Multiple Category Merchandising & SEO

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SMX East, 04/07/2023

Paginated Categorical Merchandising & SEO

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Agenda

• About PM Digital• Why Merchandise in Multiple Categories?• Technical Challenges• Solutions

– Overall Best Practices• Build It Right The First Time• Working With Existing Infrastructure

• Key Takeaways• Appendix

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About PM Digital

• Digital Agency servicing clients in retail, financial services, non-profit, CPG and more

• Primary service offerings: SEO, SEM, Email Marketing, Social Media and Creative

• Clients include The North Face, The Sportsman’s Guide, dELiA’s, Paul Fredrick and many more

• 20 clients in the Internet Retailer Top 500

• Based in New York with offices in Minneapolis, Columbia, SC and Scottsdale, AZ

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Why Merchandise in Multiple Categories?




Why Merchandise in Multiple Categories?

• Merchandising products in multiple categories enables a retailer to provide solutions for a variety of consumer needs (e.g. search queries) based on the products they carry

• This enables a retailer to create valuable entry points to capture new customers from a variety of searches in multiple stages of the consumer decision process.

• It is also necessary to merchandise products in a manner that is compelling and doesn’t overwhelm consumers and maintains optimal page-load speed, hence the need for category pagination.

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Proof is in the Data

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General Interest

Investigation Phase

Narrowing Phase

Conversion Phase

Consumer Decision Process

Eye Care4,400 (SV*)

* Source: Google Adwords data average monthly search demand, exact-match, local

Goal: Gain visibility for each level of the Consumer Decision Process

• Capture more visits at all stages

• Create greater brand awareness

• Increase overall competitive share of voice

Anti-Aging Cream2,900 (SV*)

Dark Circles3,600 (SV*)

Eye Cream3,600 (SV*)

sea results deep sleep

recovery serum, 0

(SV*)


TechnicalChallenges




Technical Challenges

1. While multiple category options do create good solutions from a merchandising standpoint, there are many instances where the product URL path changes from each category creating duplicate content for the product URLs

– Example:• /new-arrivals/product-name• /seasonal/product-name• /sale/product-name• /products/product-name

2. To compound this even further, pagination for each merchandising option can multiply duplicate content by each category resulting in loss of visibility and in some instances page removal (e.g. Panda)

8

Dresses

Dresses on Sale


Technical Challenges In-Action

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Manufacturer/retailer selling their products on their own site and several other online retailers

Challenge:URLs for the same product change when accessed from different categories

Keywords reviewed:10 product keywords, merchandised in multiple categories:Loose Leaf Tea (primary), Sale, Gifts, Top sellers, High caffeine


Solutions




Build It Right The First Time1. The ideal scenario is to store all products in a single database that assigns one

unique URL to each product no matter where the product is called

2. The navigation paths from categories (primary category, needs-based, new arrivals, sale, etc.) should not append to URLs

3. Pagination at the category-level: point all category canonical directives to the start page (pg. 1) for pages 2-n

4. Include product URLs in XML sitemap feed

5. Internal Link Optimization: include breadcrumb links

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Eye Care (Category) http://www.h2oplus.com/category/skin+care/eye+care.do

Anti-Aging (Sub Category) http://www.h2oplus.com/category/skin+care/anti-aging.do

Dark Circles (Sub Category) http://www.h2oplus.com/category/skin+care/dark+circles.

do

Sensitive Skin (Sub Category) http://www.h2oplus.com/category/skin+care/sensitive+ski

n.do

Sea Results Eye Defense Fortifying Serum (Product)

http://www.h2oplus.com/product/sea+results+eye+defens

e+fortifying+serum.do

Best Uses:Sight builds / rebuilds

eCommerce Platforms:MarketLive, GSI (latest SEO extension), Websphere (with slight modifications)


Single Database In-Action

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Cosmetic / skincare retailer / manufacturer selling their products on their own site and several other online retailers

Challenge:Products are merchandised in multiple categories, with one unique URL for each product

Keywords reviewed:12 product keywords, merchandised in multiple categories:Eye care, Anti-aging, Dark circles, Sensitive skin


Single Database In-Action

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Women’s clothing retailer / manufacturer selling their products on their own site and several other online retailers

Challenge:Products are merchandised in multiple categories, with one unique URL for each product

Keywords reviewed:10 product keywords, merchandised in multiple categories:Dresses, New Arrival Dresses, Dresses on Sale, Casual Dresses


Working With Existing Infrastructure

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Category names append to URL when accessed from different categories

1. Rel=“canonical”: Assign the canonical directive to an assigned primary product category (canonical) for all product URLs (products, primary category)

2. XML Sitemap Feeds: only add product URLs assigned to primary / canonical folder

3. Pagination at the category-level: point all category canonical directives to the start page of the category (pg. 1) for pages 2-n

4. Internal Link Optimization: include breadcrumb links

Eye Care (Category) http://www.h2oplus.com/cate

gory/skin+care/eye+care.do

Anti-Aging (Sub Category) http://www.h2oplus.com/category/skin+care/anti-aging.do

Dark Circles (Sub Category) http://www.h2oplus.com/category/skin+care/dark+circles.d

o

Sensitive Skin (Sub Category) http://www.h2oplus.com/category/skin+care/sensitive+skin.

do

Sea Results Eye Defense Fortifying Serum (Canonical

Product URL) http://www.h2oplus.com/product/sea+results+eye+defense+fortif

ying+serum.do

Eye Care (Appended Product URL)

http://www.h2oplus.com/category/skin+care/eye+care/sea+results+eye+defense+fortifyin

g+serum.do

Anti-Aging (Appended Product URL)

http://www.h2oplus.com/category/skin+care/anti-aging/sea+results+eye+defense+fortifyi

ng+serum.do

Dark Circles (Appended Product URL)

http://www.h2oplus.com/category/skin+care/dark+circles/sea+results+eye+defense+fortif

ying+serum.do

Sensitive Skin (Appended Product URL)

http://www.h2oplus.com/category/skin+care/sensitive+skin/sea+results+eye+defense+forti

fying+serum.do

Rel=“canonical” to Canonical Product

URL

Rel=“canonical” to Canonical Product

URL


Canonical Directives In-Action

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Shoe retailer / manufacturer selling their products on their own site and several other online retailers

Challenge:Products are merchandised in multiple categories, canonicals direct to product URL in primary category

Keywords reviewed:10 product keywords, merchandised in multiple categories:Sale, Special selections, New styles, Primary category (pumps, sandals, boots)


Working With Existing InfrastructureAJAX Pagination

1. Assign the canonical directive to an assigned primary product category (canonical) for all product URLs (products, primary category)

2. Add all product URLs to XML sitemap feed– Ensure product URLs are the canonical versions only

3. Modify AJAX with Google Web Tool Kit to enable crawling of category pages 2-n

4. Pagination at the category-level: point all category canonical directives to the start page of the category (pg. 1) for pages 2-n

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AJAX Pagination In-Action

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Clothing retailer / manufacturer selling their products on their own site and several other online retailers

Challenge:Products are merchandised in categories with pagination accessible via AJAX

Keywords reviewed:10 product keywords, merchandised via AJAX pagination on pages 2-n in multiple categories


Key Takeaways




Key Takeaways• While there are indeed challenges from merchandising in multiple

categories, the benefits are many. The ability to promote products by season, sales, new arrivals, and the like enable a retailer to create new entry points and better align their brand with the consumer decision process.

• The ideal scenario is to store all products in a single database that assigns one unique URL to each product no matter where the product is called typically yields the best results– Build it right the first time!

• With existing infrastructure it is recommended to direct canonical to product URLs assigned to a primary / canonical folders (products, primary category)

• Pagination at the category-level: point all category canonical directives to the start page (pg. 1) for pages 2-n– Alleviates compounding of duplicate content

• Only include product URLs assigned to the canonical version in XML sitemap feeds

• Test, Test, Test – Measure, Measure, Measure

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Appendix




Product Canonical Auto-Deployment (How To)1. Examine your product pages URL and extract the base URL from it, the part from the ‘http’ to the last part that remains constant for all products (i.e. http://www.domain.com/storefront/”).

2. Determine how and where you get the URL-friendly category name and product name. This might be the database, the request URL or as a global or local variable.

3. Determine which page/class in your code is responsible for rendering the headers for all products pages.

4. Modify the code to fetch the category name and product name.

5. Recompile and test the automatic canonical META tags functionality.

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See appendix for code sample


Product Canonical Auto-Deployment (.NET sample)The method discussed here assumes site uses a .NET-based shopping cart, the URL for any given product consists of a base URL, which is the domain name and any static folder structure, such as ‘/shop/’ or ‘/cart/’, a primary category name and a product name.

The latter two are assumed to be properly URL encoded, (e.g. do not contain any spaces or special characters). A fully rendered canonical product URL would appear as:

http://www.domain.com/category-name/product-name

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Product Canonical Auto-Deployment (.NET sample)The code sample below would be used on the product page (or product specific header or master page. A URL-friendly category name and product name are then being pulled from the database, concatenated with the base URL and then rendered as the href attribute of the canonical META tag.

using System;

using System.Web.UI;

using System.Web.UI.HtmlControls;

public partial class Products : Page

{

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

string strCategoryString, strProductString, strCanonicalUrl,

strBaseUrl;

[insert code here to retrieve category and product name strings from DB]

strBaseUrl = "http://www.domain.com/";

strCanonicalUrl = strBaseUrl + strCategoryString + "/" +

strProductString

HtmlLink canonicalTag = new HtmlLink();

canonicalTag.Href = strCanonicalUrl;

canonicalTag.Attributes["rel"] = "canonical";

Page.Header.Controls.Add(canonicalTag);

}

}

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Richard ChavezSr. Director, SEOPM [email protected]://www.PMDigital.comBlog: http://blog.PMDigital.com/ Twitter: @PMDigital, @richardachavez

Thank You

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.pmdigital.com/

http://blog.pmdigital.com/



Date post:	20-Oct-2014
Category:	Technology
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Multiple Category Merchandising & SEO

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