Category pages - SEO or deindex?

[dealblogger]

What is the best thing to do with category pages? Should I deindex them or use SEO on them? I use the Thesis theme and the Wordpress SEO plugin. I am just not sure what to do with category pages.

Also will they create duplicate content?

[BeardoCo]

Your category pages should be no-indexed if they don't have rich unique content per category. It is hard to say without seeing the category pages if it will provide duplicate content, but in most cases it will.  You should also no index your archive area as well because that will definitely provide duplicate content.

[irvingw]

In every case i've seen they should be deindexed. Install YOAST SEO plugin and it will deindex them by default. It's a great plugin too.

[EGOL]

I have a blog with 150 category pages and they pull in kickass traffic.  Lots of those pages bring in over 1000 visitors per month.

If you have long blog posts and display the first sentence or two on the category page that will not be duplicate content.    It is no different than a category page for an ecommerce store.  Category pages get out there and compete for serious traffic terms.

Lots of people say don't index them.   That's not what I have found and if I noindexed them I would be walking away from a lot of income and more traffic than is received by the rest of the blog combined.

[dealblogger]

I am using YOAST SEO so that is good. So I don't have to do anything to get them deindexed?

If Wordpress SEO (by Yoast) deindexes my category pages, why are they showing up in my sitelinks? I tried to demote the category pages but they keep showing up. Thanks!

[dealblogger]

I just remembered that Thesis and Wordpress SEO sometimes conflict. I made some adjustments and added some code to alleviate some of these conflicts but perhaps the deindexing of category pages was overrode by Thesis.

I just clicked on noindex category pages in Thesis. I also clicked on noarchive to category pages in Thesis.

Will that do it?

[dealblogger]

My category pages just organize all my blog posts. Nothing new.

[dealblogger]

I don't get any traffic to my category pages but of course my site is new so I am just getting a couple organic hits per day.

But my category pages do just give an excerpt. More than a sentence or two though. I already deindexed them. I guess I can revisit that later.

[Landforce]

I've also been wondering about this recently but I've made similar observations on a much smaller scale and it makes sense.

What about only displaying the excerpts on the category page, and use your unique (maybe?) meta descriptions as the excerpt?

[dealblogger]

Just to follow up on this - I am ranking # 5 for a category page and it's a competitive keyword. So I am not sure deindexing category pages is the best idea and I am glad I didn't do it with my second and new blog.