Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What's the difference between a category page and a content page
-
Hello,
Little confused on this matter.
From a website architectural and content stand point, what is the difference between a category page and a content page?
So lets say I was going to build a website around tea.
My home page would be about tea.
My category pages would be:
White Tea, Black Tea, Oolong Team and British Tea correct? ( I Would write content for each of these topics on their respective category pages correct?)
Then suppose I wrote articles on organic white tea, white tea recipes, how to brew white team etc...( Are these content pages?)
Do I think link FROM my category page ( White Tea) to my ( Content pages ie; Organic White Tea, white tea receipes etc) or do I link from my content page to my category page?
I hope this makes sense.
Thanks,
Bill
-
Ryan,
You added some great additional insight here for Bill to consider. Excellent work on that.
And yes, I agree with you in not being happy that the "edit" link doesn't want to work lately here.
-
and let me say how much I dislike how the Edit button is presently broken. Grrrrrrr
-
I like Alan's answer. A couple direct answers to questions you raised:
From a website architecture stand point, there is no difference between a category page and a content page. They are both web pages and it's up to you, as the site owner, to determine how they can be utilized to best present your product.
From a content stand point, there is no right or wrong answer, but there are best practices. On the one end, some site owners use category pages purely as an organizational tool. Let's say you find a site about "beverages". There could be a categories for Coffee, Tea and Juice. There are three ways you can use the Tea page:
1. Content Separator. The Tea category would only be viewable from a main index page which allows visitors to see how your content is organized. The category page would not be reachable per se. "Tea" would be text, not a hyperlink. I think this usage is a missed opportunity from a web design perspective.
2. Content Index. The Tea category would be used to provide links to all the Tea pages. Some websites would choose to simply add links to their various tea pages. Other sites choose to offer high level information about each tea, along with the link. The latter choice works pretty well.
3. Content. You can use your category page to provide content. When I look up [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea]Wikipedia's Tea page[/url] there is a lot of information which can all be included on your Tea page.
It really depends on the balance you wish to achieve for your site. What is the focus? Is "Tea" something you want to sell or educate your visitors about? Or is "Tea" a road marker used to guide readers to the real destination.
You asked "Do I link FROM my category page to my content pages or do I link from my content page to my category page".
My answer would be, both. Let's say "Bill's Black Tea" was one of your products. On your Black Tea category page, you would use anchor text to link to Bill's Black Tea. You might say "If you want a smooth tasting tea, try Bill's Black Tea". Your anchor text would be "Bill's Black Tea" which would link to that page.
From the Bill's Black Tea page, you may make a general statement such as "Connoisseurs of black tea will appreciate the smooth taste of Bill's Black Tea" with "black tea" being anchor text back to the category page.
You asked a great question. The answer requires some high level thinking on your part. Do you want your site to be an educational resource for visitors, and your site happens to also sell tea? Or are you a tea merchant who offers high level information about the products you offer?
There is not a right or wrong answer. It's market positioning.
-
It's easy to get confused with terminology. All pages, however, should have high quality, unique, paragraph based content, no matter what you call them.
You have the right idea for organization.
From the home page, there should be links to the top level categories
White Tea
Black Tea
Oolong Tea
British Tea
Then all of your articles having anything to do with White Tea would be linked from within the White Tea section of the site.
So the tree would then look like:
- White Tea
- Organic White Tea
- White Tea Recipes
- How to Brew White Tea
- Black Tea
- Oolong Tea
- British Tea
This is, in fact, high quality content organization. So congratulations for having understood the concept.
- White Tea
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
-
My Website's Home Page is Missing on Google SERP
Hi All, I have a WordPress website which has about 10-12 pages in total. When I search for the brand name on Google Search, the home page URL isn't appearing on the result pages while the rest of the pages are appearing. There're no issues with the canonicalization or meta titles/descriptions as such. What could possibly the reason behind this aberration? Looking forward to your advice! Cheers
Technical SEO | | ugorayan0 -
Duplicate Content on a Page Due to Responsive Version
What are the implications if a web designer codes the content of the site twice into the page in order to make the site responsive? I can't add the url I'm afraid but the H1 and the content appear twice in the code in order to produce both a responsive version and a desktop version. This is a Wordpress site. Is Google clever enough to distinguish between the 2 versions and treat them individually? Or will Google really think that the content has been repeated on the same page?
Technical SEO | | Wagada0 -
Why is Google Webmaster Tools showing 404 Page Not Found Errors for web pages that don't have anything to do with my site?
I am currently working on a small site with approx 50 web pages. In the crawl error section in WMT Google has highlighted over 10,000 page not found errors for pages that have nothing to do with my site. Anyone come across this before?
Technical SEO | | Pete40 -
Are image pages considered 'thin' content pages?
I am currently doing a site audit. The total number of pages on the website are around 400... 187 of them are image pages and coming up as 'zero' word count in Screaming Frog report. I needed to know if they will be considered 'thin' content by search engines? Should I include them as an issue? An answer would be most appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory". The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Product Pages Outranking Category Pages
Hi, We are noticing an issue where some product pages are outranking our relevant category pages for certain keywords. For a made up example, a "heavy duty widgets" product page might rank for the keyword phrase Heavy Duty Widgets, instead of our Heavy Duty Widgets category page appearing in the SERPs. We've noticed this happening primarily in cases where the name of the product page contains an at least partial match for the desired keyword phrase we want the category page to rank for. However, we've also found isolated cases where the specified keyword points to a completely irrelevent pages instead of the relevant category page. Has anyone encountered a similar issue before, or have any ideas as to what may cause this to happen? Let me know if more clarification of the question is needed. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | ShawnHerrick0 -
Home Page .index.htm and .com Duplicate Page Content/Title
I have been whittling away at the duplicate content on my clients' sites, thanks to SEOmoz's pro report, and have been getting push back from the account manager at register.com (the site was built here and the owner doesn't want to move it). He says these are the exact same page and he can't access one to redirect to the other. Any suggestions? The SEOmoz report says there is duplicate content on both these urls: Durango Mountain Biking | Durango Mountain Resort - Cascade Village http://www.cascadevillagehotel.com/index.htm Durango Mountain Biking | Durango Mountain Resort - Cascade Village http://www.cascadevillagehotel.com/ Your help is greatly appreciated! Sheryl
Technical SEO | | TOMMarketingLtd.0 -
Blocking URL's with specific parameters from Googlebot
Hi, I've discovered that Googlebot's are voting on products listed on our website and as a result are creating negative ratings by placing votes from 1 to 5 for every product. The voting function is handled using Javascript, as shown below, and the script prevents multiple votes so most products end up with a vote of 1, which translates to "poor". How do I go about using robots.txt to block a URL with specific parameters only? I'm worried that I might end up blocking the whole product listing, which would result in de-listing from Google and the loss of many highly ranked pages. DON'T want to block: http://www.mysite.com/product.php?productid=1234 WANT to block: http://www.mysite.com/product.php?mode=vote&productid=1234&vote=2 Javacript button code: onclick="javascript: document.voteform.submit();" Thanks in advance for any advice given. Regards,
Technical SEO | | aethereal
Asim0