Category Restructuring is an SEO Wonder Weapon

Category Restructuring

Category restructuring is an SEO wonder weapon because it usually creates a huge hockey stick SEO effect which influences the revenue, which in the end influences profits. So what is category restructuring exactly? So the definition would be category restructuring refers to the process of reorganizing and optimizing the way of products or content are grouped and labeled inside an on online store. But what is the goal of category restructuring? It is to create a clear and logical hierarchy between the categories and subcategories so that the potential customers can easier find what they're searching for and that search engines like Google and their bots can easier crawl, index and identify those subcategories and categories. So, at the end the goal is that users and bots better understand your online store structure and to know what they should and will find inside those categories.

Category restructuring is a complex undertaking, it takes a lot of effort and you shouldn't underestimate it, but the effect of it is worth every second, minute, hour, day, week or even month, or years to do it. Depending on the size of an online store, this could take a while but if you take the shortcut I will present you in this lesson, then you will be able to do it faster and more effective.

In the beginning it is important that you don't confuse category restructuring with menu restructuring. Those are two completely different things although some of you may think that they are very close or even the same thing.

In the whole process of doing the category restructuring, one thing has been done a lot of times wrong and that is not listening to the client. You should listen to the client, especially to the wording he's using to describe certain categories and subcategories and even products. You will notice in the conversation with your clients that he or she often uses a different word, a different synonym, a different completely description for a category and subcategory or even a product inside their online store. So while they're talking to you, they're using one certain term and inside the online store you can find others. Write down all the terms the client is using and are different from the online store. Maybe later in the research you will find out that the words he has been using during the conversations is more popular inside search engines than the ones which are in the store and also maybe some things will sound familiar to you, but they're not. So ask a lot of questions when having the kickoff conversations with your client to understand the niche you're working in. That's very, very important. Don't ignore everything the client is saying and ask him about his experience with the customers - what they're buying first, what they're buying the most, what they're buying during the checkout, what they often forget to buy but should buy, and so on, and so on. Those are all important notes you should take.

You shouldn't also underestimate categories and subcategories with low search volume or not existing search volume at all, because users sometimes buy things during the way to the checkout. So if you're buying a desktop PC you will see that many of those customers at the end buy also an additional keyboard and a mouse. Maybe a search volume for PC keyboards and PC mice is not so big, but in the checkout they're buying it. So always check also the revenue numbers from all channels inside Google Analytics for every category. Do not delete or do not suspend any categories without or with a low search volume just because you have that SEO perspective. Check also what is happening inside the online store.

We already mentioned a few things which are kind of related to category restructuring. For first, we talked about cleaning up the SEO entity - that's very important, it's also part of the restructuring process but can be done also as a standalone process. We also taught in the lessons that you should check if an subcategory is belonging to the right category. That seems to be important, we already addressed it, we will go further on in this lesson about it. We also learned in the past lessons that each category should have at least 12 products to be competitive. In some certain niches it's not that important, like cranes. You can also have five type of certain, five products of a certain crane type but for the most online stores 12 is the lowest number you should go. That's what we addressed but there is a lot more to it than just those three points, and just considering them, and thinking about them. So we need to go to the whole process. Therefore I have prepared three pages, I need to explain you everything. Maybe we will not finish everything in this lesson, we will need an additional lesson, we will see but let's try it.

Mirroring the Category Structure

The number one thing what you should do is that you mirror the category structure into a sheet and for the beginning how you can mirror that - you are not going to take the menu points and and write it down in a sheet, you will also not go through the category structure click by click and replicate it into a sheet. You will go into the backend of the online store and get the list of all active categories and subcategories, and then you will put them into a sheet. Nothing else works. That's the only real structure we're talking about. So that's the first thing people do wrong, but not you hopefully.

Align the Structure to the Client’s Plans

The second is to align the structure, the existing category structure to the plans the client might have. Ask him if he wants to add a certain category, subcategory in the near future, in the next 6 months up to 2 years. Ask him if he is definitely planning it, because clients as we ourselves have sometimes dreams, we would like and we wish to have certain things but it's not going to happen. Ask him what he has really planned to add to the online store. If there is something, write it down because that's your future category structure and you should consider it right now and not do again restructuring because there are new additional subcategories or categories. Then do the second thing and that is ask him if he's going to remove some categories or subcategories, or if he is planning to remove them for certain. So if there's a kind of certainty in the client that he will remove subcategories and categories, write it down and mark those categories red in your sheet. And ask your client a third question, you see the conversation between the client and you is important, it's not so easy to do a correct restructuring of categories if you don't ask your client a lot of questions. So the next question would be what are considered seasonal categories they are selling just during a certain time span inside a year, what span is that, what categories are those and write it all down because it's important how we handle seasonal categories and subcategories. We will address a lot of more about it later. That's point number two.

Number of Products per (Sub)category

Point number three is you need to count the amount of products in each category, subcategory, sub-subcategory in all the levels. So you will enter in your sheet below your nested category structure, you will write how many products are in that category, subcategory and sub-sub-subcategory and so on, write it down because we will need it later, as you already know if a subcategory doesn't have 12 products then we will need to do something about it. And also in that step you should somehow try to find out if there are existing subcategories which are placed in the wrong category. Again use the Google Shopping declaration of categories and dependencies of subcategories and try to find out if some subcategories are in the wrong categories. But you will also notice sometimes that online stores have category clones or what we call duplicate categories. If you find such subcategories which are listed in two different categories, try to find out which category is the main category and often it's just in the menu a referral to the same category, so it has the same URL but is placed in different categories. So if you really have a subcategory in two different categories and they have a different URL, you have a problem and that problem solving starts by you writing down what's the main category or what should be the main category, and mark the other one again with red.

SEO Entity Cleanup

Now you have an overview what is inside the online store, what the category structure actually looks like and what is going to look like, and now you can clean that entity, remove any categories or subcategories which don't fit the entity of the online store, or the cluster, or the niche, or the subniche, and if you're watching this lesson and you haven't watched episode 11, pause this video, go back, watch episode 11 to see how an SEO cleanup of category should be done. It's really easy if you know how to, but that's the point now to just again mark red all the categories and subcategories you should remove. You will also have a conversation after you have a proposal for the category restructuring with your client and discuss it, but as you know the benefits of cleaning your SEO entity are big and therefore mark it red you want to remove it.

Minimal Number of Products per (Sub)category

The next one is making sure that you have the minimal number of products per subcategory. So you should first look into your category and subcategory how many products are being displayed per page. So on each page we should at least show 12 products for most online stores that are out there. You can also show them much more, up to 24 or even 36 products, that's okay but at least you should have displayed 12 products in a category. So open the biggest category, look how it's displayed on page two, page three and page four, and you will see what the number of products is. If it's not 12 you should fix it also, so write a note and write an additional ticket for the developers to change it to be at least 12. What is better can be discussed, it depends on online stores but if it's between 12 and 36, that's okay, more than 36 would be challenging for the page speed. Now after you have made sure that they display at least 12, go down your list and mark all categories which have six or less products as red, we need either to merge them with some other categories or delete them or something else, so again mark them red. Now if you look at the sheet, you will see a lot of red cells there, a lot of work to do but we didn't even start right now. So it's just making an overview of the state you are in. So you could also ask the client in that certain scenario where you have only six products is he going to add more products into that category, not if he is able to, if he is planning, if he's certainly going to add products. It's very important when you talk with a client. Talk with him and make sure if he says there will be more than two products in a category, then ask him when, you should know the exactly the date - will it be in the next month during your restructuring process or in 6 months, or at the end of the year, or it's planned for the next 2 years, you need to know it because if a category has less than six products and is going to stay like it, we need to do something with it.

Merging of (Sub)categories

The next one is merging subcategories. So if we have two subcategories which have less than six products, we could merge them, right, and call them in this case, let's say we have a category with PC keyboards and PC mice and in each of those categories we have uh five products, we can merge them and call the category "PC keyboards and mice", right? Would it be good? No, it shouldn't be done like that. So, you should almost never, almost never merge two subcategories. There is just one exception which you can undertake and that's if you have two subcategories where one category is using one word or one keyword for it, and the other one is the synonym so there are the exact same products inside it, then you can merge them but you will not merge the name of the subcategories. Do not merge unrelated subcategories with two keywords, that's not the way to go. If you have an category with more products and the other one with much less products, you can merge them inside the bigger one but do not change the keywords. So if they're really, really similar products like you have a certain product and accessories for that product, and you have only three accessories and you have 15 main products then you can merge it or you have like five main products and three accessories, you can merge them but you don't need and you shouldn't put the accessories inside the name of the category. When you have done that, if you merge for example two subcategories you need to redirect the one you're not using anymore to the new one, and also move the products from that one category into the another one. Often people either forget the first one to redirect it or forget to move the products.

(Sub)category Keyword Allocation

The next thing is the right subcategory keyword allocation. Each category or subcategory should target only one keyword. Do not try again to target two keywords with the same category, especially if they're not really synonyms, and especially if they're completely unrelated. We will address handling synonyms later. It's a complex game we need more time to address it.

Creating New Subcategories

We have the last point for this lesson. What if you find a subcategory which is huge, it has a great amount of products and you can see just by looking at them that you could create some sub-subcategories for it - you should do it. So if you have more than 12 products inside a subcategory which don't belong there, they are products of another sub-subcategory, then put them together and create that sub-subcategory. Just be sure that the product URLs you are using are then being redirected to the new ones if they are related or if they're relative to the category URL. If not, you don't have that problem. You should create new subcategories if you have the right amount of products for it, but do not create subcategories or sub-subcategories with keywords which don't have a search volume. So if there are some unimportant accessories meaning they don't have search volume and the user is not explicitly searching inside an online store for that, ask again your client, if that's not the case don't create a subcategory. It makes more things wrong than right. Do not create subcategories like others, or the rest, or accessories just because you have left some products you don't know where to go with them. Leave them in the most relatable category, do not put unrelatable things in a category called others, or the rest, or accessories just to have it in that way. Now put them in the category or subcategory where the products is most relatable. If there is no such category, then you can remove the products. Again, ask your client how important is if you'll find a group of products which don't fit anywhere else and you should create a category called "others", ask the client if you can remove that, if he can live without those products because again, there might be some products or subcategories you would create that don't belong to the SEO entity. So, do not create something without search volume and do not create subcategories which don't belong to the entity just that you can group the weird products you have found.

Quiz Time

As you see, restructuring is complicated. It's enough for now that you have received the knowledge of those eight points I mentioned. In the next lesson we will cover another eight points, but before we do that let's do a quiz and see what you have understood from this lesson.

Question number one: what is the connection between the category structure and the menu of an online store?

A: There is no connection at all between them,

B: The menu shows only half of the category structure,

C: The menu shows usually only a part of the category structure,

D: The menu displays the category structure as it is.

(Correct Answer: C)

Question number two: if a subcategory has only two products, what should you do with it?

A: Leave it as it is,

B: Merge it with another subcategory and add its keyword to that subcategory,

C: Move the products to the parent category and redirect the subcategory to it,

D: Add at least four unrelated products to the subcategory.

(Correct Answer: C)

Question number three: a PC online store has 150 different PC keyboards and 50 different PC mice in the category PC accessories, what should you recommend them to do?

A: Leave it as it is,

B: Rename the category into "PC keyboard and mouse",

C: Rename it to "PC keyboards" and create a "PC mice" category with mice,

D: Merge the category with "PC gaming equipment".

(Correct Answer: C)

Congratulations, if you had everything right it seems that you're ready to become a SEOLAXY member and would appreciate our masterclass lessons. If you had only one wrong answer, watch the next episode. If you had two wrong answers, watch episode 11 again. And if you had all three answers wrong, rewatch the episode.