Wordpress SEO for ecommerce store

[musthavemarketing]

I have been working on a wordpress ecommerce website and want to check that I am doing something correctly so hope someone can help.  The Wordpress theme did not allow for an introductory content so the developer built a content page Instead to work as a front end category page so there was more flexibility.  I have set the product categories to follow- no index and set the content page as the canonical version and optimised the content page..  question is - is that the right thing to do?

[MattRoney]

Hi Allie! Did you work this out? We'd love an update.

[musthavemarketing]

Hi Dan - I have found that you can access the default product categories by using the internal search - so thanks for highlighting that possibility

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Allie

Yes, that sounds correct. You basically don't want to default category pages indexed, because you have custom ones now.

Also - if you don't even want users to find the default category pages at all (because it might confuse them etc) I would also make sure they are not linked to or otherwise accessible. There's no need for users to find them and for Google to be even crawling them. This might not be technically possible depending on your theme, and it won't be a huge detriment, but something to think about if you have control over it.

[musthavemarketing]

Hi andr,

haha all good I re read my question back and I was unclear in the fact that on the theme the product categories by default do not allow text on the page.  If the developer had used short code to replicate the products in that non indexed category to show on the content page is that the correct thing to do.  I hoped it was but starting to second doubt myself tbh

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Allie,

I think I understand what you are saying.

Just to clarify, are you asking if optimising the canonical page the right thing to do? It sounds to me like what you are doing is correct. No-indexing the category pages will help prevent duplication, or you could also canonical those back as well.

-Andy