E-trade SEOs regularly vicinity relevant content material approximately a class inside the footer in their e-trade category pages, hoping it’ll assist the web page rank in seek. But Google’s John Mueller these days cautioned in a webmaster hangout that this isn’t an excellent concept. He said, “I’d try and stick with honestly informative content and put that during places in which you suspect that users will be able to see it,” in place of throwing that content at the footer of the page.
John’s advice. John stated this at the 7:18 mark of the video documenting the hangout. He said it’s miles nice to have your content material included in the class pages in which the content is beneficial to the net website tourist. “Things you can do right here,” he stated, “is the make sure that those pages are properly-included with your internet site so that we have a clear context of how the one’s pages must belong the internet site and what the one’s pages are approximate.”
He delivered, “any other factor you can do is if you have that list of merchandise — make certain that there are a few statistics on the one’s listings so that we can apprehend what the web page is set.”
But do no longer merely throw content material within the footer of the page below the listings for the goods. But it works. Despite what Mueller said, CEOs are unlikely to be dissuaded from this practice. After I wrote about this on my non-public blog, I heard from many CEOs who stated that even if it’s not a recommended practice, it nonetheless works. In different phrases, they’ve determined that placing content material at the footer of class pages on e-commerce sites helps those class pages rank for the keywords they may be focused on.
One such SEO stated, “I’ll stop doing it when it stops operating.” That turned into a standard response we saw on social media in reaction to John Mueller’s recommendation. Why it matters, search engine marketing isn’t real technological know-how. What might paintings on one site work on every other website online? Also, the recommendation Google gives you may not turn out to be working as anticipated on your website. The key here is to try different things, live inside Google’s webmaster tips, and also ensure to build a domain that your website traffic will recognize and convert on.
Here is the transcript:
Many e-trade websites optimize their classes by including a large chew of textual content underneath the product listings—nothing except an h1 heading above the fold. I don’t consider this right usability, given that users need to scroll all of the manners down to study this. Does Google deal with this content material similar to another, or might you, for enhancing rankings, endorse setting the class textual content above the fold?
So that is something that that comes up fairly often.
One of the reasons why websites first commenced form of doing this kind of workaround is that it becomes tough once in a while for us to rank class pages on e-commerce websites if there are no beneficial statistics on that page if there’s context on that page. So as a workaround, human beings commenced stuffing entire Wikipedia articles underneath the fold the usage of small font, sometimes using a hyperlink like that says like more records that pop out at this large article of textual content.
And from our point of view, that’s essentially keyword stuffing. So that’s something worth which I would try to avoid. I’d try to stick with indeed informative content and position that during the region in which you suspect that users can be capable of seeing it, especially if it is content that you want to offer for customers. And more significant than that, I might reflect consideration on what you can do to make the pages rank correctly without having to position a massive paragraph of content below the page.
So things you can do here is they ensure that the one’s pages are well incorporated with your internet site so that we have the clean context of ways those pages must belong to the website and what those pages are about. And every other component you can do is when you have that listing of products, make sure that there are a few records on that on the one’s listings that we can understand what this web page is about.
So instead of merely listing, I don’t realize 40 photos of your product, placed some textual content there. Ensure you have alt textual content for the snapshots, which you have captions below their photographs. So that when we observe this page, we apprehend, oh there’s this big heading on top that’s telling us like this is the kind of product you have on your website. There’s plenty of product data in the one’s listings, and we can comply with the one’s listings to do even more statistics so that you don’t need to place this large block of text on the bottom. Having some quantity of textual content makes sense. So maybe transferring that giant block of textual content into perhaps one or sentence which you region above the fold beneath the heading is a great technique right here. It additionally offers customers extra facts about what they should assume on this page. So that’s a form of the path I might head there.
I’d sincerely try to keep away from the situation in which you’re fudging a web page by way of putting heaps of textual content on the bottom of the page just because the rest of the page is suboptimal and alternatively, attempt to locate ways to enhance the web page standard so that you don’t should move this workaround.
