Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. WordPress and category/subcategory landing pages

    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.

    WordPress and category/subcategory landing pages

    On-Page Optimization
    2
    4
    4997
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • mihaiaperghis
      mihaiaperghis last edited by

      Hey,

      Here's my situation. I'm building a WordPress blog for product reviews of a certain niche.

      Current category setup is 4 main categories with 4-8 subcategories each. Each subcategory has a unique description that will help it become a landing page for certain keywords, after which it lists the posts from that subcategory.

      The posts will always be assigned to a sub-category, never to a main category.

      My issue is what to do with the main categories. They're fairly general so they're not really targeting any keywords, and don't have any unique descriptions attached to them. I was thinking of choosing between three options on designing the main category pages:

      1. List the subcategories + normal posts loop that bring the latest posts from the subcategories (may create a lot of duplicate content since the subcategory pages are also listing their posts)
      2. List only the subcategories (+ maybe just the latest post from each subcategory)
      3. Don't link the main categories at all, instead only use them to create dropdowns for the subcategories

      So, what would you choose, and why?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • BlueprintMarketing
        BlueprintMarketing @mihaiaperghis last edited by

        Would you feel of will comfortable sharing the URL either here or in a private message.

        a screenshot perhaps of what you would like it to look like?

        A screenshot of what you have now.

        I built many blogs and have followed the Advice given  on copyblogger.com  it has not steered me wrong yet.

        http://www.copyblogger.com/wordpress-setup-mistakes/#more-30398

        What you're doing is adding a parent category or page?

        You can add new categories and subcategories as shown below, however you will want to link to every one of them meaning each one has its own page without a / category/ sub/

        You want examples/category/tag/

        That will do what you are wishing the subcategory to do however it will do it in a much cleaner and better way for your blog.

        http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-add-categories-and-subcategories-to-wordpress/

        I get what you're saying now your WordPress structure is set to use categories and subcategories

        http://www.copyblogger.com/wordpress-setup-mistakes/#more-30398

        Mistake 3: Too many categories, not enough tags

        This is a really common error that even proficient content publishers can make — especially once your site starts to outgrow its original purpose.

        It’s easy to just assign another category and dump posts into it, but that starts to create a very cluttered category structure. This is where tags can step in to do the job of tying together your posts.

        Think of it this way: Categories are best for segmenting your content into broad sections. Tags help further refine and filter each post into specific sub-sections.

        Category

        Sub category 1

        Sub category 1

        New Category

        Sub category 1

        Etc.

        http://wordpress.org/tags/subcategories

        Would you like the categories to show up as URLs or would you like them to show up simply as a choice inside of the main URL?

        My reason for asking is not due to URL structure so much as how your blog will operate. I also want to ask you what framework you're using?

        My reason their different ways of going about things on different frameworks is I am sure you know.

        I'm sure that you've gotten rid of the category Uncategorized right?

        http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic/automatic-building-sublevels-menus-using-subcategories

        http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sub-categories-widget/

        http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11594678/wordpress-categories-linking-to-subcategories

        Would be more worried about burying my links using the subcategories for every subcategory you create Google's going to have to dig a little deeper I would suggest building pages instead of categories I understand in certain instances that is not an option. However if using subcategories I would need to know if you want them to be shown? If yes you may use tools like this

        http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sub-categories-widget/

        Or

        http://yoast.com/showing-subcategories-on-wordpress-category-pages/

        I would be very wary of doing that but I to understand if you want to essentially categorize your information. Maybe

        SEO

        Hosting

        Etc.

        Make them into tags not subcategories.

        I hope what I've written makes sense. And I had to do some research I do everything on WordPress myself so if I could see a screenshot pictures worth 1000 words as they say.

        Sincerely,

        Thomas

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • mihaiaperghis
          mihaiaperghis @BlueprintMarketing last edited by

          Thanks Tom! However, I'm not interested in the URL structure, as I got that figured down. I'm mainly curious on what's a good practice for designing the blog category page when you have subcategories, and all the posts belong to the subcategories themselves.

          BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • BlueprintMarketing
            BlueprintMarketing last edited by

            I use Premise as you can change the landing page url to meet your needs. You want the least amount of parameters  after the

            http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-wordpress-seo-by-yoast-remove-category-base

            Get it here

            http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/

            Original URL/ this will get you the most ranking power. You may also want to use WordPressSEO by yost you can eliminate categories from the URL therefore lowering the the amount of parameters your website will show.

            If I had A) http://example/landing-page/

            Vs

            B)  http://example/category/landing-page/

            I will always pick the one with the least amount of forward slashes or parameters

            There is a good price on Unbounce to create  landing pages inside the SEOmoz pro perks

            http://www.seomoz.org/pro-perks

            I like http://getpremise.com/

            Landing Page URLs – This option allows you to create a unique URL for all the landing pages you create. Like a category distinction, it will keep your landing pages ordered and more SEO friendly.

            basically in WordPress you you want the least amount of parameters after the/as possible to not use your categories to dilute the URL unless the category is a unique category and is the only thing after the/.

            I hope this makes things easier.

            Sincerely,

            Tom

            mihaiaperghis 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • JamesDavison

              Value of using spaces or no spaces on product category page varient keywords

              keywords page grader several search terms category page

              Hello, all fellow Mozzers,
              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 Mal

              On-Page Optimization | | JamesDavison
              0
            • GOMO-Gabriel

              Shifting target keyword to a new page, how do we rank the internal page?

              I have been targeting one keyword for home page that was ranking between the postilion 6-7 but was never ranking on 1st as there were 2 highly competitive keywords targeted on the same page, I changed the keyword to an internal service page to rank it on 1st, I have optimized the content as well but the home page is still ranking on 11th, how do I get the internal page rank on that keyword

              On-Page Optimization | | GOMO-Gabriel
              0
            • paul-bold

              Recommended Schema for a Collection/Category page?

              Hi There! Taking on a  small project up updating and adding in Schema to a clients site; a previous developer half put in data vocabulary. In my planning I was wondering if their would be a best schema type for category page of products - or a collection of products? Any ideas and experience? Thanks!

              On-Page Optimization | | paul-bold
              0
            • SpaMedica

              Duplicate Content with ?Page ID's in WordPress

              Hi there, I'm trying to figure out the best way to solve a duplicate content problem that I have due to Page ID's that WordPress automatically assigns to pages. I know that in order for me to resolve this I have to use canonical urls but the problem for me is I can't figure out the URL structure. Moz is showing me thousands of duplicate content errors that are mostly related to Page IDs For example, this is how a page's url should look like on my site Moz is telling me there are 50 duplicate content errors for this page. The page ID for this page is 82 so the duplicate content errors appear as follows and so on. For 47 more pages. The problem repeats itself with other pages as well. My permalinks are set to "Post Name" so I know that's not an issue. What can I do to resolve this? How can I use canonical URLs to solve this problem. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

              On-Page Optimization | | SpaMedica
              0
            • rsigg

              Noindex child pages (whose content is included on parent pages)?

              I'm sorry if there have been questions close to this before... I've using WordPress less like a blogging platform and more like a CMS for years now... For content management purposes we organize a lot of content around Parent/Child page (and custom-post-type) relationships; the Child pages are included as tabbed content on the Parent page. Should I be noindexing these child pages, since their content is already on the site, in full, on their Parent pages (ie. duplicate content)? Or does it not matter, since the crawlers may not go to all of the tabbed content? None of the pages have shown up in Moz's "High Priority Issues" as duplicate content but it still seems like I'm making the Parent pages suffer needlessly... Anything obvious I'm not taking into consideration? By the by, this is my first post here @ Moz, which I'm loving; this site and the forums are such a great resource! Anyways, thanks in advance!

              On-Page Optimization | | rsigg
              0
            • BobGW

              Ecommerce - how many clicks from the home page should categories be

              My client has about 300 products in 20 categories with a lot of overlap. How many clicks from the home page should we keep the products? We're not doing pagination. I'd been told several years ago that all products should be 2 clicks or less from the home page. Is this true today? Thanks.

              On-Page Optimization | | BobGW
              1
            • Kotkov

              Right way to block google robots from ppc landing pages

              What is the right way to completely block seo robots from my adword landing pages? Robots.txt does not work really good for that, as far I know. Adding metatags noindex nofollow on the other side will block adwords robot as well. right? Thank you very much, Serge

              On-Page Optimization | | Kotkov
              0
            • dimanyc

              How to avoid keyword stuffing on e-Commerce Category pages

              Hi, I'm optimizing a large, consumer electronic e-commerce superstore. Based on client's choice of keywords, I'm using product category pages as my target urls. Because of the proprietary CMS structure, product names and titles, featured on my landing pages (product category pages) create a keyword overkill, affecting various ranking factors. For example, one of the target urls / landing pages, dedicated to a specific product category, mentions the keyword over 190 times because of so many product titles in the "body" section. Would inline "rel="canonical" help? If yes, what part of the website should it "canonize"? If rel="canonical" is not the answer, what strategies would you suggest? Thanks!

              On-Page Optimization | | dimanyc
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.