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Ranking Page - Category vs. Blog Post - What is best for CTR?
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Hi,
I am not sure wether I shall rank with a category page, or create a new post. Let me explain...
If I google for 'Basic SEO' I see an article from Rand with Authorship markup. That's cool so I can go straight to this result because I know there might be some good insight. BUT: 'Basic SEO' is also an category at MOZ an it is not ranking.
On the other hand, if I google for 'advanced SEO' then the MOZ category for 'advanced SEO' is ranking. But there is no authorship image, so users are much less likely to click on that result.
Now, I want to rank for a very important keyword for me (content keyword, not transactional). Therefor, I have a category called 'yoga exercises'. But shall I rather create an post about them only to increase CTR due to Google Authorship?
I read in Google guidelines that Authorship on homepage an category pages are not appreciated.
Hope you have some insights that can help me out.
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The basic theory is that as you go down a website's hierarchy, the more you go from short-tail, general themes to long-tail, specific things. Here's the rough idea:
- Home Page -- very general short-tail
- Blog (or other main section page) -- general and short-tail
- Post Category (or a section subpage) -- specific and long-tail
- Blog Post -- very specific and long-tail
Basically, items like blog posts should ideally be the best sources of authoritative information on very specific topics such as a post each on "international seo," "e-commerce seo," and "b2b seo." All of these posts could be within a category of "seo strategy" for which the category page would aim to rank.
As far as click-through rate -- it depends on the keyword. You should aim to give whatever will address the user intent behind a given search query. The more that the query is very, very specific, the more that it should probably be targeted by a specific post. The more that it is a general, informational query, the more that users may want to be taken to a collection of posts.
Now, I wouldn't know what to suggest for your website because I have not seen it. But I hope this helps!
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