Category pages - SEO or deindex?
-
What is the best thing to do with category pages? Should I deindex them or use SEO on them? I use the Thesis theme and the Wordpress SEO plugin. I am just not sure what to do with category pages.
Also will they create duplicate content?
-
Just to follow up on this - I am ranking # 5 for a category page and it's a competitive keyword. So I am not sure deindexing category pages is the best idea and I am glad I didn't do it with my second and new blog.
-
I've also been wondering about this recently but I've made similar observations on a much smaller scale and it makes sense.
What about only displaying the excerpts on the category page, and use your unique (maybe?) meta descriptions as the excerpt?
-
I don't get any traffic to my category pages but of course my site is new so I am just getting a couple organic hits per day.
But my category pages do just give an excerpt. More than a sentence or two though. I already deindexed them. I guess I can revisit that later.
-
My category pages just organize all my blog posts. Nothing new.
-
I just remembered that Thesis and Wordpress SEO sometimes conflict. I made some adjustments and added some code to alleviate some of these conflicts but perhaps the deindexing of category pages was overrode by Thesis.
I just clicked on noindex category pages in Thesis. I also clicked on noarchive to category pages in Thesis.
Will that do it?
-
I am using YOAST SEO so that is good. So I don't have to do anything to get them deindexed?
If Wordpress SEO (by Yoast) deindexes my category pages, why are they showing up in my sitelinks? I tried to demote the category pages but they keep showing up. Thanks!
-
I have a blog with 150 category pages and they pull in kickass traffic. Lots of those pages bring in over 1000 visitors per month.
If you have long blog posts and display the first sentence or two on the category page that will not be duplicate content. It is no different than a category page for an ecommerce store. Category pages get out there and compete for serious traffic terms.
Lots of people say don't index them. That's not what I have found and if I noindexed them I would be walking away from a lot of income and more traffic than is received by the rest of the blog combined.
-
In every case i've seen they should be deindexed. Install YOAST SEO plugin and it will deindex them by default. It's a great plugin too.
-
Your category pages should be no-indexed if they don't have rich unique content per category. It is hard to say without seeing the category pages if it will provide duplicate content, but in most cases it will. You should also no index your archive area as well because that will definitely provide duplicate content.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Ranking more than one page.
Our travel website has a number of different places listed. The layout of each place is the same as the next. On place ranks on page 1 for its keywords where as others do not. Is there a tool of some description that may identify why this is.
On-Page Optimization | | twiguins0 -
Too many page links warning... but each link has canonical back to main page? Is my page OK?
The Moz crawl warns me many of my pages have too many links, like this page http://www.webjobz.com/jobs/industry/Accounting ...... has 269 links but many of the links are like this /jobs/jobtitles/Accounting?k=&w=3&hiddenLocationID=463170&depth=2 and are used to refine search criteria.... when you click on those links they all have a canonical link back to http://www.webjobz.com/jobs/industry/Accounting Is my page being punished for this? Do I have to put "no follow" tags on every link I do not want the bots to follow and if I do so is Roger (moz bot) not going to count this as a link?
On-Page Optimization | | Webjobz0 -
On-page SEO optimization
hi there! Is it possible not to be in the first 20 or 30 positions in the SERPs after executing onpage SEO actions (keyword optimization, metatags, ....) even for keywords for which there's not "too much" competition? Is there a way of visualize the pages indexed by the google bot? (the pages especifically, not the number) in order to discard indexing problems? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr1 -
Does having more products in a category than others help with ranking that page with a particular keyword like iphone cases. We have thousands of products and wondered if it would hellp these all being on the website.
does having more products in a category than other websites help with ranking that page with a particular keyword like iphone cases. We have thousands of products and wondered if it would help these all being on the website.
On-Page Optimization | | Casefun0 -
Landing Pages
Howdy Guys, We currently have around 19 landing pages that are near enough identical for each make of car. The content on each page isn't identical but you can tell its a template. Do you think we should change this and just target models instead of makes. Thanks, Scott
On-Page Optimization | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Does anyone know an "updated" all in one cheat cheat for on page SEO
howdy guys, after panda, and penguin, i wanted to know if anyone has any good references for a cheat sheet that has ALL the on page SEO factors like title tag, image tags, H1-H6, etc, the basics, but since the zoo got loose I dont know if things have changed for on page SEO. For example what is the optimal KW density we should be using etc. i found this list : http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm but it seems to be a bit outdated, if someone can share something similar to this list but something more recent, like a few weeks old, i think that would help the community out a great bunch! thanks guys
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
Canonical to the page itself?
Hello, I'd like to know what happens when you use canonical to the same page itself, like: Page "example.com" rel canonical="example.com" Does that impact in something? Bad or good? See ya!
On-Page Optimization | | seomasterbrasil1 -
Links to Product pages
Hello all, I am still rather new to SEO and learning a lot every day. I do have a question. On our product search result pages (example http://shop.ferguson.com/search/bathroom-lighting)
On-Page Optimization | | Ferguson
It is currently set up so the image, text, price etc of a product is linking to that product page. Our question is, if we were to link the image and the product name - will this be seen as two links to the same page? Is this a bad thing having multiple links to the same page? I searched around to see how other ecommerce sites have similar pages setup and it seems they link the image and also the product name, and the description is not click-able, which allows a user to "Highlight" the text (this is not possible on ours) Which would be to correct approach for SEO as well as User Interface, the way we have it set up, or by going with the method of the question I asked, Thank you for any information on this! Nick0