Comments on: What Every Blogger Needs to Know About Categories

By: Anita Clark

Anita Clark — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:39:31 +0000

I have tried to keep my list of categories very short (12 at the moment) with over 600 posts. It seems to be working and users don’t get the paralysis you talk about…too many choices might as well be none at all. Good readt, enjoyed it!

By: Chris Pearson

Chris Pearson — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 15:28:09 +0000

Botox Doc, check out this article on WordPress category page SEO. It's got more specific, actionable information that you can combine with this article to get the maximum out of your category pages.

By: Botox Doc

Botox Doc — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:16:14 +0000

Hey Chris,
I’ve been using thesis recently, really enjoying it.

I notice that this post is a bit old, and I’m sure you’ve made some changes to thesis since then regarding category SEO. I’m currently trying to improve my category page and was wondering if you have a new article related to it? If not, I’m sure lots of people would be interested in the info and would be worth updating this post.

By: varun

varun — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 12:48:29 +0000

This post was amazing.It was more like SEO with Categories.
I didn’t bother to check the date as its more like useful in any year of this blogging world.
Thanks Mr Pearson :)

By: Chris Pearson

Chris Pearson — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:29:09 +0000

Bob, you're talking about Google Sitelinks, which I never mentioned here. You can control those (but not whether or not Google displays them) inside Google Webmaster Tools.

By: Bob Dickinson

Bob Dickinson — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:32:39 +0000

Very interesting, is this how Google determines which sites it will give sub heading to? I have tried everything to get Google to show my site with subheadings and thought that categories was the answer?

Thanks for the info,

Bob D

By: Chris Pearson

Chris Pearson — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:31:34 +0000

Michelle, like many things in SEO, the answer is, "It depends." In this case, it depends on what you're trying to rank for. I'll use an example to help explain what I mean here: Let's say, for instance, that I'd like to try and rank for "SEO for everybody" here on this site. Since I have multiple articles on SEO as well as an established category page on the topic, it makes sense to link to the category page as opposed to an individual article about SEO. A direct link to the category page yields 2 distinct benefits:

The SEO of the category page gets stronger (because of the direct link).
Because the category page's SEO is boosted, all links from that page will also receive a boost because they'll have more "link juice" flowing their direction.

In other words, by linking to a high quality category page, you can increase the SEO of many pages at once rather than just one page at a time.

By: Michelle Minch

Michelle Minch — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 04:35:07 +0000

Chris: When adding internal linking, does it make any sense to link to a category (for example) as opposed to an individual page or post? Is there any SEO benefit?

By: SeanE

SeanE — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 14:36:19 +0000

Have been searching and inquiring on forums regarding categories and teasers. I would like teasers to only show for a select category on the home page. Everything so far either kills the teaser functionality in thesis (essentially showing teasers instead as featured post formatting) OR duplicates the thesis generated teasers (while the thesis generated ones do not adhere to category settings and the duplicate does).

Figured I would ask the man behind the curtain.

Thank you.

By: Sanjin Kunovac

Sanjin Kunovac — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 02:15:27 +0000

Chris, how many categories should I have per page? I want to make sure that my blog page has many categories…. Thanks