• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. On-Page Optimization
        4. Ecommerce On-Site SEO: Keywords in Category Descriptions

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Ecommerce On-Site SEO: Keywords in Category Descriptions

        On-Page Optimization
        4
        12
        6676
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • BobGW
          BobGW last edited by

          Hello,

          I'm doing on-site SEO for a client's ecommerce site.

          Are 160 words enough for a category description?

          I'm using the keywords once at the top of the description, and once at the bottom of the description, with the ones at the bottom reworded so that they are the keywords with a different word order.

          I used to put the keywords in 3 times but it just feels like stuffing.

          Is twice, worded differently the second time, enough for a category description?

          Thanks.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • BobGW
            BobGW @BobGW last edited by

            Great, that sounds like an improvement. With that many words, appropriate keywords for the page can be used 3 times in various word orders.

            If your keyword was "running shoes" and you have your words at the top, do you use your keyword once as "running shoes" at the top, and then in the bottom text include it once as "running shoes" and once as "shoes for running"

            Or what have you found is effective? I don't like to keyword stuff.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • CMC-SD
              CMC-SD @BobGW last edited by

              We do what Gerd describes in his comment -- a short description at the top of the page, then the products in the middle of the page, and then additional description at the bottom of the page. Total word count ~500.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • BobGW
                BobGW @CMC-SD last edited by

                I agree. How many words do you guys recommend for a category? We could probably add up to 300-500 if we wanted in our case.

                CMC-SD BobGW 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • CMC-SD
                  CMC-SD @MagicDude4Eva last edited by

                  Meta-Keywords and Meta-Description no longer contribute to ranking, I thought -- and optimizing Meta-Description is less and less important as Google becomes more likely to use whatever the heck they want for the snippet.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • CMC-SD
                    CMC-SD last edited by

                    160 well written words are certainly enough for Google to understand what the page is about. Adding more words could help bring in more long-tail, as you include variations on the keyword, modifiers, etc. But you don't want so many words that conversion suffers.

                    I find that for most keyword phrases, more than twice in ~150 words feels stuffed and unnatural.

                    BobGW 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • BobGW
                      BobGW @BobGW last edited by

                      Forgive me for not knowing, but what is a high index-ratio?

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • MagicDude4Eva
                        MagicDude4Eva @BobGW last edited by

                        True, there is obviously a lot more to SEO than just filling meta-tags. My example above was just something we do for categories and obviously elements such as TITLE, H1-H3 are important.

                        I would look at SEO in eCommerce holistically:

                        • Understand your product category taxonomy and related categories. Provide a mechanism to "boilerplate" tags important for SEO. This also should include microdata such as breadcrumbs.
                        • Provide a "fall-back" mechanism if your content team fails - i.e. if your product team introduces new categories without SEO meta-data, craft them from the information you know about the category (i.e. category title and generic keywords)
                        • Don't forget about pushing Sitemap data to Google - this will push your whole taxonomy and products into the index.
                        • Ensure that your search indexes (many people say don't but we have not found an issue with it).
                        • Pay attention to canonicals for both products and categories and ensure that all links are SEO friendly
                        • Craft your brand verbs (buy, sell, cheap etc) in searches and categories

                        I think it is more important to have a high index-ratio in search than stuffing keywords which result in irrelevant search results. Over 80% of our products get indexed through Google and since we have mostly user-generated content, we ensure that the meta-data for the products is good.

                        If your client has a product catalogue SEO becomes a lot easier, as data should be very structured, but it will be challenging since the same content is syndicated to many other competitors.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • BobGW
                          BobGW @MagicDude4Eva last edited by

                          Gerd,

                          Could you say more? I'm not sure I completely follow you. I assume you think titles, h1, etc. should point to what's exactly on the page, and I agree, but don't you work in what's most searched for?

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • BobGW
                            BobGW @MagicDude4Eva last edited by

                            Gerd,

                            Could you say more? I'm not sure I completely follow you. I assume you think titles, h1, etc. should point to what's exactly on the page, and I agree, but don't you work in what's most searched for? In your case gaming is very searched for almost no matter what terms you use to describe it.

                            MagicDude4Eva BobGW 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • MagicDude4Eva
                              MagicDude4Eva last edited by

                              I honestly would not stuff keywords like that. Meta tag keywords and descriptions should hint at the actual content on page.

                              Our site-structure for eCommerce categories consists of the following (here is an example😞

                              • Meta tags with keywords and description
                              • Content lead-in (text below the banner)
                              • Subcategory links and content
                              • Content lead-out (text below pagination)

                              Each category has the same structure and our product team manages the actual content. This works very effectively.

                              BobGW CMC-SD 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • TomRayner
                                TomRayner last edited by

                                It's pretty hard to give a 'right' amount here.

                                Of course, it's well documented that more content on a page has a strong correlation with improved rankings (and conversions).  To say that there is a golden threshold of characters, however, is impossible to say.

                                I'd rather bring up the point you make about stuffing.  That's probably the main thing to keep in mind when writing descriptions or content - don't make it look like you're gaming for a search engine, but keep it great for a user.  If you can use your keyword multiple times, that's great.  But, as you allude to, writing it for the sake of getting it on the page more often is a bad move.

                                If 160 words for a description is the absolute most you can say on a topic, without repeating yourself, then 160 is the right amount **in this case.  **Other times it might be more, and sometimes it might be even less; it really is dependent on the context.

                                You might be able to squeeze more content for a description by using things like an example of how a system/process works etc.  But I'd always remain focus on writing for a user, not a search engine, and to avoid stuffing where possible, as you rightly pointed out.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • 1 / 1
                                • First post
                                  Last post

                                Browse Questions

                                Explore more categories

                                • Moz Tools

                                  Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                                • SEO Tactics

                                  Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                                • Community

                                  Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                                • Digital Marketing

                                  Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                                • Research & Trends

                                  Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                                • Support

                                  Connect on product support and feature requests.

                                • See all categories

                                Related Questions

                                • whiteonlySEO

                                  Hi, Does having orphan pages on my site negatively affect my seo? Thank you.

                                  Hi, I have quite a few orphan pages on my site and we see that our rankings have fell significantly over the past 6 months. Can this have be negatively affecting our rankings? Thank you.

                                  On-Page Optimization | | whiteonlySEO
                                  0
                                • Mike.Bean

                                  Keyword Stuffing Question

                                  Say your on a e-commerce category page "Shirts" every lower level category has "shirts" in it such as: T-shirt, long sleeve shirt, sweat shirt, v-neck shirt, and so on. Is this page going to be penalized in google for the keyword "shirts" just because it is in the title and on the page a thousand times because i'm targetting words like "long sleeve shirt? and if it is, will the "long sleeve shirt" keyword be negatively affected as well? Answer much appreciated,
                                  Thanks in advance.

                                  On-Page Optimization | | Mike.Bean
                                  0
                                • AndieF

                                  ECommerce Filtering Affect on SEO

                                  I'm building an eCommerce website which has an advanced filter on the left hand side of the category pages. It allows users to tick boxes for colours, sizes, materials, and so on. When they've made their choices they submit (this will likely be an AJAX thing in a future release, but isn't at time of writing). The new filtered page has a new URL, which is made up of the IDs of the filter's they've ticked - it's a bit like /department/2/17-7-4/10/ My concern is that the filtered pages are, on the most part, going to be the same as the parent. Which may lead to duplicate content. My other concern is that these two URLs would lead to the exact same page (although the system would never generate the 'wrong' URL) /department/2/17-7-4/10/ /department/2/**10/**17-7-4/ But I can't think of a way of canonicalising that automatically. Tricky. So the meat of the question is this: should I worry about this causing issues with the SEO - or can I have trust in Google to work it out?

                                  On-Page Optimization | | AndieF
                                  0
                                • NeilD

                                  Keywords in Navigation

                                  Hi, What is best practice for main navigation links with regards to use of keywords in them. For example is it best to using the phrase 'Pricing", "Website Pricing" or "Website Design Pricing" To me 'Pricing' is more appropriate because to the user they know they are on a website designer's site so what else would pricing be for right?!  Furthermore you use less 'real estate' on the nav bar! There is on page text around the site which has links to "see our website design pricing" etc so I assume that is perhaps a more natural place to include that phrase? Look forward to your insights 🙂

                                  On-Page Optimization | | NeilD
                                  0
                                • Jungles

                                  SEO for luxury brands!?

                                  Hi all, It is widely known fact that you will be a bit in trouble if you will need to do SEO for luxury brand that is not willing to sacrifice design, layout etc. for SEO purposes. So basically - there is no content to optimize and there is almost no keywords to rank! 😉 Just wondering - how would be the best to approach such kind of terrible situation? Regards, Jungle

                                  On-Page Optimization | | Jungles
                                  0
                                • KnutDSvendsen

                                  SEO for Japan

                                  Google and Yahoo are the two major search engines in Japan. You can search using Western characters, and you often see English language results with Japanese (Chinese) characters next to them. As I don't speak Japanese, how do I approach SEO for my Japanese-language site? would appreciate any experiences and educational sources on the topic.

                                  On-Page Optimization | | KnutDSvendsen
                                  0
                                • A Former User

                                  Does keyword at the very front of meta description have impact?

                                  I know that it is important to have your primary keyword target as the first word or two words of your title tag.  But what about your meta description tag? does it matter where they keyword is in the description tag?  I see a lot of other sites stuffing their keywords right at the front of the description tag and it looks somewhat unnatural.  What's your take? do you put the primary keyword as the first word or two words of your description tag?

                                  On-Page Optimization | | A Former User
                                  0
                                • semvibe

                                  Keyword Self- Cannibalization

                                  I have a question about Keyword Self Cannibalization.  I have a web page which is targeting the main keyword as "sarees". But this same page has internal linking from the keywords Benarasi Silk Sarees, Silk Saree, Traditional Sarees, cotton sarees,etc to their respectve pages. We are optimizing those pages separately for their respective keywords as well. When I run on-page report card for these web page from seomoz tool, I got an error says "Avoid Keyword Self-Cannibalization". Is this due to the internal linking from these keywords? Can anybody recommend a solution for this problem?

                                  On-Page Optimization | | semvibe
                                  1

                                Get started with Moz Pro!

                                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                Start my free trial
                                Products
                                • Moz Pro
                                • Moz Local
                                • Moz API
                                • Moz Data
                                • STAT
                                • Product Updates
                                Moz Solutions
                                • SMB Solutions
                                • Agency Solutions
                                • Enterprise Solutions
                                • Digital Marketers
                                Free SEO Tools
                                • Domain Authority Checker
                                • Link Explorer
                                • Keyword Explorer
                                • Competitive Research
                                • Brand Authority Checker
                                • Local Citation Checker
                                • MozBar Extension
                                • MozCast
                                Resources
                                • Blog
                                • SEO Learning Center
                                • Help Hub
                                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                • How-to Guides
                                • Moz Academy
                                • API Docs
                                About Moz
                                • About
                                • Team
                                • Careers
                                • Contact
                                Why Moz
                                • Case Studies
                                • Testimonials
                                Get Involved
                                • Become an Affiliate
                                • MozCon
                                • Webinars
                                • Practical Marketer Series
                                • MozPod
                                Connect with us

                                Contact the Help team

                                Join our newsletter
                                Moz logo
                                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                • Accessibility
                                • Terms of Use
                                • Privacy

                                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.