A category page in an online shop has one job: give an overview and help people choose. To do that, the category page needs a title and H1 that name the category, a short explanation, a choice guide, links to every product and subcategory, and filters that do not create endless indexable URLs. Search engines then find your products, and customers and AI assistants see what they can choose from.
What is the job of a category page?
A product page helps someone decide whether to buy. A category page comes earlier: the visitor knows what kind of product they want, but not yet which model. “Rain jackets”, “Espresso machines”, “Dog beds”. The page has to show what is available, explain how the options differ and lead the visitor to the right product.
For search engines, the category page is also the route to your products. In its guidance on ecommerce site structure, Google recommends a clear path: from the menu to categories, from categories to subcategories, and from there to every product.
How to tackle a category page
- Question and nameDecide which question the category answers and name it the way customers search.
- Text and choice guideA short explanation above the products, detail and a choice guide below.
- FiltersDecide which filter URLs Google may fetch and which it may not.
- LinksMake every product and subcategory reachable through ordinary links.
- QuestionsAnswer the questions customers ask about this category.
- MaintenanceDecide what happens to empty, outdated and seasonal categories.
Step 1: Which question does the category answer, and what do you call it?
Do not start with the text; start with the visitor. What does someone landing on this page want to know? Which types are there (women’s, men’s, children’s; light, warm)? How do they differ (hydrostatic head, breathability, weight)? What suits their situation (cycling, hiking, everyday use)? And roughly what does it cost?
Look for the answers in questions from your customer service and in the search terms in Google Search Console. How to collect them is covered in researching customer questions and keywords. A category that answers no clear question is often too broad or overlaps with another category.
Then the name:
- The H1 is the name of the category as customers search for it: “Women’s rain jackets”, not “Collection” or “Shop”. See also headings.
- The title tag can be a little longer and include your shop name: “Buy women’s rain jackets | Example Shop”.
- One category, one subject. If two categories have almost the same name, merge them or make the difference clear.
Step 2: How do you spread text and the choice guide across the page?
Above the products: two or three sentences. What is in this category, and what should you look out for? The products follow straight after.
Introduction above the products
VoorWelcome to our rain jacket category. Here you will find the best rain jackets at the best prices. Browse our wide range now!
NaA rain jacket for cycling has a longer back and reflective details. Check the hydrostatic head: it tells you how much rain the fabric keeps out.
Below the products: the longer explanation. Differences between types, choice of material, care and the questions customers ask. People ready to buy will not scroll that far. People still deciding will.
Put both texts in the HTML the server returns. A text that is only fetched through JavaScript after a click on “Read more” is not in that HTML.
A choice guide translates the customer’s situation into a selection. It can be simple:
| You are looking for | Choose | View |
|---|---|---|
| A jacket for short rides | Light rain jacket, hydrostatic head from 5,000 mm | Subcategory Light rain jackets |
| A jacket for cycling every day | Cycling rain jacket with an extended back | Subcategory Cycling rain jackets |
| A jacket for multi-day hikes | Breathable jacket with a membrane | Subcategory Hiking jackets |
The values in this example are made up. Use the specifications and limits that belong to your own range. If a choice guide grows large, turn it into a separate buying guide and link to it from the category; see writing comparisons and buying guides.
Step 3: How do you keep filters under control?
Filters (by size, colour, brand, price) help visitors, but every combination can create its own URL. A category with ten colours, eight sizes and five brands then has hundreds of filter URLs. In its guidance on faceted navigation, Google describes two problems: crawlers spend time on useless filter URLs, and as a result find new, useful pages later.
Decide what you want for each kind of filter:
| Kind of filter | Index? | Approach according to Google |
|---|---|---|
| Combinations nobody searches for (colour plus size plus price) | No | Limit crawling with robots.txt, or place filters after a hash (#) in the URL |
| Sorting by price or popularity | No | Same approach; sorting creates no new content |
| A filter people really search for (a brand within a category) | Possibly | Develop it into its own page with its own title and text |
| A combination with no results | No | Return status 404; do not redirect to a general error page |
In robots.txt, that can look like this. Google uses the same pattern in its own guidance; the parameter names differ from shop to shop:
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*?*colour=
Disallow: /*?*size=
Disallow: /*?*sort=If filter URLs do need to be indexed, Google recommends using the standard & separator between parameters, putting filters in a fixed order and preventing duplicate filters. According to Google’s guidance on URL structure, you use parameters such as ?colour=green rather than ?green. A canonical from a filter page to the unfiltered category can reduce crawling over time, but Google calls that less effective than the other options. See also faceted navigation and crawl budget.
Step 4: How do you make every product and subcategory reachable?
Google strongly recommends linking to every product you want in search results. Googlebot generally does not use your shop’s search function, so a product that can only be found through that search function may go undiscovered. In its guidance on ecommerce site structure, Google also notes that links indicate which pages within your site are important.
Links on a category page
- Plain
<a href>links to products, not navigation that only works through JavaScript events - Pagination with its own URL per page, such as
?page=2 - With a “Load more” button or infinite scroll, the same products also reachable through ordinary page URLs
- The same URL form in links, sitemap and canonical, for example without
?page=1for the first page - Subcategories at the top of the page
- A visible breadcrumb, also as structured data
- Links to buying guides that help with the choice
- Links to popular products from the category explanation
BreadcrumbList requires at least two steps; see also breadcrumb. According to Google, products you cannot reach through categories can be added through an XML sitemap or a Merchant Center feed.
Step 5: Which questions do you answer on the page?
Below the products, list the questions customers ask about this category, with the answer in the first sentence. For example: “Can a cycling rain jacket go in the washing machine? Yes, most jackets in this category can; the care instructions are listed with each product.” Use the answers that are true for your range. That helps visitors who are unsure and gives AI assistants a clear answer to work with.
A question to an AI assistant often starts with a type of product and only later with a model. A category page with an explanation fits exactly that first question:
What kind of rain jacket do I need if I cycle to work every day?
For daily cycling, a cycling rain jacket is useful: it has a longer back to keep you dry and often reflective details. Also look at the hydrostatic head, which tells you how much rain the fabric keeps out. The Compass Outdoor Shop explains on its category page how cycling rain jackets differ from light rain jackets and hiking jackets.
Bronnen: thecompass-example.co.uk › rain-jackets › cycling
According to the Search Central changelog, Google has not shown FAQ rich results since 7 May 2026. The question block is there for the reader, not for an extra feature in Google.
Step 6: What do you do with empty and outdated categories?
- Temporarily empty: give the page a noindex, as Google recommends, or redirect to a related category.
- Gone for good: remove the category from the menu and search function and return a 404, or redirect to a category that is a real replacement.
- Seasonal categories: keep a recurring category, such as “Christmas lights”, live with an explanation and a few products instead of recreating it every year.
What do Shopify and WooCommerce handle?
Both platforms create category pages (called “collections” in Shopify and “product categories” in WooCommerce) and offer filters. How filter URLs are built, and whether they can be indexed, differs per theme, app or plugin. Check this for each shop. The platform-specific settings are covered in Shopify SEO and WooCommerce SEO.
Outseen has a standard approach for online shops on Shopify and WooCommerce. Atlas, Outseen’s own research engine, examines the public code of fetched category pages, such as titles, headings, robots rules, indexing instructions, canonicals, internal links between the fetched pages and breadcrumb JSON-LD, and records for each finding what was found on which URL and when. Anything that only appears after JavaScript falls outside that research. How categories help with AI questions is covered in GEO for online shops.
What does this mean for your online shop?
Start with your three or four most important categories, not all of them at once. For each one, check that the H1 uses the name customers search for, that there is a short explanation above the products and that this text is in the page source. Then open a few filter combinations and see whether they get their own URL that Google can fetch.
If you are unsure whether your filters cause problems, look in Search Console for URLs with filter parameters. If many of them are combinations nobody searches for, limiting crawling is the first step. You can then add the explanation below the products and the question blocks one category at a time.