Category pages - SEO or deindex?
-
What is the best thing to do with category pages? Should I deindex them or use SEO on them? I use the Thesis theme and the Wordpress SEO plugin. I am just not sure what to do with category pages.
Also will they create duplicate content?
-
Just to follow up on this - I am ranking # 5 for a category page and it's a competitive keyword. So I am not sure deindexing category pages is the best idea and I am glad I didn't do it with my second and new blog.
-
I've also been wondering about this recently but I've made similar observations on a much smaller scale and it makes sense.
What about only displaying the excerpts on the category page, and use your unique (maybe?) meta descriptions as the excerpt?
-
I don't get any traffic to my category pages but of course my site is new so I am just getting a couple organic hits per day.
But my category pages do just give an excerpt. More than a sentence or two though. I already deindexed them. I guess I can revisit that later.
-
My category pages just organize all my blog posts. Nothing new.
-
I just remembered that Thesis and Wordpress SEO sometimes conflict. I made some adjustments and added some code to alleviate some of these conflicts but perhaps the deindexing of category pages was overrode by Thesis.
I just clicked on noindex category pages in Thesis. I also clicked on noarchive to category pages in Thesis.
Will that do it?
-
I am using YOAST SEO so that is good. So I don't have to do anything to get them deindexed?
If Wordpress SEO (by Yoast) deindexes my category pages, why are they showing up in my sitelinks? I tried to demote the category pages but they keep showing up. Thanks!
-
I have a blog with 150 category pages and they pull in kickass traffic. Lots of those pages bring in over 1000 visitors per month.
If you have long blog posts and display the first sentence or two on the category page that will not be duplicate content. It is no different than a category page for an ecommerce store. Category pages get out there and compete for serious traffic terms.
Lots of people say don't index them. That's not what I have found and if I noindexed them I would be walking away from a lot of income and more traffic than is received by the rest of the blog combined.
-
In every case i've seen they should be deindexed. Install YOAST SEO plugin and it will deindex them by default. It's a great plugin too.
-
Your category pages should be no-indexed if they don't have rich unique content per category. It is hard to say without seeing the category pages if it will provide duplicate content, but in most cases it will. You should also no index your archive area as well because that will definitely provide duplicate content.
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
-
Is it better to have an hreflang go to the home page in a different language if there's no corresponding page
If I have some pages in English, but not in Spanish on my website: Should my hreflang go to the home page on the Spanish site? Or should I not have an "es-MX" hreflang for that page? Ideally I would have all the pages translated, but this has not all been done yet.
On-Page Optimization | | RoxBrock0 -
Is there any decent web browser that still displays the full page title at the top of the page?
I just updated to the latest version of Firefox on my Mac and saw that they now hide most of the page title in the browser tab, like Chrome and Safari. I like to be able to see the full page title at all times (for reasons I'm sure you all understand) and that's pretty much the only reason I stuck with Firefox all these years. Now I'm looking for an alternative – any suggestions?
On-Page Optimization | | matt-145671 -
International SEO
We have a client who is looking to expand to other countries, particularly South America. What is my best route forward for SEO on a multi national site?
On-Page Optimization | | CreativeCow0 -
Homepage On-page Optimization
How do you all handle homepage optimization, if you (or a client) offers a variety of services? Our homepage has the strongest link profile of any of our pages, but it lists all the areas of law we cover. Therefore, it has too many keywords and none really rank well. Should we just pick our most profitable areas and optimize for that? www.kempruge.com in case anyone would benefit from looking at the actual page. Thanks, Ruben
On-Page Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Category Descriptions if Category Pages are Noindexed?
I have noindexed my category pages. Do I still need to write a description for my categories? I am using the plugin SEO Content Control to see what I can spiff up but I don't want to waste my time. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger0 -
Onpage SEO before Offpage?
Hi there, I want to ask why should a website first have Onpage optimization and after that Offpage optimization or Link building/earning? I have read that this is better, even obligatory in many articles but I am not sure for the reason and benefits of that. Can at least social media optimization start at the same time or at the middle of the Onpage optimization?
On-Page Optimization | | vladokan0 -
Main page deindexed by google.
3 days ago our main page('/') has stopped appear in google results. Rest of pages works fine. Even our main page from canadian version of site with similar content works fine. Some times canadian page appears for key word where we had our com version before. But I think this is just result of disappearing com version. Any suggestion were to look? Messages box in google webmastertools is empty. Could this be the question too long page title? PS: Does any way exist to check if we were punished by Google and reason of this? For Bing and Yahoo everything works fine. PPS: We have just found that "cache:our_site.com" and "info:our_site.com" returns in google our_site.ca. So this should be reason of problem. So now we are looking how to fix this.
On-Page Optimization | | ctam0 -
Is an Overflow SEO friendly
Is an "overflow" (scrollbar) seo and Google friendly? I only ask because it hides part of the visible text.
On-Page Optimization | | BradBorst0