Kind of duplicate categories and custom taxonomy. Necessary, but bad for SEO?

angelamaemae

Hello Everyone! I'm new here!

My husband and I are working on creating a website: https://sacwellness.com .The site is an online therapist directory for the the Sacramento California area.

Our problem is this: In wordpress our category system is being used for blog posts. Our theme is using a custom taxonomy system to categorize different therapist specialties, therapeutic approaches, etc. We've found ourselves in a position where our custom taxonomy and categories are near duplicates.

for example we have the blog categories: ADHD counseling, Anxiety therapy, and Career counseling

our corresponding custom taxonomy/therapist categories are: ADHD, Anxiety, and....(oops) career counseling.

My understanding is that google doesn't see a difference between identically named categories and custom taxonomies and will so choose one to rank and disregard the other, effectively leaving you competing against yourself.

is this true in a case like this? Can google maybe understand the difference because of the custom taxonomy and/or URL paths?
if this is a problem is it ok to have near duplicates....like ADHD vs. ADHD counseling. This has been our solution so far....but now we're questioning it....derp x_x.
I thought about tagging the categories with no index, but I think the archive pages would be useful for people. Essentially we have 2 sets of archives for each keyword. One is for blog posts, and one is for therapists who work with that particular issue along with the 6 most recent blog posts in that category.....because we are putting the 6 most recent blog posts at the bottom of the therapist pages I feel like it wouldn't be as terrible of a loss if we had to noindex the category pages.

....what do you think?

Thank you!

RickVN

Roman,

I'm a newbie to SEO and reading this thread along with tons of other material. I just wanted to thank you for taking the time creating all these in-depth answers. They are very helpful!! I've heard all this content before, but haven't fully put it together in my head yet. So this case study is helpful and valuable. Thanks again!

angelamaemae

....actually, I didn't know about the "page%%" at the end of several of my google snippets.....looks like I messed that up in Yoast too . Thanks for catching that one ^_^

angelamaemae

Lolol. Roman, I really appreciate all of the work you're putting into this. You are sending me a lot of really useful information. But none of it is answering any of my questions lolol. You're meta answering my question :-p. You're telling me about all of the issues that are caused by my problem, which we are aware of....we just need help with the problem.

I'm aware of the category meta issues and the titles being off. They are like that because I am currently trying to find an answer to the question I am posting this thread for:

The way my site is set up requires me to have categories and custom taxonomy to function. I am using the categories for blog posts and the custom taxonomy for listings. Both need to address the same issues, ie category: ADHD and cust. tax: ADHD.

Is this a problem for google? Can it tell the difference between a blog archive and a listing archive based on the content rather than the category or cust. tax title?
2)Would it be best for me to just noindex my blog categories even though they contain useful content?

You had suggested noindexing the blog archives, which is what I am thinking too, I just really want to be sure before I do it. I think I just have to come to terms with the fact that my blog has useful content, but the reason I want people to find my site is for listings....does that seem like sound reasoning?

I feel like I should put all of this in context again. My site has only been live for 4 months. It is ranking in the first two pages of google for over 200 of the 900 keywords we're tracking. Our category pages are messed up right now because I am trying to figure out this issue and because I made a big mistake a couple of months ago and noindexed all of the listing archives x_x. Given all of this, I think we're doing pretty well so far.

....I guess one of my other hesitations about noindexing the blog categories is the fact that google has not finished processing my request to fix my noindex mistake. Right now it has only processed 18 of the 80 URLS I submitted for validation a little over a month ago....I'm worried that if I noindex my blog categories right now then I will lose a lot of ranking.....What do you think? if I go this route of noindexing the categories should I wait till google finishes validating the corresponding custom taxonomies?

Thank you for your help!

Roman-Delcarmen

Please read this articles

Let use a simple search operator --> sacwellness.com "ADHD counseling"

Let's take your own keywords as examples
ADHD counseling, Anxiety therapy, and Career counseling

Let use a simple search operator
sacwellness.com "ADHD counseling"

And these are the results according to Google ( Please check how bad are these pages 7 of 10 have errors on the title ) So I'm not talking about complex error related to taxonomies or indexability

**Let's take one of the results, check this page, the meta tags have no relation to the content inside the page. The title, description, and content inside. This is how Google actually see your site **

_PTSD and Trauma page%% - SacWellness.com ---> Title _
https://sacwellness.com/category/ptsd-and-trauma/ ----> URL
Aug 2, 2018 - write a guest blog for our site! We will feature it on our front page for a week or two and include it in our social media advertising. footer.

Let's use another simple search operator
site://sacwellness.com

And according to google your most relevant pages are home, blog, and contact. I mean we are talking about a directory. Even worst just take some of your keywords "ADHD counseling" and look for the same category on any other directory

How do you expect rank a page for this keyword **"ADHD counseling" **if even the most basic aspects such as titles and description are wrong? How do you expect that Google recognizes them?

angelamaemae

I'm wondering if I'm right to assume that google will be able to tell the difference between these two on its own and despite their category titles, will see that one is about a topic and the other is about therapists who work with that topic.

angelamaemae

Hi Roman, Thanks again for the in depth answer! ^_^...I think I probably should have mentioned in the beginning of my post that I have pretty much been a 20+hour/week SEO for the last 4 years. I'm familiar with crawling and crawl budget. I've just never made a directory before or anything that included custom taxonomy. We have spent a lot of work on our site structure and feel like its pretty good for what we need. The issue is just the conflict between categories and custom taxonomy. I know we really should have a better hierarchy with broader categories and then tags, but we could only really think of 2 possible parent categories: basically diagnoses and not diagnoses....but 98% of our blogging content revolves around diagnoses/therapeutic issues.

my understanding is that google will choose the page it thinks is most relevant and index that one, not ignore competing pages and list none of them.

2) "As I see you have a blog and also have a listing pages you can use the custom taxonomies for listing and categories for the blog"
-yes. This is what we have done. and this is the problem we are trying to sort out, because our categories and custom taxonomy overlap and/or are similar. We'd be open to canonical tags or redirecting the blog categories to the custom taxonomy pages, but that really feels like we would be losing something. The blog archives and the listing archives offer distinctly different content to users....aside from the fact that listing archives also contain the most recent 6 blog posts in their relevant category.

We've done everything you've mentioned in #3....just not in a super great way because we couldn't really think of parent categories :-p.

so given all of the previous information. Do we need to change things? can google handle the categories and custom taxonomies if one for example is ADHD and the other is ADHD counseling? Do we need to noindex the blog archives?....I can't really think of another solution if this is truly an issue.

.......I mean how do other people do this? lets say you have a shoe store and it contains custom taxonomy for types of shoes for sale, but you also have a blog that needs to talk about different types of shoes.....if you have a blog archive about sneakers and a custom taxonomy for sneakers that you're selling.....how do you distinguish these for google?

Roman-Delcarmen

1) can I have one set of categories and another set that are pretty much the same but with the word "therapy" or "counseling" tacked on and have Google recognize both of them?

Before to talk more in deep about taxonomies I think is important to you get understanding of some concepts

Crawl budget: Crawl budget is the number of pages Google will crawl on your site on any given day. This number varies slightly from day to day, but overall it’s relatively stable. The number of pages Google crawls, your “budget”, is generally determined by the size of your site, the “health” of your site (how many errors Google encounters) and the number of links to your site.

https://yoast.com/crawl-budget-optimization/

Crawled pages: When Google visits your website for tracking purposes. This process is done by Google’s Spider crawler.
Indexed pages: After crawling has been done, the results get put onto Google’s index (i.e. web search).
Keyword Intent: Basically is the goal behind any search

Let me explain with a very basic example, let's take 3 simple keywords

Dentist Tampa Florida - Volume: 20
Tampa Dentist - Volume: 20
Cosmetic Dentist Tampa FL - Volume: 20

So the main point here is, you or any other SEO can try to rank for 1 or 2 or even 3 keywords and does not matter at all, From the Google point of view, all of them have the same intents (and that is a crucial point). So that means for Google hey... There are 60 users looking for a dentist on Tampa Florida and this is the main point for SEO. This is what is really matter on SEO. Google. Will try the give them the best possible result for that intent.

Talking about your case if you have 1 category page using a single keyword and 1 custom taxonomy using a close related keyword probably both of them will be competing for the same intent, so if Google can't decide which one of those pages have value or which one is better well, it will ignore both of them.

2) Would it be better just to no-index my blog categories and keep the custom taxonomy indexed since they hold the 6 most recent posts in a given category? In my opinion that's the best option, there are other options such as add canonical tags or redirect. You need to check your Search Console. If those pages have been indexed you should redirect them. As I see you have a blog and also have a listing pages you can use the custom taxonomies for listing and categories for the blog

3) Is this even a problem at all? Yes, this is a problem and in your case is a big problem mainly because your site is a directory site and the hierarchy of your site is the core for users and crawlers. You have a niche website, so you don't need too many backlinks or social media presence, you just need a good site structure and a good on-page optimization that all you need to rank your site. Your site structure depends on your taxonomies, categories and tags.

How to structure your website

We’ll take you through all the steps of creating a rock solid
structure for your website!

1 Create an overview of your pages
2 Organize your content as a pyramid
3 Define a menu
4 Name your sections
5 Add internal links to strengthen the structure
6 Reflect the structure in breadcrumbs

The structure of your website should be like a pyramid. On the top of
the pyramid is your homepage, and beneath the homepage are some
category pages. Category pages bundle your listing or posts in
groups with related content. To create even smaller groups within
your categories you can use tags or subcategories.

Once you’ve developed your new site structure correctly, you should
consider how you’re going to connect the sections of this pyramid.
Think of these sections as small pyramids inside your larger pyramid.
Each page at the top of that pyramid should link to all its sub-pages
and the other way around.

Since you’re linking from pages that are closely related to each other
content-wise, you’re increasing your site’s possibility to rank. You’re
‘helping’ the search engine out by showing it what’s related and what
isn’t.

So the way you config the URL of your site (URL Structure) and the way you connect your pages (Internal links) is the way of how Google determinate which pages are important on your site. Here is where concepts like crawl budget and **indexed pages become important **

If the answer were useful don't forget to mark it as a Good Answer... Cheers and Good Luck

angelamaemae

Awesome! thanks for doing such an in depth look Roman ^^. Our categories and custom taxonomies aren't ranking right now because I made a mistake and noindexed them on a Yoast update a couple of months ago. lolololol.....it sucks but we've been catching up over the last month ^^. Our 900 keywords tracked in SerpFox went up almost 6,000 rankings in the last 2 weeks.

We did a lot of research before we started and picked our keywords carefully....we just didn't realize the potential conflict presented by dupilicate/similar categories and taxonomies. Our site opened to indexing only a little over 4 months ago, so its going to take some time to rank.

So what do you think? Is my concern an actual problem? In short:

can I have one set of categories and another set that are pretty much the same but with the word "therapy" or "counseling" tacked on and have google recognize both of them?
would it be better just to noindex my blog categories and keep the custom taxonomy indexed since they hold the 6 most recent posts in a given category?
Is this even a problem at all? When we first started the site we were of the thought that google woud be able to tell the difference between blog/adhd and therapists/adhd and rank the two as separate archives related to ADHD. This is the core conflict. Is this an issue or do you think we're ok?

Roman-Delcarmen

Ok I took the time to

I took the time to analyze your site

Screamingfrog to check some technical aspect
Ahrefs to check your site structure
Majestic to check your trust-flow and so on

This what I found

Moz: DA:7
Ahrefs: UR:9
Ahrefs: DR:2.1
264 Pages according to Screamingfrog

This is my honest point of view

First Point: If you don't know if which is better custom taxonomies or default that means that you didn't a good research or even worst you didn't a research. When you run a research you create your site structure and match all your target keyword with the specific page for that specific keyword. I usually create an excel file with my list of all keywords in collum the specific page for that keyword, I also add the URL, Title, Meta description, canonical etc. So your main problem is not related to custom taxonomies or categories your main problem is the lack of planning.

So the first step that you need to do is run a **content audit ( basically make an inventory of your content and create a structure that means URL structure and internal links structure and selects your taxonomies and your keywords) **If you do that then you will have a clear idea of which taxonomy is better for your site.

Second Point: I don't know why are focusing on your taxonomies and categories. None of them are even ranking they are not even in the first top 50 pages of your site, why? because you don't have a site structure ( add categories or taxonomy to your site does not mean that you have a site structure)

These are your top 10 pages

So, in summary, how do you fix this problem

Create an inventory of all your pages
Create a keyword research for those pages
Match your keywords with your pages
Optimize your URL structure (Dynomaper, Sitebulb, or Semrush can be a good option)
Create an internal links structure which reflects the hierarchy of your site
Implement schemas to your site
Implement amp to your site

As see you are running a directory site that means you will need to have an almost perfect technical SEO, you need to worry about inbound links or social media or stuff like that you need to focus on all your technical aspect in order to rank your site.

If you are interested I can share with you the audit that I made just send a PM

Good luck and have a nice day

angelamaemae

But that's part of the problem they're both valuable content and different from each other. If I choose one over the other then I'm losing out on some SEO juice and preventing some valuable content from being indexed. It would basically amount to indexing the pages that have therapists on them and the 6 most recent blog posts in that category OR the blog archive pages.

Roman-Delcarmen

In your case, if you have taxonomies and categories competing for the same keyword is pretty easy, select one them and optimize them.

angelamaemae

Does anybody have any ideas for this one?

angelamaemae

Yes, we're very familiar with the differences between categories and tags. What do you think about my question?

Roman-Delcarmen

To help you understand taxonomy systems, first let me explain the
difference between categories, subcategories, and tags. Categories are
used to create large groups within your site. They bundle content that
has a similar high-level topic. Products or blog posts on your site
should fall into a category (a shop category or a blog category).
Because categories are hierarchical they can have subcategories.
Sub-categories fall into at least one category. They bundle a smaller
group of products into a category. Subcategories can have
subcategories too, which bundle an even smaller group, and so on.
By creating categories and subcategories you’ll create a treelike
structure.

Tags on the other hand just group content on certain topics together.
Tags are not hierarchical. You can see them as an index of your site.
They’ll not necessarily fall into a category. They can apply to
products, but to other site content as well.

You can have both a hierarchical and a non-hierarchical taxonomy
system for your website. Ideally, these taxonomy systems are much
alike. For example, you could have a blog on an eCommerce site. In
this case, you’d probably write a lot on topics related to your products.
Maybe about events where you use them, or what to use them for,
how to use them best, comparisons between different products etc.
Therefore, it makes sense that your tags will partly overlap with the
product categories and subcategories of your shop. This is ok. Because
in the end, you’d like to rank with those posts to draw people to the
products you sell. And, if you group products, whether that’s in
categories or tags, it’s easier to make them rank.

Category archives are landing pages
Your category archives are more important than individual pages and
posts. Those archives should be the first result in the search engines.
That means those archives are your most important landing pages.
Thus, they should also provide the best user experience. The more
likely your individual pages are to expire, the more this is true. In a
shop, your products might change, making your categories more
important to optimize. Otherwise, you’d be optimizing pages that
are going to be gone a few weeks/months later.

Categories prevent individual pages from competing
If you sell boxers and you optimize every product page, all those
pages will compete for the term ‘boxers’. You should optimize them
for their specific brand and model, and link them all to the ‘boxers’
category page. That way the category page can rank for ‘boxer’, while
the product page can rank for more specific terms. This way, the
category page prevents the individual pages from competing.

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