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
-
Https://www.fitness-china.com/hip-thrust-machine title too long
https://www.fitness-china.com/hip-thrust-machine title too long But we have two keywords Hip Thrust Machine and Glute Bridge Machine it 's ok?
On-Page Optimization | | ahislop5740 -
How to Handle duplicate pages/titles in Wordpress
The wordpress blog causes problems with page titles. If you go to the second page of blog posts it there's a different URL but with the same page title. for example: page 1: site/blog page 2: site/blog/page/2 Each page gets flagged for duplicate page titles. Thanks in advance for your thoughts,
On-Page Optimization | | heymarshall1 -
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 | | SpaMedica0 -
Seo category or specific seo page?
To rank in google.bg for key phrase like "seo optimization for web" which do you thing is better: To make most of the backlinks with anchor text "seo optimization for web" to point to a link that is a category with many seo articles or to point to a single page from this category?
On-Page Optimization | | vladokan0 -
Duplicate content http:// something .com and http:// something .com/
Hi, I've just got a crawl report for a new wordpress blog with suffusion theme and yoast wordpress seo module and there is duplicate content for: http:// something .com and http:// something .com/ I just can't figure out how to handle this. Can I add a redirect for .com/ to .com in htaccess? Any help is appreciated! By the way, the tag value for rel canonical is **http:// something .com/ **for both.
On-Page Optimization | | DanielSndstrm0 -
Is there a SEO penalty for multi links on same page going to same destination page?
Hi, Just a quick note. I hope you are able to assist. To cut a long story short, on the page below http://www.bookbluemountains.com.au/ -> Features Specials & Packages (middle column) we have 3 links per special going to the same page.
On-Page Optimization | | daveupton
1. Header is linked
2. Click on image link - currently with a no follow
3. 'More info' under the description paragraph is linked too - currently with a no follow Two arguments are as follows:
1. The reason we do not follow all 3 links is to reduce too many links which may appear spammy to Google. 2. Counter argument:
The point above has some validity, However, using no follow is basically telling the search engines that the webmaster “does not trust or doesn’t take responsibility” for what is behind the link, something you don’t want to do within your own website. There is no penalty as such for having too many links, the search engines will generally not worry after a certain number.. nothing that would concern this business though. I would suggest changing the no follow links a.s.a.p. Could you please advise thoughts. Many thanks Dave Upton [long signature removed by staff]0 -
SEO Plugins for WordPress
Hi, Mozzers- I'm re-evaluating my SEO WordPress Plugins. What are your favorites and why? Are there others that you avoid and why? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | lhc672 -
Duplicate pages
Hi, I am using a CMS that generates dynamic urls that according to the SeoMoz tool will be indexed as duplicate pages. The pages in questions are forms, blog-posts etc. that are not crucial to achieve ranking for. I do worry though about the consequences of having 20 (non-duplicate)pages with static urls and about 100 pages that are duplicates with dynamic urls. What consequences will this have for the speed that the robots crawl the site and could there be negative effects on ranking for the entire domain?
On-Page Optimization | | vibelingo0