Categories and SEO

Hello,

I wanted to create category pages that worked like the homepage, but I was told in a previous forum topic that I submitted that it was not possible.

The first question is it possible to make a categories which does not show all pages, but has a show more feature. Reason it seems the search engines don’t like categories going e.g. space shuttle page 1, space shuttle 2, space shuttle 3 etc because its got same metatags and descriptions etc.

I had the idea of using a redirect and instead of going to the categories page it does to a page/post. Problem is the breadcrumbs show the category page. For that to work breadcrumbs need to be user definable. Is that possible?

So what I am trying to do is say I have a pages on Space Shuttle instead of having a category pages showing blog posts I’d rather have a info page with some blogs in the bottom with a button to see more. If I use the present method it takes alot of scrolling through pages to get to what you want.

I await your reply,

Vic Stathopoulos

Categories can have multiple pages if your meta data is properly done to show page 2, page 3, page 4. Etc.

We have a 16 year old news portal with 100+ pages in some categories, like “California” or “software news” … and no issues.

The use of proper canonical tags, pretty permalinks, and title/description clearly including page numbers is the simple solution. There are tutorials on how to do this, or simply use the recommended YOAST SEO plugin.

Folks often have sub-category pages like

space shuttle > museum photos
space shuttle > liftoffs
space shuttle > in space

etc.

Not sure that helps – just food for thought in that multiple pages don’t hurt seo if meta data properly setup. 🙂

Chris,

I will give you an example of what I am trying to do.

I would prefer to have the dedicated Solar System page:
http://www.aerospaceguide.net/solar_system/index.html

Because I have to use categories and want to use breadcrumbs I have to go the categories method.

I think users would prefer to go to a main page thats summarises the info than going through pages trying to find the main Solar System info page.

MY ORIGINAL WEBSITE

My original website was made in Front Page and the above link was the main Solar System page whereas now I have been forced to use Categories in order to use the Breadcrumb.

If you click on the breadcrumb its takes you to Solar System Categories page:
http://www.aerospaceguide.net/category/solar-system

ONE SOLUTION

I thought of using a redirect so when a person goes to Solar System categories it takes you to the full Solar System page, but unfortunately the breadcrumbs would show the Solar System Categories page and not the dedicated Solar System page.

If Tagdiv implemented the Visual Editor in Categories – it would solve this problem and would make super power websites with Categories / Sections which simply aren’t just blog pages.

BREAD CRUMB PROBLEM

This problem gets worse when I say want to use Breadcrumbs from the Dwarf Planet Pluto, but I have omitted doing it because I can’t manually create breadcrumbs in WordPress.

http://www.aerospaceguide.net/planet/planetpluto.html

I tried to get around the problem by using a text link in the content. Its a solution, but its easier if the breadcrumb was available for it.

Regards,

Vic

Right … you can create a custom “page” as landing page for any topic and manually create elements for that on the topic, and liberal use of ‘search’ boxes, and category drop-down selectors on the page help too.

Theme doesn’t control “structure” of how WordPress builds categories, pages, or tags, in the sense of how they rest in the WP hierarchy.

Sounds like simply building topic landing “pages” vs “post categories” is one option.

Or, build a custom category template, and then manually select that for the category you want to do things a slightly different way from default.

Way outside the scope of the theme itself, probably.

Chris,

With pages you can use the Visual Editor which sort of solves the page problem, but is there a way to manually control the breadcrumbs?

Other idea is with the categories pages is there a way to stop it using multiple pages and be one page with pagination (click on button to make list longer).

Vic