What is a category page?<\/h2>\n
A category page allows you to group different posts together. It\u2019s like your main blog page but it only displays posts from a particular category.<\/p>\n
When you create a post you have the option to add it in one or more categories. Pages by default don\u2019t have this option.<\/p>\n
A properly optimized WordPress theme will show the category of a post in the breadcrumb, like the example below.<\/p>\n Category pages may share the same template as your posts and the same sidebar or widgets. This depends on the theme you are using but in the majority of cases a post page and a category page have similar layout.<\/p>\n Usually a category page (also known as Archive page), will show the title, image and introduction of a post and will have paging at the bottom to help users navigate through the archives.<\/p>\n When thinking about your blog structure and navigation, it is a common practice to group your posts into categories and show these on your main menu. A typical website has the following structure:<\/p>\n From an SEO perspective category pages have several issues, duplicate content is one of them. A category page that shows the excerpts of a number of posts doesn\u2019t have any unique content since all the content is already available in the individual post pages.<\/p>\n This is also true for ecommerce websites where a category page will show a list of products that make up the category without having unique content on its own.<\/p>\n Category pages are difficult to rank high in the search results<\/strong><\/p>\n Because of the above problem, Google is more likely to rank a page (or post) from your website instead of a category page.<\/p>\n Search for any keyword on Google and you will see that category pages are rarely shown in the SERPS.<\/p>\n The only cases that Google may show a category page is when a website has a lot of related pages and the SEO structure<\/strong><\/a> of a website is such that it helps Google choose the category page over a post page.<\/p>\n When are category pages useful for SEO?<\/strong><\/p>\n In blogs or corporate websites, category pages are mostly used to help users navigate a website and find what they are looking for faster and easier. SEO wise, they don\u2019t serve any purpose.<\/p>\n In cases though that you have an ecommerce website, services website or even a\u00a0travel website<\/strong><\/a>, category pages can serve as landing pages and are also important for SEO.<\/p>\n Let me explain this with an example:<\/p>\n Assume that you have a travel website showcasing villas for rent<\/em> in different parts of Italy.<\/p>\n You have category pages for your main locations i.e. \u2018Villas in Sicily<\/em>\u2019, \u2018Villas in Sardinia<\/em>\u2019 etc. and individual pages for each villa i.e. \u2018Villa Talia – Large Villa for Rent in Sicily\u2019<\/em>, etc.<\/p>\n When users search Google for \u2018Villas in Sicily<\/em>\u2019, you want them to land to your category page so that they view all available villas in that particular location and not a single property.<\/p>\n If you have experience with such scenarios, you know that Google might choose not to show the category page because they find the individual pages to have more valuable and unique content.<\/p>\n How do you solve this problem?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are a number of things you can do to help Google rank the category page in their results.<\/p>\n Your category pages must have unique titles and descriptions.<\/strong><\/p>\n When you EDIT a CATEGORY on WordPress you can configure the titles and descriptions.<\/p>\n When choosing your title and description, same rules apply as in the case of posts or pages.<\/p>\n Pro Tip:<\/strong> Read How to create SEO Friendly Titles<\/strong><\/a> and Meta Description optimization<\/strong><\/a> for all the tips related to optimizing your titles and descriptions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Your category pages need to have unique content<\/strong><\/p>\n Next, to solve the problem of not having unique content on the category pages, you need to add a few paragraphs of text to the \u2018Description\u2019 field.<\/p>\n This is normally shown at the top of the page. I say normally,\u00a0<\/em>since the actual position depends how your theme is configured to show the category descriptions.<\/p>\n If everything is configured correctly, your category pages will have a unique title, a unique H1 heading and a useful description.<\/p>\n Set Canonical URLs for multipage categories<\/strong><\/p>\n Before proceeding to the next step, if you have paging enabled for your category pages (or if it shows options like \u2018next post\u2019 or \u2018previous post\u2019 at the bottom of the page), make sure that all subsequent pages have canonical URLS pointing to the first page.<\/p>\n Pro Tip:<\/strong> Read this guide<\/strong><\/a> from Google about pagination and SEO.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As far as on-page SEO<\/a><\/strong> is concerned, these are all the settings you need to make to your category pages.<\/p>\n Advanced SEO for Category pages<\/strong><\/p>\n The problem explained above with Google picking a single page instead of a category page still remains, even after you optimized your category titles and descriptions.<\/p>\n So, you need to go one step further and perform the following checks \/ changes:<\/p>\n Make sure that you have breadcrumbs enabled on your website and that the links in the breadcrumb menu are clickable and have the proper schema<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n In our example above the breadcrumb when viewing a villa page should look like this:<\/p>\n Home<\/em> > Villas in Sicily<\/em> > Villa Talia<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Villas in Sicily<\/em>\u2019 should be a link pointing to the category page.<\/p>\n Next, you need to add internal links in the individual pages that will point to the category page using the proper anchor text.<\/p>\n For example, you can edit the description in Villa Talia<\/em> and add a link to help users navigate back to \u2018Villas in Sicily<\/em>\u2019.<\/p>\n These internal links will help Google understand that your category pages are important and also it will help users navigate your website better.<\/p>\n Lastly, check that you don\u2019t confuse Google by having the title of the category pages included in the titles of the individual pages.<\/p>\n For example, don\u2019t have this as a title for a villa: \u2018Villas in Sicily \u2013 Villa Talia for Rent\u2019<\/em>.<\/p>\n In the titles of the individual pages you should give details about their unique characteristics, and page content and not about their category.<\/p>\n The above concepts can be applied to any ecommerce website or even to blogs. It is an advanced SEO technique for optimizing your category and archive pages better.<\/p>\n When you add a tag in the tags section of a post, WordPress creates a page for each tag. The URL of a tag page is https:\/\/www.yourdomain.com\/tag\/tag-name<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n When you go to the TAGS page on WordPress and EDIT a page, you can do the same SEO fixes as explained in categories\u00a0to make your tag pages unique and interesting.<\/p>\n In the majority of cases, tag pages are only used to aid the user navigation and serve no other purpose.<\/em><\/p>\n Tag pages may have the same titles as category pages or even posts and this is not good for your SEO.<\/p>\n I have seen a lot of cases on client\u2019s websites where tag pages are shown in the SERPS (instead of the main pages) and this is not a good user experience or for the presentation of a company in the search results.<\/p>\n The best practice is to \u2018noindex<\/em>\u2019 and \u2018nofollow<\/em>\u2019 tag pages. By doing so Google (and other search engines<\/a><\/strong>), will not take into account these pages while indexing your website.\u00a0 This will save you a lot of time and also make your website more optimized.<\/p>\n![\"Categories](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/wordpress-category-in-breadcrumb.png\")
![\"Wordpress](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/website-structure-example.png\")
Category Page SEO<\/h2>\n
![\"Category](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/category-title-optimization.png\")
![\"Example](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/example-of-optimized-category.png\")
What are tag pages?<\/h2>\n
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Best SEO practices for tag pages<\/h2>\n
![\"Tag](\"https:\/\/www.reliablesoft.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/tag-seo-yoast.png\")