WordPress and category/subcategory landing pages
-
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:
- 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)
- List only the subcategories (+ maybe just the latest post from each subcategory)
- 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?
-
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
-
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.
-
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
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
-
How to best handle search landing pages - that don't exist
I have quite a bit of blog information that can be searched, which results in "pages" that don't actually live anywhere. These are scanned by Moz and appear as poor page quality for speed, etc. How do I get the service to either ignore all of these or is there a way to treat them as a real page with content? As there are quite a few generated over time, I'd like to be able to capture them somehow. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | amac70 -
Sitelinks to internal pages
Hi Moz Community, Is it only possible to get sitelinks to your main domain in the SERPs or can you also get them to internal pages in the SERPs? i.e. if this were to pop up in the SERP: www.mysite.com/page1
On-Page Optimization | | Brian_Dowd
Can I get sitelinks such as the examples below:
Sitelink1: www.mysite.com/page1/page1a
Sitelink2: www.mysite.com/page1/page1b
Sitelink3: www.mysite.com/page1/page1c
etc. Just curious and I haven't really find anything like that on the internet. How can I set them up? Thanks.0 -
Spammy page titles
Over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that Google aren't showing the page titles for my online shop anymore. They're set up with a third party plug-in piece of software, and while it's an old version of the software, the developer said it wouldn't be causing issues. They have suggested that I re-write my page titles to be less spammy. The thing is, Google haven't attacked just spammy looking titles, they're just taking a swoop through my whole site and not showing any of my page titles in their search results. I'm getting "Category Name - Shop Name" showing. Here's some of the page titles no longer appearing and I honestly have no idea how to rewrite these to not be spammy. Are there any good articles on what's spammy and what isn't? "Coconut oil - best tasting in Australia. Buy online from <my business="" name="">"</my> "Discount Vitamix Blender. Best deal in Australia. Buy online from <my business="" name="">."</my> "Natural & Organic skin care for the face | buy online in Australia from <my business="" name="">."</my> There are others that are showing the real page titles, but I think it's only a matter of re-indexing before they're all not showing. Any clue?
On-Page Optimization | | sparrowdog0 -
Home Page Keywords not Ranking and Assigned to Inside Pages
Hi, thank you for taking the time to read this. We have a few websites with the same problem. I will use http://www.prepared-meals.com as an example: The home page was ranking on page one for keyword "Prepared Meals". The site is about 6 months old. We use the Moz page optimizer on all pages of our websites to score an A rating. Recently we found the home page is no longer showing up in search results and the keyword "prepared meals" now points to an inside page that is not relevant: http://www.prepared-meals.com/Senior-Meals/Moms-Meals-Reviews.html this page shows up for Prepared Meals around page 15 in Google results. We have read keywords in the URL might be the issue, even though the page optimizer in MOZ says to do that. We are wondering if this is the issue or there is some other problem we are not aware of. Again, thank you for you for your time. -Craig
On-Page Optimization | | CraigSWD0 -
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 -
Opencart category urls
Hi, I have a problem with the category urls in Opencart. I have duplicate page content because of this: www.mydomain.com/category and www.mydomain.com/category?page=1 are with same content. There is also a very new problem, there are new urls - autogenerated like this. www.mydomain.com/category/category?page1 These three urls are with same content and title. I tried with 301 redirect like this: RewriteRule ^category/category?page1$ www.mydomain.com/category [L,R=301] but it doesnt work. Pls help me.
On-Page Optimization | | ankali0 -
Pages vs Posts
What are your thoughts on pages vs posts? I am setting up a new blog for a client but not sure how to structure the content. I may just do posts or a whole bunch of page listed down the sidebar. It seems like my pages always rank better than my posts. Has anyone else noticed this? Could it be because of the dates tied posts?
On-Page Optimization | | SixTwoInteractive0 -
Offer landing page, duplicate content and noindex
Hi there I'm setting up a landing page for an exclusive offer that is only available (via a link) to a particular audience. Although I've got some specific content (offer informaiton paragraph), i want to use some of the copy and content from one of my standard product pages to inform the visitors about what it is that i'm trying to sell them. Considering I'm going to include a noindex on this page, do i need to worry about it having some content copied directly from another page on my site? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | zeegirl0