Should I noindex our WordPress Categories?
-
What are the conditions under which we should noindex blog categories?
I'm asking because I want to decided whether or not to noindex our categories. here.
-
I think that your "hub" pages can be category pages and more.
Imagine a hub page for widgets with.... "how to do it" articles down the left column, "widget reviews" down the center column, and tips on "how to enjoy widgets" down the right column.
These could look like your sample page or look like the homepage of Slate.com... or any other news site's homepage or category pages if you have enough content.
-
-
Nice, I think that is going to be killer. Let me know how it works.
-
Exactly. This is what I did for one such page last week.
-
"...use "hub" pages that link to all my other content. "
Yes, exactly. That is actually what we are working on next week. We are going to create hub pages for the entire website. They will link out to all of the best content for their topic that is both "on the blog" and "on the website". These will also link to product pages. We are going to use big juicy images on these hub pages to quickly communicate the topic and make them look colorful and fun.
The order of the items on these pages will be determined by what is getting clicked. So, stuff that is hot with the visitors will move to the top. These hub pages will also link to a few product sales pages that have generous amounts of informative content.
-
Thanks EGOL. Yes, I've realized that I need to have a strategy and to make a conscious decision to index or noindex. My category pages do pull in some SE traffic but I also have pages that compete directly with those category pages. In terms of content those specific pages (articles) are superior to the category pages too.
One other solution is what you did which is delete the category all together and use "hub" pages that link to all my other content.
I'm definitely going to do some reading and learning about this in the next couple weeks.
-
Heydarian, great to see you here.
This is a complex question. The answer of what to index and what to not index varies from situation to situation.
Let me give you examples and a little history for two sites...
**BLOG A ** (an industry news filter, kinda like Metafilter for an industry)
The site that I spend most of my time on has a blog that receives very skimpy posts. "You gotta see this widget". "This widget is really cool". "Acme invents a new green widget". Three years ago, I had post pages, category pages and a home page that all received lots of traffic. Then, after Panda, those skimpy post pages did not perform well and actually damaged the rankings for the entire site - because I had thousands of them. So, I noindexed all of the post pages and even deleted thousands of them a couple times per year because they were mostly "newsy" content. The category pages and homepage still received lots of traffic and the rankings for the rest of the site recovered nicely.
Then, I think google started looking at category pages that link to skimpy content pages and they started performing poorly. So, I changed the blog format to eliminate the post pages and the category pages. Now there is only a big homepage and pagination pages. This blog still is very successful because lots of people continue to visit it directly and subscribe to the feed - but I intentionally abandoned the post pages and category pages because Google has changed.
BLOG B (a product blog for a retail website)
On this blog the posts are detailed product reviews, detailed descriptions of how to do something, detailed quashes of misconceptions, etc. Each post has several photos and 500 to 2000 words. At first I was using about ten category pages, but after a couple years they still were not getting much traffic. Other pages of my site (not on the blog) competed with them and performed more strongly. So, I deleted the category pages from the blog, HOWEVER, I began to generously link to the topic pages on other parts of the website. The results have been positive.
So, the bottom line. I think that you have to look at many things:
-
Are your category pages pulling in traffic? If not, delete them, don't just noindex them unless lots of people are reading them. They are power sinks if you still have them on your site IMO.
-
Do you have superior pages on your site for the same topic? If you do, then give them your attention and promote them on your blog posts.
-
How does google treat pages like yours?
Then you gotta place your bets on a strategy. Hope that it works. Keep watching the analytics.
Good luck.
-
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
-
Value of using spaces or no spaces on product category page varient keywords
Hello, all fellow Mozzers,
On-Page Optimization | | JamesDavison
I have taken over a project and this account, so can't change the username according to MOZ.🙃 We run an eCommerce website, and to me, some of the content is conflicting as some pages have more information content than what I would put in a commerce page, but this is how the boss wants it to work, personally, I would separate the content out.
The page I'm working on:
https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/tyres/205-70-14.html
and this is an example of the rest of these types of pages, I will be tackling:
https://www.longstonetyres.co.uk/tyres/125-15.html I was tasked to improve SEO ranking, when using the MOZ page grader I had a score of 24 out of 27 83% SEO score and 3-page problems. 7th position in Google for the search term 205/70 R14 As it is a generic product listing page, It was pointless to add to the URL and the Internal links I can't reduce as these are links to products, so I went to reduce the
keyword stuffing and making the page content more natural, this improved the page to 25 out of 27, 87% SEO score and 2-page problems. Improvement to 3rd position in Google, but he wants to chase 1st place to be above his competitors, which is fair enough. It turns out that in the past, they have used this type of page to try and get a high ranking for several search terms, as it is a different variation on a tyre size terms are:
205/70 R14, 205/70R14, 205/70 R 14
205/70 X 14, 205/70X14, 205/70 X14
and so on for all the different ways you can search for this tyre size. He is also convinced Google will see these as different search terms, and while I agree to an extent, this causes Keyword Stuffing on the page, which in turn was harming the rankings. Each product listed on the page already has its own title 205/70 R14, 205/70 HR14 and so on, so my question is. What is the best practice for writing content on these types of pages to gain high rankings for several Keywords, and what value does writing the same keyword with spaces and no spaces have? Any help or advice is welcome, so I have a better understanding of how to approach this for this page and the rest of the site. Cheers Mal0 -
Wordpress: Why do the URLs of my posts keep changing to match the posts titles?
I'll try to keep this brief. The URLs of my posts keep snapping back to exactly match their post titles, no matter how often I try to change them. e.g. title: How to Tie Your Shoelaces desired URL: tie-shoelaces BUT actual URL: how-to-tie-your-shoelaces Anyone come across/ resolved this issue before?
On-Page Optimization | | GerardAdlum0 -
Snippet Wordpress Plugins
I have clients that are really pushing us for snippets ie for reviews and articles. any luck with any Snippet plugins for WordPress I was looking a schema pro. In addition are you seeing it helpful in SEO organic efforts?
On-Page Optimization | | netprodjb0 -
Too many posts in a category?
Does having a post in too many categories have a negative effect on SEO? I have some posts in around 15 categories on my site.
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Wordpress photo blog with sparse text - noindex posts, index categories?
Hi everyone, I have a wordpress blog that is heavy on photos but short on text - most of my posts consist of a photo linking to a full gallery, and a short description of 1-4 sentences. I've often read recommendations to noindex category pages, but in this case I'm wondering if it might be best to noindex the individual posts instead - I'm concerned that the short posts might seem like thin content to Google compared to the category pages which aggregate the posts. Also, some of my categories reflect keywords that I'd like to rank well for. I have about a dozen categories and close to 1000 posts.
On-Page Optimization | | matt_b0 -
Category page canonical tag
I know this question has been asked a few times on here but I'm looking for very specific advice. Currently when you go to a category, say http://www.bronterose.co.uk/range.html, a canonical tag is added to the head of the page. There are plenty of "variant" pages which carry the same tag, for example: /range.html?p=2
On-Page Optimization | | crichardson9
/range.html?p=3
/range.html?dir=asc&order=price
/range.html?dir=asc&limit=all&order=price Is it wise to push the "link juice" for each of these variant pages to the top level page? Or should each variant page have its own unique canonical tag? After reading many blog posts, guides and papers I'm truly confused! Any general guidance or recommendations would be much appreciated. Chris.1 -
How often should I update category and product content to keep it fresh?
I want to keep our site up to date and fresh with content. How often should I update categories and products pages with content? What angel should I take with categories (new products/services etc.) Thanks Craig
On-Page Optimization | | Towelsrus0 -
Changing an Aged Category Name
I am interested in potentially changing a category name on our site, WirelessEmporium.com. This section has been called "Covers & Faceplates" for the better part of the decade. However, changing search trends, PPC data and search volume analysis have indicated that our preferable KW combo may be "Cases & Covers" instead. What are the potentially ramifications of making the switch now? We have a significant amount of age, link juice, etc built up toward our "Covers & Faceplates" section at the moment and all of their relevant URLs. A change would involve 301 redirects, rewriting of URLs, rewriting of all tags, img alt tags, etc.
On-Page Optimization | | eugeneku0