Empty category pages competing with their own products

Empty category pages competing with their own products
Category page was just a grid of thumbnails. No text. Product pages had all the copy. Google couldn't tell what the category was about, so individual products outranked the category for the head term. Backwards.

Fix:
— added 150-250 words of real intro copy ABOVE the grid
— linked to the top sub-categories in that text
— made the category the link target in internal anchors for the head keyword

Category pages should rank for broad terms; products for long-tail. If your category has no words, it has no shot at the broad term.

Caveat: don't dump a 1,000-word wall under the grid — nobody reads it and it looks like keyword stuffing.