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 -
Can I use a 301 redirect to pass 'back link' juice to a different domain?
Hi, I have a backlink from a high DA/PA Government Website pointing to www.domainA.com which I own and can setup 301 redirects on if necessary. However my www.domainA.com is not used and has no active website (but has hosting available which can 301 redirect). www.domainA.com is also contextually irrelevant to the backlink. I want the Government Website link to go to www.domainB.com - which is both the relevant site and which also should be benefiting from from the seo juice from the backlink. So far I have had no luck to get the Government Website's administrators to change the URL on the link to point to www.domainB.com. Q1: If i use a 301 redirect on www.domainA.com to redirect to www.domainB.com will most of the backlink's SEO juice still be passed on to www.domainB.com? Q2: If the answer to the above is yes - would there be benefit to taking this a step further and redirect www.domainA.com to a deeper directory on www.domianB.com which is even more relevant?
Technical SEO | | DGAU
ie. redirect www.domainA.com to www.domainB.com/categoryB - passing the link juice deeper.0 -
Soft 404's on a 301 Redirect...Why?
So we launched a site about a month ago. Our old site had an extensive library of health content that went away with the relaunch. We redirected this entire section of the site to the new education materials, but we've yet to see this reflected in the index or in GWT. In fact, we're getting close to 500 soft 404's in GWT. Our development team confirmed for me that the 301 redirect is configured correctly. Is it just a waiting game at this point or is there something I might be missing? Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MJTrevens0 -
How to Delete the slug /category/ from wordpress category pages
Hi all, I would like to ask you what's the better way to eliminate the slug /category/ form the wordpress category pages. I need to delete the slug /category/ to make the url seo frendly. The problem is that my site is an old site with the page indexed by Google for a long time. Thanks for your advice.
Technical SEO | | salvyy0 -
How do I handle duplicate content of the same product in Multiple product categories?
I am building a BigCommerce store for selling framed art. Many of the pieces of art will fall in more than one product category. Let's say I have a framed print of a photograph of a western landscape. This piece of art would fit into these categories; "western", "landscape", and "photography". I would have three pages with duplicate content for just this one framed print. Will google give me less page rank due to this? Can all the link juice be given to just one of the three categories by use of rel=canonical? If so, does anyone know how to do this for a bigcommerce site? I would appreciate any feedback. Thanks, Kelly
Technical SEO | | Kelly_S0 -
Are Collapsible DIV's SEO-Friendly?
When I have a long article about a single topic with sub-topics I can make it user friendlier when I limit the text and hide text just showing the next headlines, by using expandable-collapsible div's. My doubt is if Google is really able to read onclick textlinks (with javaScript) or if it could be "seen" as hidden text? I think I read in the SEOmoz Users Guide, that all javaScript "manipulated" contend will not be crawled. So from SEOmoz's Point of View I should better make use of old school named anchors and a side-navigation to jump to the sub-topics? (I had a similar question in my post before, but I did not use the perfect terms to describe what I really wanted. Also my text is not too long (<1000 Words) that I should use pagination with rel="next" and rel="prev" attributes.) THANKS for every answer 🙂
Technical SEO | | inlinear0 -
Why am I not showing up in the SERP's or Google Local?
I have been trying to optimise the following site for both Google SERP's and Google Local - Pixel Primate The URL has been around for around 3 years now but they just updated the website and launched it in December 2012. I did the on-page optimisation early in January 2013 and Google seems to have indexed the changes, for the home page at least. One major keyword I am targeting for the home page is 'Web Design Leicester'. I understand that the DA is fairly low (24) so this is something I need to improve. However, I've experienced positive results fairly quickly from just on-page optimisation for other sites I have worked on. The site just doesn't seem to be ranking at all for any keywords. Maybe the industry type is just extremely competitve but I find it very strange to not be visible anywhere in the SERPs. The site does not seem to have any penalties as it ranks for 'Pixel Primate' and all pages appear when doing a site: search. Also what's strange is that I set up the Google Local listing years ago but it doesn't appear anywhere in the local listing, not even when I search for it manually. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CWseo0 -
Solving duplicate content with WP authors, tags, categories
I've been kind of neglecting wordpress installations on my websites and noticed many showing duplicate content for pages showing under author and tags, tags and single post, categories and single post. Should this be a concern? Whats the best way of fixing this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | cgman0