How many product categories can I create?

[DunderMannen]

So I recently started building an ecommerce site for the first time.
The products I have are in 4 main categories, but they are also available in different sizes. I see now that I started running Google ads that people search for "main category SIZE" - should I create unique product categories for those keywords too? It will essentially be the same products as the main category, but with unique category descriptions and titles of course.

 

[Ryuzaki]

For both SEO and PPC purposes I would probably not do this. What I'd do is your typical URL Parameters where all pages with parameters have canonicals that point back to the main page. What I mean is:

example.net/t-shirts/ is your main SEO'd page that has all the content and collects all the link juice. It collects the link juice because these with the query strings are all canonical'd to it:

example.net/t-shirts/?color=black?size=large
example.net/t-shirts/?color=white?size=medium
example.net/t-shirts/?color=gray?size=small

I don't know that it'll simplify your PPC work but it won't make it any harder. But it poses a problem with SEO to not do this because you're going to end up with what's essentially very similar content across many "doorway pages" and dilute your ability to rank any of them by spreading the juice around. Though you could say that having tighter on-page could offset it.

This is me saying this largely as an SEO person and not an eCom or PPC person. I think it's the classical setup and a convention for a reason. Often we can lean on the wisdom of the crowd for a lot of this.

 

[DunderMannen]

For both SEO and PPC purposes I would probably not do this. What I'd do is your typical URL Parameters where all pages with parameters have canonicals that point back to the main page. What I mean is:

example.net/t-shirts/ is your main SEO'd page that has all the content and collects all the link juice. It collects the link juice because these with the query strings are all canonical'd to it:

example.net/t-shirts/?color=black?size=large
example.net/t-shirts/?color=white?size=medium
example.net/t-shirts/?color=gray?size=small

I don't know that it'll simplify your PPC work but it won't make it any harder. But it poses a problem with SEO to not do this because you're going to end up with what's essentially very similar content across many "doorway pages" and dilute your ability to rank any of them by spreading the juice around. Though you could say that having tighter on-page could offset it.

This is me saying this largely as an SEO person and not an eCom or PPC person. I think it's the classical setup and a convention for a reason. Often we can lean on the wisdom of the crowd for a lot of this.

Fuck, I didn't see your reply until now. I already set it up hehe

I don't see how it would disrupt my PPC strategy as I only do shopping ads.
We'll see if Google deems them as doorway pages, but I now link out from homepage like this:

Cotton T-shirts
Pique T-shirts

T-shirts Small
T-shirts Medium
T-shirts Large

The cotton and pique pages look like this:
H1 - Cotton T-shirts
P - short intro
Internal links like this: T-shirts Small | T-shirts Medium | T-shirts Large
Products in category
Longer text related to the product category

Size pages look like this:
H1 - T-shirts Small
P - short intro
Internal links like this: Cotton T-shirts Small | Pique T-shirts Small

This is overoptimizing it, no?