How to fix seo category empty on Adobe Commerce (Magento)

Steps for Adobe Commerce (Magento)

1. Log in to the Adobe Commerce / Magento Admin Panel.
2. Go to Catalog → Categories and click the empty category in the tree.
3. Option A — Add products: Scroll to the 'Products in Category' tab at the bottom of the category editor. Search for and assign relevant products. Save.
4. Option B — Noindex: In the category editor, open the 'Search Engine Optimization' tab. Set 'Include in Menu' to 'No'. In the 'Meta Robots' field (if your theme exposes it) or via a third-party SEO extension (e.g., Mageworx SEO Suite), set the value to 'NOINDEX, FOLLOW'. Save and flush the Magento cache (System → Cache Management → Flush Magento Cache).
5. Option B (via XML layout): In your theme, create a layout override for catalog_category_view_id_{CATEGORY_ID}.xml and inject the noindex meta tag into the head block.
6. Option C — Delete & redirect: In the category editor, click 'Delete Category'. Then go to Marketing → SEO & Search → URL Rewrites, click 'Add URL Rewrite', set Type to 'Custom', enter the old category request path, the target path of the parent category, and set Redirect Type to 'Permanent (301)'. Save and flush cache.
7. Remove the category from any navigation menus by going to Content → Elements → Menus (if using a menu builder extension) or by checking 'Include in Menu: No' in the category settings.

What is seo category empty?

A category (also called a collection) page that contains zero products is considered "thin content" by search engines. There is nothing of substance for Google to index — no product listings, no descriptions, no prices — just a shell of a page. This can happen when you create a category in advance, remove all products from it, or when seasonal inventory runs out and is never restocked.

Google actively discounts thin-content pages, and having too many of them across your site can drag down the quality signal for your entire domain, hurting rankings across all your pages — not just the empty one. Empty category pages also waste Google's crawl budget: every minute spent crawling a blank page is a minute not spent discovering your actual product and blog pages. From a user perspective, a shopper who lands on an empty category will immediately leave (high bounce rate) and lose trust in your store, directly costing you conversions and revenue. Removing or hiding these pages is one of the highest-return, lowest-effort technical SEO wins available to any store owner.

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