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SEO for online retailers, starting with what not to index

Most search problems on a large store are not content problems. They are structural: a catalog that generates tens of thousands of near-identical addresses through filters and sort orders, product descriptions supplied by manufacturers and used verbatim by every competitor, and category pages that carry almost all the available demand while receiving almost none of the attention. Fixing the structure is unglamorous and it is usually worth more than any amount of writing. Subscription disclosure and sales tax obligations sit outside marketing and belong with an advisor.

A catalog generates more addresses than content

Filters, sorts and variants multiply a few thousand products into an enormous number of URLs, and most of them should not exist to a search engine.

Faceted navigation is the usual cause. Every combination of color, size, price band and sort order can produce a distinct address, and the number grows combinatorially.

The result is a store where crawling is spent on filter combinations nobody searches while genuinely important pages go unvisited for weeks.

Deciding which combinations deserve to exist is the actual work. Some are real searches worth a page; most are navigation states that should never be indexed.

Variants raise a related question. Whether sizes and colors are separate pages or one page is a decision with consequences, and inconsistent handling produces both duplication and missed demand.

None of this is visible from the front end, which is why it survives so long. It shows up in crawl data and in the gap between how many pages exist and how many ever receive a visit.

Manufacturer descriptions are on a hundred other sites

Using the supplied copy means your product page is identical to every competitor selling the same item.

Most retailers import descriptions from suppliers, which is efficient and produces pages with nothing to distinguish them from anybody else's.

Rewriting an entire catalog is usually impractical, which makes prioritization the real decision: the products that carry the revenue, the ones with genuine search demand, and the ones where a buyer needs help choosing.

What adds value is what the manufacturer did not write. How it compares to the alternative you also stock, who it suits, what people ask about it, and what the returns tell you.

Your own review content and customer questions are the most efficient source of this, since they are already specific to your customers and they accumulate without effort.

For the long tail where rewriting is not viable, the answer is usually structural rather than editorial: make sure those pages are technically sound and let the category pages do the ranking.

Category pages carry the volume and get the least attention

People search for kinds of things far more than for specific items, and the pages serving those searches are usually a grid with a heading.

Search volume for a category dwarfs volume for any individual product within it, and category pages are what compete for it.

Most are a title and a product grid, with nothing to explain the category, no help choosing, and no reason for a search engine to prefer them over a competitor's identical grid.

What works is buying guidance placed where it does not obstruct the grid. What differs between the options, what to consider, what fits which use.

Subcategory structure is part of the same decision. Real distinctions people search for deserve pages; arbitrary internal groupings do not.

This is also the highest-leverage place to work, because one improved category page affects the visibility of every product beneath it.

Marketplaces are your channel and your competitor at once

The platforms you sell through are the ones outranking you, including for products you list.

Major marketplaces dominate product search results, which means a retailer competes with the same platforms it may also be selling through.

That is not a fight to win on general product terms. Their authority and their inventory breadth are structural advantages.

Where an independent retailer competes is depth and specificity: a narrower range chosen for a reason, genuine expertise about it, and service a marketplace cannot provide.

Being the retailer that explains a category properly is a durable position, because a marketplace listing has no reason to help somebody decide between two products it also sells.

The economics deserve the same clarity. Marketplace sales carry commission and rarely produce a customer relationship, so they should be evaluated separately rather than blended into a revenue figure.

Reviews are content, and they are regulated

Customer reviews improve the pages they sit on and how they are gathered and displayed is subject to real rules.

Reviews add specific, unique language to product pages, answer questions nobody thought to write, and influence purchase directly.

How they are collected and presented is regulated, and enforcement attention on review practices has increased.

Suppressing negative reviews, incentivizing positive ones without disclosure, or presenting reviews of one product as though they belong to another are the practices those rules address.

Review gating, meaning asking for feedback first and only routing happy customers to a public review, falls into the same category and is worth avoiding.

The version that works is asking everybody, displaying what arrives, and responding where it is warranted. It is also better content, since a page with only positive reviews is not believed.

Two obligations sit outside marketing entirely

Subscription disclosure and sales tax nexus are settled with an advisor, not in a content plan.

If any part of the business runs on subscriptions or auto-renewal, disclosure and cancellation requirements apply, and negative-option billing has drawn particular enforcement attention.

That reaches the pages where an offer is presented, which is where marketing and compliance meet, and it is not a copywriting judgment.

Selling into many states raises sales tax collection questions that turn on where the business has nexus, which is an accounting and legal matter rather than a marketing one.

Both are worth settling before spend scales, since growth is what turns either into a problem.

Neither is something an agency should be deciding. What we can do is make sure the pages present whatever your advisor establishes, clearly and where people will actually see it.

Questions we actually get

Where should we start on a large store?: With what should exist rather than with what to write. Faceted navigation and variant handling typically generate enormous numbers of near-identical addresses, which wastes crawling on filter states while important pages go unvisited. That is invisible from the front end and usually worth more than any content work.
Do we have to rewrite every product description?: Rarely practical and rarely necessary. Prioritize the products carrying revenue, those with real search demand and those where a buyer needs help choosing. For the long tail, make sure the pages are technically sound and let category pages do the ranking.
Why do our category pages perform badly?: Usually because they are a heading and a product grid with nothing to distinguish them from a competitor's identical grid. Category searches carry far more volume than individual products, and buying guidance placed where it does not obstruct the grid is the highest-leverage work available.
How do we compete with the big marketplaces?: Not on general product terms, where their authority and inventory breadth are structural. On depth: a narrower range chosen for a reason and genuine help deciding, which a marketplace listing has no incentive to provide for products it also sells.
Can we do anything about negative reviews?: Respond to them and fix what causes them. Suppressing them, incentivizing positive ones without disclosure, or gating so only happy customers reach a public review are exactly the practices under enforcement attention. A page with only positive reviews is also not believed.

What is different here

Two areas set the constraints. Advertising claims, subscription and auto-renewal disclosure, and how reviews are gathered and displayed are regulated federally and increasingly at state level too, with negative-option billing drawing particular enforcement attention. Separately, selling into many states raises sales tax collection questions that turn on where a business has nexus. Neither is a marketing decision, so both are worth settling with an advisor before spend scales.

Other disciplines for online retailers

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Written by KC Thompson, Morgul Marketing. Updated September 6, 2026.

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