WordPress and category/subcategory landing pages

[mihaiaperghis]

Hey,

Here's my situation. I'm building a WordPress blog for product reviews of a certain niche.

Current category setup is 4 main categories with 4-8 subcategories each. Each subcategory has a unique description that will help it become a landing page for certain keywords, after which it lists the posts from that subcategory.

The posts will always be assigned to a sub-category, never to a main category.

My issue is what to do with the main categories. They're fairly general so they're not really targeting any keywords, and don't have any unique descriptions attached to them. I was thinking of choosing between three options on designing the main category pages:

1. List the subcategories + normal posts loop that bring the latest posts from the subcategories (may create a lot of duplicate content since the subcategory pages are also listing their posts)
2. List only the subcategories (+ maybe just the latest post from each subcategory)
3. Don't link the main categories at all, instead only use them to create dropdowns for the subcategories

So, what would you choose, and why?

[BlueprintMarketing]

I use Premise as you can change the landing page url to meet your needs. You want the least amount of parameters  after the

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-wordpress-seo-by-yoast-remove-category-base

Get it here

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/

Original URL/ this will get you the most ranking power. You may also want to use WordPressSEO by yost you can eliminate categories from the URL therefore lowering the the amount of parameters your website will show.

If I had A) http://example/landing-page/

Vs

B)  http://example/category/landing-page/

I will always pick the one with the least amount of forward slashes or parameters

There is a good price on Unbounce to create  landing pages inside the SEOmoz pro perks

http://www.seomoz.org/pro-perks

I like http://getpremise.com/

Landing Page URLs – This option allows you to create a unique URL for all the landing pages you create. Like a category distinction, it will keep your landing pages ordered and more SEO friendly.

basically in WordPress you you want the least amount of parameters after the/as possible to not use your categories to dilute the URL unless the category is a unique category and is the only thing after the/.

I hope this makes things easier.

Sincerely,

Tom

[mihaiaperghis]

Thanks Tom! However, I'm not interested in the URL structure, as I got that figured down. I'm mainly curious on what's a good practice for designing the blog category page when you have subcategories, and all the posts belong to the subcategories themselves.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Would you feel of will comfortable sharing the URL either here or in a private message.

a screenshot perhaps of what you would like it to look like?

A screenshot of what you have now.

I built many blogs and have followed the Advice given  on copyblogger.com  it has not steered me wrong yet.

http://www.copyblogger.com/wordpress-setup-mistakes/#more-30398

What you're doing is adding a parent category or page?

You can add new categories and subcategories as shown below, however you will want to link to every one of them meaning each one has its own page without a / category/ sub/

You want examples/category/tag/

That will do what you are wishing the subcategory to do however it will do it in a much cleaner and better way for your blog.

http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-to-add-categories-and-subcategories-to-wordpress/

I get what you're saying now your WordPress structure is set to use categories and subcategories

http://www.copyblogger.com/wordpress-setup-mistakes/#more-30398

Mistake 3: Too many categories, not enough tags

This is a really common error that even proficient content publishers can make — especially once your site starts to outgrow its original purpose.

It’s easy to just assign another category and dump posts into it, but that starts to create a very cluttered category structure. This is where tags can step in to do the job of tying together your posts.

Think of it this way: Categories are best for segmenting your content into broad sections. Tags help further refine and filter each post into specific sub-sections.

Category

Sub category 1

Sub category 1

New Category

Sub category 1

Etc.

http://wordpress.org/tags/subcategories

Would you like the categories to show up as URLs or would you like them to show up simply as a choice inside of the main URL?

My reason for asking is not due to URL structure so much as how your blog will operate. I also want to ask you what framework you're using?

My reason their different ways of going about things on different frameworks is I am sure you know.

I'm sure that you've gotten rid of the category Uncategorized right?

http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic/automatic-building-sublevels-menus-using-subcategories

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sub-categories-widget/

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11594678/wordpress-categories-linking-to-subcategories

Would be more worried about burying my links using the subcategories for every subcategory you create Google's going to have to dig a little deeper I would suggest building pages instead of categories I understand in certain instances that is not an option. However if using subcategories I would need to know if you want them to be shown? If yes you may use tools like this

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sub-categories-widget/

Or

http://yoast.com/showing-subcategories-on-wordpress-category-pages/

I would be very wary of doing that but I to understand if you want to essentially categorize your information. Maybe

SEO

Hosting

Etc.

Make them into tags not subcategories.

I hope what I've written makes sense. And I had to do some research I do everything on WordPress myself so if I could see a screenshot pictures worth 1000 words as they say.

Sincerely,

Thomas