Ecommerce SEO: category pages are where the money is
Most store owners optimise product pages. Most ecommerce revenue from search arrives through category pages. We work on both, in the right order.
The three problems specific to ecommerce
Category pages are under-built. A category page targets a term with far more search volume than any individual product, and on most stores it consists of a heading, a filter bar and a grid of thumbnails. There is nothing for a search engine to understand and nothing for a hesitant buyer to read. Well-built category pages are usually the single largest available win on an ecommerce site.
Faceted navigation generates infinite URLs. Every filter combination — colour, size, price, brand, sorted three ways — can create a crawlable URL. A 500-product store can generate hundreds of thousands of them. The crawler spends its budget there instead of on your real pages, and your index fills with near-duplicates.
Product content is duplicated at scale. Manufacturer descriptions appear identically on every retailer selling that product. Variant pages differ by one word. Out-of-stock and discontinued products accumulate and are handled badly — usually by deleting them, which throws away every link and ranking they had.
What’s included
- Category page development — content, internal linking, and a structure that serves both the buyer and the crawler
- Faceted navigation strategy — which filter combinations to index, which to block, and how
- Product page optimisation — unique descriptions, structured data, review integration, image optimisation
- Product schema — price, availability, reviews and shipping, so listings show rich results
- Duplicate and variant handling — canonical strategy across product variants
- Out-of-stock and discontinued product policy — redirect, retain or replace, decided per case
- Site search analysis — internal search queries are the most honest keyword research available to any store
- Crawl budget optimisation on large catalogues
- Technical performance — ecommerce sites are typically heavy and slow
Platforms
Shopify · WooCommerce · BigCommerce · Magento / Adobe Commerce · Custom builds
Each has characteristic SEO limitations — Shopify’s forced URL structure and collection handling, WooCommerce’s performance profile, Magento’s default faceted navigation behaviour. We work within them rather than pretending they don’t exist.
Pricing
| From | |
|---|---|
| Ecommerce SEO audit | $900 |
| Category page optimisation programme | $1,200 |
| Ecommerce SEO retainer (small catalogue) | $900/month |
| Ecommerce SEO retainer (large catalogue) | $2,000/month |
| Product feed optimisation | $400 |
FAQ
How much does ecommerce SEO cost?
Ecommerce SEO retainers start at $900 per month for smaller catalogues and $900 per month for large ones, since effort scales with catalogue size and technical complexity. A standalone ecommerce SEO audit starts at $2,000, and a category page optimisation programme from $600.
Should I optimise product pages or category pages first?
Category pages, in almost every case. They target higher-volume commercial terms, they’re fewer in number so the work is more concentrated, and on most stores they’re badly under-built. Product pages matter for branded and model-number searches, but the volume is lower and the work scales with your catalogue size.
What should I do with out-of-stock products?
It depends on whether the product is coming back. Temporarily out of stock: keep the page live, say so clearly, and offer alternatives — it retains its rankings and links. Permanently discontinued: redirect to the closest replacement or the parent category. Deleting the page discards every link and ranking it accumulated, which is the most common and most costly mistake.
How do I handle filters and faceted navigation?
Decide deliberately which filter combinations deserve to be indexed — usually a small set with real search demand, like “black running shoes” — and block the rest from crawling. Left unmanaged, faceted navigation is the single largest cause of crawl budget waste and index bloat on ecommerce sites. It’s also one of the most impactful things to fix.
Do I need unique descriptions for every product?
For products where you compete with other retailers selling the same item, yes — identical manufacturer copy gives a search engine no reason to prefer your listing. For large catalogues where that’s impractical, prioritise: unique content on your best-selling and highest-margin products, templated but varied content elsewhere. Perfect coverage is rarely the right use of budget.
Related
Ecommerce sites usually have significant technical SEO debt. Product feed work overlaps with Google Ads Shopping campaigns, and a full-funnel approach is covered in ecommerce marketing.
Tell us what you need.
You’ll get a scope, a price and a timeline within one working day — no call required unless you want one.