Include item attributes on category page?

[Tonearm]

Hello! I have category pages that list 9 products per page. I need to decide whether to include each product's attributes in it's display. The attributes would be the number of pages in the book, or the dimensional size of the poster, etc. My limited knowledge of SEO tells me that leaving this info in there would make those pages seem more content-rich?

[DerekH]

My limited knowledge of SEO tells me that leaving this info in there would make those pages seem more content-rich?

Probably, from the perspective of your customers, it would make the pages ACTUALLY more content-rich, and this should be your prime mover. A good customer experience is just as important as getting customers to your site in the first place.

Just adding words to a page doesn't make Google rank the page more highly, but adding real content may result in you ranking higher for a whole range of words, rather than just your keywords, and this can be a very useful side-effect and bonus.

Extra content also makes it more likely that your keyword density looks normal (because it WILL be normal).

So it looks to me like you'll win all around if you add (relevant) extra content to your site.
DerekH

[Tonearm]

The truth is, I'm really going for a minimalist kind of a thing with my whole design, and I'm trying to put as few words on the page as possible. My hypothesis is that people don't want to do too much reading and might not read any of something that's longer, but all of something that's shorter.

Would you say taking that text out doesn't make too much of a difference with SEO? Removing it would cut the on-screen text by about 75% in the multiple product display area.

[DerekH]

There's nothing wrong with a minimalist design - one of my sites tries for a very plain layout.
Of course, different designs mean different things to your visitors, and you may find that a minimalist layout attracts exactly the sort of person who'll buy your products.
Google, however, doesn't have the same view on style as the rest of us, and though its algorithms certainly analyse the page content, I wouldn't say that that made it an arbiter of good taste, or a search engine with an eye for a classy layout!

In my earlier post I mentioned that extra words gave you the chance to rank higher for other words (not your keywords), that a searcher might try in their attempts at driving Google.
It's also true that having the same word on the page more than once definitely helps Google decide *what* the page is about.
A page about widgets that only mentions widgets once (and of course, a lot of other words only once too!) is not going to rank as highly as one where widgets definitely seems to be a constant emphasis.

Using the ALT= on every image will help, as will getting good anchor text in links to the page.

Making a successful page is a mix of getting Google to drive visitors to you, and your page keeping them once they've arrived.
You'll probably have to balance the two to get the result you want!
DerekH

[MikeBeverley]

Would you say taking that text out doesn't make too much of a difference with SEO?

I'd have to agree with DerekH in that you've got this back to front. Aiming your site at a blind crawler/bot is not the way to go, Google tends to focus on off-the-page ranking factors these days anyway so just aim your pages at your users and do the external SEO stuff.

[Tonearm]

DerekH -

Of course, different designs mean different things to your visitors, and you may find that a minimalist layout attracts exactly the sort of person who'll buy your products.

You are a diplomat!

Ok, thanks a lot guys. It sounds like it would be best to take that extra text out. I think the plain design is more valuable than the extra information.