Over the years, I’ve written thousands of product listing pages (PLPs) for eCommerce websites. From sportswear to supermarkets, home decor to healthcare, I’ve produced PLP copy that helps websites rank higher in SERPs and increases sales – often quite significantly.
Writing PLP copy is an interesting challenge. You usually have no more than a couple of hundred words to say something valuable about a list of products. You also need to optimise it for search and answer engines.
Here are some of my tips for writing PLP copy that works.
What is a product listing page (PLP)?
A product listing page (also known as a category page) is a way of organising products on an eCommerce website. It bunches together a group of related items. This helps users narrow down their search and makes navigation easier on websites that have a lot of things to sell.
For example, with an online supermarket, you might have PLPs for ‘eggs’, ‘flour’, ‘sugar’ and so on. It’s not dissimilar to how products in a real-world supermarket are divided into aisles. Bunching things in categories makes it easier for people to find stuff.
The SEO side of category pages
In eCommerce, product listing pages have two purposes.
The primary goal is to help people who are already on your website find what they want.
But they also have an important role in SEO and AEO. By publishing a PLP content block that describes what’s available on the page, an eCommerce site can appear in search results related to those products.
For example, if someone is searching for ‘toothpaste for sensitive teeth’, and you have a PLP for a few types of toothpaste on your site with accompanying copy, you’re likely to win that customer.
Do people actually read product listing page copy?
PLP copy blocks are often placed at the bottom of a page. So, realistically, a lot of people don’t read them.
eCommerce sites mainly produce PLP copy for search engine crawlers. It tells the bot what’s on the page. So, it’s reasonable to ask if you really need to produce something ‘good’.
In my experience, there are two reasons to get a PLP copywriter to produce the content:
- Some people will read it: If people do scroll to the bottom of your list of products (especially if it’s a short list), they’ll read copy that communicates what your company is about. If the content is generic, doesn’t align with your tone of voice or is obviously just a list of keywords, it’s a missed opportunity to really promote your brand or convert people.
- Because it works: Better quality, longer and detailed PLPs just seem to work – as this 2025 analysis from Digitaloft, an agency, shows. Search and answer engines seem to rank pages with detailed PLPs higher than those which lack them (or only have a sentence or two).
Things to include in PLP copy
When I’m writing category page copy, there are a few key things I always include.
Technical essentials
- Keywords: You’ll want to include a primary keyword, plus a few secondary and long tail keywords. You should avoid keyword stuffing.
- Titles: You want an H1 at the top of the page, including the target keyword. I’d also recommend an H2 directly above the PLP copy.
- Reasonable word count: I generally write between 200 and 300 words. It’s enough to provide a reasonable amount of information while being practical and cost effective. It’s also not necessary to write extensive guides – keep them for your blog.
- Internal links: These direct people, and bots, to other pages on your website that might list related goods they could be interested in.
Body copy essentials
- Description of main products: It might seem too obvious to say, but I have often seen PLP copy that doesn’t actually describe what’s on the page! Look at the product list and read up on individual items. Describe what brands there are, what the things do or are used for, how many of them are (e.g. multipacks or single items).
- Call out features: I find it useful to pick out features of individual products listed on the wider category page. This can make the content feel much more specific. For example, for a PLP that lists 20 kinds of hair dryer, I might highlight features from one or two particular hair dryers in the list. Something like: “Find hair dryers from X Brand that include unique smoothing nozzles…”
- Mention benefits: It’s basic copywriting, but you need to highlight key benefits. Running shoes that have great cushioning. Drinks that make you feel energised. Scissors that help you cut more precisely.
- Describe experiences: Talk about what using a product is like. Chocolate melts in the mouth. A pair of leggings lets you do a deep stretch. While eating pasta sauce, you spend time with your loved ones.
Tone of voice for category pages
Any brand worth its salt should have a consistent tone of voice for its content, everywhere it ‘speaks’. And that includes in its category pages.
I always request (and actually read!) TOV documents from clients. I also check other pages and material.
One brand I often work with has a TOV that focuses on its customers’ health journey. I can weave that into the opening hook of the PLP copy fairly easily. Something like “Wherever you are on your journey, you’ll need…”.
Can’t you just get ChatGPT to do it?
Well, yes and no. I’ve obviously tried (after getting one client’s permission!). But personally I just feel the end product isn’t that good.
The content often feels really generic, does sometimes hallucinate and is a bit boring. When I have tried using LLMs to write PLPs, I find I spend almost as long editing it as I would writing it myself – all for content that’s not quite as good.
Need help producing PLP copy and category pages?
Most eCommerce websites have dozens, even hundreds of category pages. If you don’t have the time or resources to produce or update your own PLP copy in-house, I can help.
I’ve been doing eCommerce copywriting for over 10 years, and can produce large volumes of PLP copy (not to mention PDPs, blogs and other commercial content) quickly and affordably.
Contact me today to talk about your category page optimisation project.