Repeating product category in product title

Question

I am wondering if there are any benefits or drawbacks to repeating a product category in the tile of the product? For example: Let's say I sell "light bulbs", on the product category page where all the light bulbs are listed some product names might read "Large Incandescent Light Bulb", "Low Power Incandescent Light Bulb", "Blue LED Light Bulb". I think it seems repetitive especially since your in the product category of light bulbs where there will only be light bulbs listed, it also makes long ugly titles. I want to make sure there is no harm being done from removing the category out of the title.

I can't see SEO benefiting because in the product category page I would not have any content just basically the product pictures and titles linking to the individual product pages. I would make a separate page that would talk about the light bulbs that we sell and the differences between the types to get the content needed.

Answer 1

To be safe, it certainly would not hurt to leave the category off the product description/name if the category page has an h1 tag, and title tag along with bread-crumbs all with the category name. Create your links to your category pages with the category name as well. This is enough of a signal for search engines that they will be able to return search results appropriately. I do this with good results and compete rather well against my competition.

Repeating the category name can be seen as spam, however, if there are only a few products for each category, you can consider using the category name with the product name if it makes sense. Remember to think human and not machine. What is a reasonable thing to do for your users? Forget SEO. The formula I gave above will be enough. SEO is a rather simple process these days despite what you may have read.