What's the difference between a category page and a content page
-
Hello,
Little confused on this matter.
From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page?
So lets say I was going to build a website around tea.
My home page would be about tea.
My category pages would be:
White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? ( I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?)
Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?)
Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page?
I hope this makes sense.
Thanks,
Bill
-
Ryan,
You added some great additional insight here for Bill to consider. Excellent work on that.
And yes, I agree with you in not being happy that the "edit" link doesn't want to work lately here.
-
and let me say how much I dislike how the Edit button is presently broken. Grrrrrrr
-
I like Alan's answer. A couple direct answers to questions you raised:
From a website architecture stand point, there is no difference between a category page and a content page. They are both web pages and it's up to you, as the site owner, to determine how they can be utilized to best present your product.
From a content stand point, there is no right or wrong answer, but there are best practices. On the one end, some site owners use category pages purely as an organizational tool. Let's say you find a site about "beverages". There could be a categories for Coffee, Tea and Juice. There are three ways you can use the Tea page:
1. Content Separator. The Tea category would only be viewable from a main index page which allows visitors to see how your content is organized. The category page would not be reachable per se. "Tea" would be text, not a hyperlink. I think this usage is a missed opportunity from a web design perspective.
2. Content Index. The Tea category would be used to provide links to all the Tea pages. Some websites would choose to simply add links to their various tea pages. Other sites choose to offer high level information about each tea, along with the link. The latter choice works pretty well.
3. Content. You can use your category page to provide content. When I look up [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea]Wikipedia's Tea page[/url] there is a lot of information which can all be included on your Tea page.
It really depends on the balance you wish to achieve for your site. What is the focus? Is "Tea" something you want to sell or educate your visitors about? Or is "Tea" a road marker used to guide readers to the real destination.
You asked "Do I link FROM my category page to my content pages or do I link from my content page to my category page".
My answer would be, both. Let's say "Bill's Black Tea" was one of your products. On your Black Tea category page, you would use anchor text to link to Bill's Black Tea. You might say "If you want a smooth tasting tea, try Bill's Black Tea". Your anchor text would be "Bill's Black Tea" which would link to that page.
From the Bill's Black Tea page, you may make a general statement such as "Connoisseurs of black tea will appreciate the smooth taste of Bill's Black Tea" with "black tea" being anchor text back to the category page.
You asked a great question. The answer requires some high level thinking on your part. Do you want your site to be an educational resource for visitors, and your site happens to also sell tea? Or are you a tea merchant who offers high level information about the products you offer?
There is not a right or wrong answer. It's market positioning.
-
It's easy to get confused with terminology. All pages, however, should have high quality, unique, paragraph based content, no matter what you call them.
You have the right idea for organization.
From the home page, there should be links to the top level categories
White Tea
Black Tea
Oolong Tea
British Tea
Then all of your articles having anything to do with White Tea would be linked from within the White Tea section of the site.
So the tree would then look like:
- White Tea
- Organic White Tea
- White Tea Recipes
- How to Brew White Tea
- Black Tea
- Oolong Tea
- British Tea
This is, in fact, high quality content organization. So congratulations for having understood the concept.
- White Tea
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
-
Better to have less pages with more related content?
I work with a law firm and we are having a hard time busting into the first page of results for any of our keywords. I am new at SEO and have been trying to analyze how are competitors have an edge over us when on paper we are better optimized than their websites. One glaring difference is they have fewer webpages, which possibly makes each of their pages more keyword rich. Would it be smarter to condense our many webpages/topics into less, more general web pages? I hope my question is even making sense, thanks for any possible help! Our site is http://www.utahdefenseattorney.net/
Technical SEO | | MyOwnSEO0 -
How different should content be so that it is not considered duplicate?
I am making a 2nd website for the same company. The name of the company, our services, keywords and contact info will show up several times within the text of both websites. The overall text and paragraphs will be different but some info may be repeated on both sites. Should I continue this? What precautions should I take?
Technical SEO | | savva0 -
How to prevent duplicate content at a calendar page
Hi, I've a calender page which changes every day. The main url is
Technical SEO | | GeorgFranz
/calendar For every day, there is another url: /calendar/2012/09/12
/calendar/2012/09/13
/calendar/2012/09/14 So, if the 13th september arrives, the content of the page
/calendar/2012/09/13
will be shown at
/calendar So, it's duplicate content. What to do in this situation? a) Redirect from /calendar to /calendar/2012/09/13 with 301? (but the redirect changes the day after to /calendar/2012/09/14) b) Redirect from /calendar to /calendar/2012/09/13 with 302 (but I will loose the link juice of /calendar?) c) Add a canonical tag at /calendar (which leads to /calendar/2012/09/13) - but I will loose the power of /calendar (?) - and it will change every day... Any ideas or other suggestions? Best wishes, Georg.0 -
Is content important on home page
hi. i am working on a site at the moment www.in2town.co.uk and i am trying to decide if on the second column of my site where it says uk news, if i should keep it the way it is and have content under the picture or should i get rid of the content under the picture and just have the main title. I am wanting to know if the content under the picture is important for google and for the reader or would it be better just to have the title which is h2. any help would be great.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Duplicate Page Content Report
In Crawl Diagnostics Summary, I have 2000 duplicate page content. When I click the link, my Wordpress return "page not found" and I see it's not indexed by Google, and I could not find the issue in Google Webmaster. So where does this link come from?
Technical SEO | | smallwebsite0 -
Should I allow index of category / tag pages on Wordpress?
Quite simply, is it best to allow index of category / tag pages on a Wordpress blog or no index them? My thought is Google will / might see it as duplicate content? Thanks, K
Technical SEO | | SEOKeith0 -
Fowarding URL's Have No SEO Value?
Good Morning from -3 Degrees C no paths gritted wetherby UK 😞 Imagine this scenario. http://www.barrettsteel.com/ has been optimised for "Steel suppliers" & "Steel stockholders". After runnning an on page SEO moz report its recommended that the target terms should be placed in the url eg www.steel-suppliers.co.uk Now the organisation will not change the url but think setting up a forwarding url eg registering www.steel-suppliers.co.uk to then forward to www.steel-suppliers.co.uk will be of benfit from an SEO perspective. But i think not. So my question is please "is a forwarding url of no value but a permanent URL (struggling for the terminology to describe the url a site is set up with) such as www.steel-suppliers.co.uk would be of value?" Any insights welcome 🙂
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0