How adding fifty words to category pages improved our search traffic.

For a time our template directory pages were just a grid of images with titles and download buttons. We thought users just wanted to see the templates away so we kept the design as simple as possible.

The issue was that search engines had no text to read to figure out what the page was really about. We were appearing on the page for our main keywords and our organic traffic stayed the same for six months.

We stopped making templates for a week and went back to update our top twenty category pages. We added a three-sentence introduction at the top of each page that explained exactly what the templates were for and who should use them.

We also added a frequently asked questions section at the bottom to answer common technical questions. In than forty days those specific category pages had a forty-five percent rise in organic search visits.

Search engines still use a lot of text to understand your content properly. If you run a product directory or an e-commerce store how do you make sure there is text, for search engines without making real users unhappy?