According to Google’s guidelines, we should designate a separate place on our website for purely informational content and a separate place for transactional content (e.g. product descriptions in an online store).
Separating this content allows Google to serve the right page to the right user at the right time.
If different types of content are mixed up, Google may show product pages to people who are not interested in buying at all. This, in turn, affects the level of satisfaction with search results.
You can easily compare it to a pushy seller in a store
Does this division mean that we cannot have informational content and transactional content on the same site?
This question was answered by John Mueller from Google during an SEO webinar on October 8.
A user who runs an e-commerce site was concerned about adding too much informational text to his product pages. He asked Mueller if he should move non-transactional content to another section.
Or maybe move it to another page?
Page-level order, not site-level
Here is what John Mueller advised the user:
“I don’t think we have it documented or defined. I understand that this issue is specific to the page level.
Many websites contain a mix of different types of content. And then you try to figure out which of those pages match the searcher’s intent, and you try to rank them accordingly.
So I have a feeling it’s something that would be at the level of a specific page rather than at the level of the entire site.”
Therefore, it is good to combine content focused on different user intentions on the same site.
But keep them separated at the page level.
Mueller, for example, cited a website that News US focuses on breaking news, but also has special sections dedicated to important historical events.
Since historical content is included in a separate section, Google knows it’s not supposed to show these pages when people are looking for the latest news.