Think of a really organized walk-in closet – dress shirts hanging above dress pants in one section, your joggers and athleisure in another section…everything easy to find and a pleasure to go through! Your ecom store should give off a similar vibe…

And your product category keyword strategy is the 1st step to making your shop better organized. But, it’s not just about organization; it’s about visibility and relevance for the bots, and a better shopping experience with happy purchasing for humans.

Structuring Keywords by Product Categories

Nobody browses an online store from start to finish like it’s a novel, reading it from cover-to-cover. They’re hunters with specific prey in mind.

Your product structure? It needs to mirror real shopping behavior. I’ve seen some stores build category pages based on how they think about their products rather than how customers search for them.

Take electronics. Sure, you’ve got “smartphones,” “laptops,” and “audio equipment.” Stopping there would be negligence in SEO terms. Each category demands proper branching: smartphones into “Android phones,” “iPhones,” and perhaps “budget smartphones” based on actual search volume. Laptops split naturally by use case: “gaming laptops,” “student laptops,” or “workstation laptops.”

This isn’t just organization—it’s keyword clustering that maps directly to site architecture while matching human search patterns.

Take the example of a furniture seller that struggle with this concept. Their single generic “tables” page competed against every specific table category imaginable. So, their structure was rebuilt with dedicated pages for “coffee tables,” “dining tables,” and “console tables.”

Within just three months, organic traffic jumped 40%. The missed opportunity? Geographic terms. Adding pages for “small-space dining tables” would’ve captured apartment dwellers in urban markets.

Something I rarely see: look beyond competitive analysis. Don’t just copy the category structure of bigger competitors—find their blind spots! The juiciest opportunities often hide in the keywords they’ve overlooked.

Going Granular: Product Attributes

People rarely search for generic terms like “shirt” when they’re ready to buy. They want “blue oxford button-down shirts” or “moisture-wicking athletic t-shirts.” These attribute keywords are conversion gold.

The main product attributes to optimize for include:

• Size: “plus-size dresses,” “king-size bed frames”
• Color: “red running shoes,” “black leather sofa”
• Material: “cotton pajamas,” “stainless steel cookware”
• Style/Type: “bohemian maxi dress,” “ergonomic office chair”
• Occasion: “wedding guest dresses,” “hiking backpacks”
• Price point: “affordable gaming laptop,” “luxury watches”

This can get overwhelming because the combinations are practically endless. That’s exactly why you need proper keyword research tools—they help you figure out which attribute combos actually have real search volume.

I’m always impressed by online clothing retailers who really get this right. One mid-size fashion site decided to create dedicated category pages for their most-searched color and product type combinations.

Their “black cocktail dresses” page now pulls in around 1,000 organic visits a month. That’s traffic they used to lose to competitors.

One way they could’ve taken it further is by weaving in seasonality, maybe launching short-term category boosts for things like “summer wedding guest dresses” or “winter cocktail dresses” when the timing’s right.

Don’t Ignore Brand + Product Name Combos

Some store owners forget about branded searches, which is a costly mistake. Brand keywords usually convert at two to five times the rate of generic ones!

You’ll want your keyword strategy to cover three main brand angles.

• First, your own brand. Make sure you optimize for your brand name plus product categories, like “Nike running shoes.”
• Second, brands you actually sell. If you’re a retailer with lots of brands, set up brand-specific category pages—think “Adidas sneakers” or “Samsung smartphones.”
• Third, don’t skip product models. People search for stuff like “iPhone 13 Pro Max” or “Sony WH-1000XM4.”

Now, will these just rank on their own? Not always. E-commerce platforms love to introduce weird technical hiccups that mess with indexing and ranking.

For example, this consumer electronics store had a big miss. Their brand pages didn’t show up for model numbers at all.

So, they built dedicated landing pages for popular models… tweaking URLs, titles, and the content. After that, their traffic for brand plus model searches shot up nearly 65%.

One thing they didn’t do: they ignored older models. If they’d made pages for those too, they could’ve grabbed repair and accessory searches. 

Breaking Category Boundaries

Shoppers don’t always think in neat little category boxes. Sometimes, they search across boundaries: “gifts for teen boys,” “office workout equipment,” or maybe “pet-friendly furniture.”

These cross-category terms? They’re big opportunities because:

• They’re usually less competitive
• They speak directly to what people actually want (addressing needs)
• They let you feature products from multiple categories.

A home goods retailer, for example, made a “small space furniture” section. They pulled in products from different categories—desks, shelving, tables—all focused on one thing: helping folks furnish tiny living spaces.

That single page now brings in about 15% of their organic traffic. Not bad, right?

But, their results could’ve been better if they broke things down by room type: “small bedroom furniture” or “furniture for small apartments.” That way, you grab even more specific searches.

Category Trap: Keyword Cannibalization

A tech nightmare: your product category pages start fighting each other for the same keywords. Google can’t figure out which page to rank, so neither does well. That’s cannibalization, and it creeps in when your category strategy blurs the lines.

You might spot it if:

• Multiple pages keep swapping spots for the same term.
• Category pages and subcategory pages chase the exact same keywords.
• Your rankings never seem to settle down.

I recall a sporting goods company that ran into this headache. Their “running shoes,” “men’s running shoes,” and “women’s running shoes” pages all said pretty much the same thing and competed for the same terms.

So, the content was separated and their internal links were fixed. After about three months, their main category page hovered around position 3 for their target keyword.

They could’ve gone further though. Comparative content like “What’s the difference between trail running shoes and regular running shoes?” would catch people searching for those answers.

Implementation Challenges with Ecommerce Platforms

The truth is that your ‘perfect category keyword strategy’ can be hard to execute:

• Your e-commerce platform might restrict URL structures or force clunky category limitations
• Inventory fluctuations can render carefully crafted category pages temporarily useless
• Internal politics turn category organization into interdepartmental warfare

My solution? Start with data, not opinions. Hard numbers showing search volume and conversion potential should drive the primary decision making, not someone’s bias on how things should look.

For platform restrictions, I’ve seen success building “shadow taxonomies”—marketing category structures that exist alongside inventory management systems. Yes, it’s more work to do, but it also works for you.

Where Category Strategy Is Headed

Voice search, visual search, and AI assistants are already changing the search game. Increasingly, queries sound conversational: “What’s the warmest winter coat for Chicago weather?” rather than “affordable warm winter jackets.”

The future belongs to stores that bridge traditional keyword structures with conversational search patterns. Some forward-thinking stores have already started building category-adjacent content that answers natural language questions while showcasing relevant products.

The e-com graveyard is filling up with stores that stuck rigidly to outdated keyword approaches, but you can avoid fading into mediocrity.

Take a hard look at your category strategy, and if its still stuck in 2015. Are your categories nicely aligned with how your customers actually search for your products and browse your store?