Google suggests extra content is not always needed for category pages. Because Google search engine can recognize what’s on a page by reading the product names. Google’s senior webmaster trends analyst John Mueller said, “a little bit of content I think is always useful.”
Category pages should maintain the minimum content to cover all the necessary information to make it understandable to Google SE. Many products carry the majority of such data in their name themselves. It may not require any additional content besides including products themselves.
One should provide necessary content but should not overload it. Mueller was asked about the minimum word count for an ideal product category page but did not specify.
Mueller emphasized putting the necessary amount of information on a category page. He suggested adding separate pages for different intents of the same product. As a result, Google and users will distinguish between the product landing page and the informational page.
The main focus of category pages is always the products themselves. But one should also look for the quality of the content to make it rank higher according to SEO guidelines. So we need to prepare the content, where the product is more important than the content.
e-Commerce website contains a category page with products and a huge advisory text for the product. On the category page, information should be in a list of bullet points. Outsource the rest of the data to another page that links to the category page.
A few suggestions by various researchers regarding the ideal category page. A few hundred words on top of the page is a perfect way to make the product name more prominent. Ideally, category pages should allow users to read more by going to the bottom of the page.
Extra Content is Not Always Needed for Category Pages
There should be a provision of a button below the product, which can lead to the full informational content of the product. One should try a category page with different tabs to test their potential success.
Few follow different landing page schemes to make the category pages look more symmetrical. They put informational content in the blog and link it to the category page or the individual product pages. By doing this, a blog post is generally with appropriate category pages.
It is possible that if a product name is more descriptive, Google will rank the page without much additional information. For the non-descriptive product names, this is usually not much applicable. It would require extra content in that case to gain a deeper understanding of the page.
With the advent of mobiles in this modernized world, Google is also changing the category page perspectives. Google has started indexing both tabs and even non-visible tabs to make more sense on mobile screens.
Use a trial and error method to determine what category page will ultimately suit the product. A category page needs to be of a good design to make it rank higher in search engine results.