website, though it may take some coding. For custom built websites, it will take a bit more effort and customizing.

If you are using Wordpress, check if your theme supports adding a category description. If it doesn't, you need to create a child theme and make a few small changes to the code. 

If you are using Magento, in some cases you need to do some coding. And in any case you have to consider the design of your product category page to carefully fit in the additional content.

How to implement?

When you can add a description to your category page, write an introduction of at least 300 words. Use pictures and rich media to make this page as valuable as possible.

This makes the page very valuable for search engines.

This transforms the page from a summary of duplicate content to a page of unique content.

It provides more information on the category and links to all related articles or products. This makes the page very valuable for search engines.

Chances are that this page will rank higher for a specific keyword than any other type of page. Make sure you leverage this powerful hack and make this one of the best pages you have to offer.

Follow the usual checklist for optimizing a page for search engines. Choose your keywords with care and make sure it fits into your website's hierarchy.

Don't forget to add high quality content and pictures. Include meta tags and build internal links from other category pages and the homepage.

To take full advantage of this hack split your categories into subcategories. Create subcategories based on your keyword research for long tail keywords.

Example

For example, your fashion e-commerce website sells dresses. You might split dresses into categories for short dresses and long dresses. 

But also consider categories based on occasion like prom dresses, homecoming dresses, etcetera. 

Long tail keywords include searches like cheap prom dresses and sexy prom dresses. These add up to another 200K searches, so it might be worth the effort to create separate subcategory pages for these.

Note that the keyword sexy prom dresses has little competition and bids are as low as $0.14. This is a great opportunity for your AdWords campaign!

Concluding

A category based landing page will prove to be of great value. It will become easier to beat the competition with a high ranking page that is very relevant to the performed search query.

You can even work towards "dominating the first page of Google", when SEO and SEA are working together.

And because your landing page is more relevant, it will convert better.

And that means more sales.

First published on https://www.silkdrive.com/growth-hacks-for-seo-category-pages/