How to fix seo category description thin on BigCommerce

Steps for BigCommerce

1. In your BigCommerce control panel, go to Products > Product Categories.
2. Click the category name to edit it.
3. Find the 'Category Description' WYSIWYG editor and write or paste your expanded 100+ word description.
4. Use the editor toolbar to add headings, bullet points, and links to subcategories.
5. Click 'Save'. The description appears on the storefront wherever your theme's category.html template outputs {{category.description}}.
6. If the description is not visible on the live page, open Storefront > My Themes > Edit Theme Files > templates/pages/category.html and confirm {{category.description}} is present and not commented out.

What is seo category description thin?

A category description is the block of text that appears on a collection or category page (e.g. "Women's Running Shoes" or "Outdoor Furniture") explaining what products are listed there. Search engines read this text to understand what the page is about and decide how — and for which search terms — to rank it. "Thin" content means the description is too short (under roughly 100 words) to give Google enough signal about the page's topic, making it look sparse or low-effort compared to competing pages.

Category pages are often your highest-traffic SEO landing pages because they match the broad, high-volume searches shoppers type (e.g. "buy running shoes online"). A thin description means Google has very little unique text to evaluate, which can suppress your ranking for those valuable terms and hand traffic directly to competitors with richer pages. More words also means more natural opportunities for the keywords your customers actually search, improving relevance signals without any link-building required. Finally, a well-written description helps shoppers quickly confirm they're in the right place, reducing bounce rates and increasing the chance they'll buy.

See the complete Seo category description thin guide for every platform and the full background.