Bert Swope
If you’re using WordPress on your website, you may be wondering if it helps with your SEO efforts. While it can be difficult to determine exactly what your site is doing to help with SEO, there are a few things you can do to improve the performance of your pages. Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been at it for a while, reorganizing your categories and creating new content can greatly impact your website’s ranking in search engine results.
Sub-categories
When you add tags or sub-categories to WordPress, you are adding a grouping of posts. This helps search engines index your website. It also helps visitors find related content and navigate your site. Adding categories is easy and simple, and it can be done from the dashboard or in the block editor.
Using sub-categories is a great way to help improve SEO. They improve your site’s navigation, filtering, and pageviews. You can also use them to boost UX. By doing this, your users will be more engaged with your site. That helps you achieve higher SERP.
A good category will help visitors understand your site’s structure, and it will encourage them to interact with it. When visitors can easily find what they are looking for, they are more likely to remain on your site and engage with it. If you have multiple posts on the same topic, using sub-categories can be a great way to improve your rankings.
For example, if you are blogging about wildlife, you might have a few categories for birds, fish, and mammals. Each one of these groups of posts can have different tags, allowing you to make them easier for readers to navigate and find. In this example, the Birds category has two different tags.
While tags do not have a hierarchical structure like categories do, they are a useful tool for search engine optimization. The WordPress tag section is a good place to add new tags, and the landing page for the tag has a URL that is /blog/tag/.
There are several plugins that allow you to create sub-categories. These plugins can be found in the right-hand menu of your admin area. Once you have added a sub-category, you can delete it by clicking the little x icon. Alternatively, you can change the prefix of the category’s URL.
As with any other feature of WordPress, you can modify your categories and tags. Change the title of the category to make it more searchable. Create a proper meta description for each category.
Optimizing your category archive page
If you’re looking to improve your site’s ranking, optimizing your category archive page is a good place to start. They’re generally not indexed by search engines, but you can make them more search engine friendly.
The purpose of categories is to give more detail and direction to people. If you have a website that sells shoes, for example, you’ll want to optimize your product pages for specific brands and styles. However, if you sell bathing suits, you might want to optimize your category pages for the term “bathing suits.” This is because you may have to compete with other sites that are also selling bathing suits.
Optimizing your category archives is important, as you can pull related content to boost your rankings. You can also use breadcrumbs to tell search engines more about your site structure.
Another SEO-related thing you can do is create a custom meta description. Search engines will show this on your search results page. A short, catchy description will increase your chances of getting a click. To do this, you’ll need to install a WordPress SEO plugin.
One of the best is the Yoast meta box. It’s located at the bottom of your pages and allows you to create a customized title. In addition, it gives you the chance to write a short meta description.
Although the Yoast box is a great way to optimize your category and tag archive pages, you can do even more with a free WordPress SEO plugin. Here are some options for your blog:
You’ll also want to link to your archive page. Not only will it help visitors find your site, but it will also tell the search engines that your site is important.
Finally, you can include some unique and eye-catching content on your category and tag pages. For example, you might include an introductory section that breaks your posts into sections, such as “What’s new” and “Recipes.” These will help visitors see your content more easily and improve your site’s click-through rate.
You can also use a plugin like Mai Archive Pages to customize the look and feel of your site’s archives. This will allow you to add content before and after your archive content.
Creating content that supports category pages
Category pages are a major part of your site’s user experience. They help visitors locate content-related posts and enhance overall SEO. These pages are very valuable to both webmasters and site visitors. Understanding how to display category pages will increase conversions and boost overall SEO.
WordPress categories make it easy to group blog posts and make it easier for readers to browse through your website. Using tags is also a great way to organize your content. You can add them to new posts and even change the WordPress default.
Most category pages are a collection of links to post in the same category. But it is possible to create more informative pages that will draw more visitors. When you include content on category archive pages, you can significantly improve the visibility of your website’s content.
You may find that you have duplicate content on your website, which can hurt on-page SEO. If this is the case, you can use a WYSIWYG editor to customize your category page. With this tool, you can insert shortcodes from other plugins and even style your pages.
One of the most important things you can do when creating a category is to choose a unique introductory text. This will not only show search engines what your page is about, but it will also tell your visitors what to expect.
In addition to the introductory text, you should add your category description to your site. You can write it yourself or use a WordPress plugin. Creating your own description is a time-consuming task.
Adding SEO content on your category pages is not always a simple task, but it is worth the effort. Fortunately, there are several plugins and HTML builders that can help you add it. Having unique content on your category page can boost your domain authority and ranking in Google SERPs.
Creating your own category page can be as easy as editing your theme files or using a WordPress plugin. However, you might consider hiring a freelancer if you have hundreds of category pages.
Re-organizing your categories
Re-organizing your categories in WordPress can help your website be easier to navigate and boost SEO rankings. Categories and tags are both taxonomies used to organize your content. But they work in a different way.
Tags are more of an index than a category. A tag can help you search for specific content, and it’s used as an index of related posts. However, if you’re re-organizing your tags, you may want to consider adding some categories to your site.
You can create new categories and subcategories in the WordPress dashboard. Hover over a category, and you’ll see a link to edit that category. This helps you maintain a clean, well-organized structure.
The number of categories you have should reflect the type of content you’re providing. For example, a food blog might create categories for a variety of foods. If you create categories for books, you could add memoirs, general books, and biographies.
When you re-organize your categories in WordPress, you should make sure you change all of your blog’s URLs. It’s best to keep your URL structure to a minimum and only assign one main category to each post. That way, your blog is kept clean and you won’t have to worry about boilerplate SEO issues.
Creating new subcategories is not required, but it can be helpful. Subcategories are also useful when you’re narrowing down your topic. They’re a great way to make your categories clearer and more accessible.
Adding parent and child categories will add more text to the URL, but it’s important to make sure that you don’t confuse visitors. For example, a casual reader browsing fashion content isn’t going to want to see the category of “Burgundy Sweater” on the archive page. Rather, they want to see a large list of posts with that type of content.
Changing your category structure can cause backlinks to break and other issues. Don’t try to change the entire structure of your blog, as that will cause lost backlinks and broken links. Instead, create new subcategories and re-organize your site.