Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Problem with Yoast not seeing any of this website's text/content
Hi, My client has a new WordPress site http://www.londonavsolutions.co.uk/ and they have installed the Yoast Premium SEO plug-in. They are having issues with getting the lights to go green and the main problem is that on most pages Yoast does not see any words/content – although there are plenty of words on the pages. Other tools can see the words, however Yoast is struggling to find any and gives the following message:- Bad SEO score. The text contains 0 words. This is far below the recommended minimum of 300 words. Add more content that is relevant for the topic. Readability - You have far too little content. Please add some content to enable a good analysis. They have contacted the website developer who says that there is nothing wrong, but they are frustrated that they cannot use the Yoast tools themselves because of this issue, plus Yoast are offering no support with the issue. I hope that one of you guys has seen this problem before, or can spot a problem with the way the site has been built and can perhaps shed some light on the problem. I didn't build the site myself so won't be offended if you spot problems with it. Thanks in advance, Ben
Technical SEO | | bendyman0 -
Static or dynamic category pages for seo
Hi, I'm developing an accommodation site with a limited number of properties in 8 categories. I had been looking at making the properties blog posts and then using category function to show lists but its going to require a lot of customisation and I have seo concerns about the dynamic content as the category page is crucial. As I don't have a lot to add and listings will remain the same my latest thought was to create all as pages. However if I create a page with a list of 12 properties on a category page is there anyway of adding some sorting criteria to that page (would be 7 options - swimming pool, near beach, on site creche, budget, mid-range, luxury) Thanks for any tips Neil
Technical SEO | | neilhenderson0 -
Blog Page Titles - Page 1, Page 2 etc.
Hi All, I have a couple of crawl errors coming up in MOZ that I am trying to fix. They are duplicate page title issues with my blog area. For example we have a URL of www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/1 and as we have quite a few blog posts they get put onto another page, example www.ourwebsite.com/blog/page/2 both of these urls have the same heading, title, meta description etc. I was just wondering if this was an actual SEO problem or not and if there is a way to fix it. I am using Wordpress for reference but I can't see anywhere to access the settings of these pages. Thanks
Technical SEO | | O2C0 -
Why am I not showing up in the SERP's or Google Local?
I have been trying to optimise the following site for both Google SERP's and Google Local - Pixel Primate The URL has been around for around 3 years now but they just updated the website and launched it in December 2012. I did the on-page optimisation early in January 2013 and Google seems to have indexed the changes, for the home page at least. One major keyword I am targeting for the home page is 'Web Design Leicester'. I understand that the DA is fairly low (24) so this is something I need to improve. However, I've experienced positive results fairly quickly from just on-page optimisation for other sites I have worked on. The site just doesn't seem to be ranking at all for any keywords. Maybe the industry type is just extremely competitve but I find it very strange to not be visible anywhere in the SERPs. The site does not seem to have any penalties as it ranks for 'Pixel Primate' and all pages appear when doing a site: search. Also what's strange is that I set up the Google Local listing years ago but it doesn't appear anywhere in the local listing, not even when I search for it manually. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CWseo0 -
Home Page .index.htm and .com Duplicate Page Content/Title
I have been whittling away at the duplicate content on my clients' sites, thanks to SEOmoz's pro report, and have been getting push back from the account manager at register.com (the site was built here and the owner doesn't want to move it). He says these are the exact same page and he can't access one to redirect to the other. Any suggestions? The SEOmoz report says there is duplicate content on both these urls: Durango Mountain Biking | Durango Mountain Resort - Cascade Village http://www.cascadevillagehotel.com/index.htm Durango Mountain Biking | Durango Mountain Resort - Cascade Village http://www.cascadevillagehotel.com/ Your help is greatly appreciated! Sheryl
Technical SEO | | TOMMarketingLtd.0 -
What's the SEO impact of url suffixes?
Is there an advantage/disadvantage to adding an .html suffix to urls in a CMS like WordPress. Plugins exist to do it, but it seems better for the user to leave it off. What do search engines prefer?
Technical SEO | | Cornucopia0 -
Blocking URL's with specific parameters from Googlebot
Hi, I've discovered that Googlebot's are voting on products listed on our website and as a result are creating negative ratings by placing votes from 1 to 5 for every product. The voting function is handled using Javascript, as shown below, and the script prevents multiple votes so most products end up with a vote of 1, which translates to "poor". How do I go about using robots.txt to block a URL with specific parameters only? I'm worried that I might end up blocking the whole product listing, which would result in de-listing from Google and the loss of many highly ranked pages. DON'T want to block: http://www.mysite.com/product.php?productid=1234 WANT to block: http://www.mysite.com/product.php?mode=vote&productid=1234&vote=2 Javacript button code: onclick="javascript: document.voteform.submit();" Thanks in advance for any advice given. Regards,
Technical SEO | | aethereal
Asim0 -
Does 'framing' a website create duplicate content?
Something I have not come across before, but hope others here are able offer advice based on experience: A client has independently created a series of mini-sites, aimed at targeting specific locations. The tactic has worked very well and they have achieved a large amount of well targeted traffic as a result. Each mini-site is different but then in the nav, if you want to view prices or go to the booking page, that then links to what at first appears to be their main site. However, you then notice that the URL is actually situated on the mini-site. What they have done is 'framed' the main site so that it appears exactly the same even when navigating through this exact replica site. Checking the code, there is almost nothing there - in fact there is actually no content at all. Below the head, there is a piece of code: <frameset rows="*" framespacing=0 frameborder=0> <frame src="[http://www.example.com](view-source:http://www.yellowskips.com/)" frameborder=0 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0> <noframes>Your browser does not support frames. Click [here](http://www.example.com) to view.noframes> frameset> Given that main site content does not appear to show in the source code, do we have an issue with duplicate content? This issue is that these 'referrals' are showing in Analytics, despite the fact that the code does not appear in the source, which is slightly confusing for me. They have done this without consultation and I'm very concerned that this could potentially be creating duplicate content of their ENTIRE main site on dozens of mini-sites. I should also add that there are no links to the mini-sites from the main site, so if you guys advise that this is creating duplicate content, I would not be worried about creating a link-wheel if I advise them to link directly to the main site rather than the framed pages. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | RiceMedia0