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Category Pages Ranking, but Posts Nowhere to be found?!

by Branlan17
10 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a site that I'm rebuilding and I'm making all of the pages "posts" this time around, but still linking to the perma-link URL for each post in my navigation menu and trying to rank the individual posts in search engines.

Surprisingly, the category pages for the keywords are actually ranking already, but the individual posts (who's names and URLs also have the keyword in them) are nowhere to be found yet.

I'm wondering if I should just go back to making any page I want to rank a static page (with no www.site.com/blog/08/2012/KEYWORD.html) in the URL, so that it is instead just (www.site.com/KEYWORD.html), or if getting popularity / backlinks to those post pages will cause google to get the picture and rank them instead (or at least higher than) the category pages?

I feel like I might be making it harder on myself by trying to rank posts whose content already appears on the blog index page, but I also don't want to waste work time switching pages over to static ones, re-submitting a new sitemap, and re-indexing the new URLs if it's ultimately unnecessary.

So, any ideas? ^ ^

- Brandon
#category #found #pages #posts #ranking
  • Profile picture of the author nik0
    Banned
    I've seen it many times, it's a temporarily thing, don't worry soon your posts start to rank.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    The category probably has an internal link from every single page in the category (more relevant internal links).

    If you don't want the category page showing in the SERPs, make sure you have Canonical tags showing which page is the correct page & possibly (extreme case) NOINDEX the category page, just know that a NOINDEX tag will remove any page from the SERPs that include that tag (be careful with the tag).
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  • Profile picture of the author kevlah
    I agree with nik0, if it's a new site or undergoing a major overhaul then it's just a temporary thing.

    It's frustrating when this happens as it come sometimes take up to a few weeks for google to work things out, but just be patient and don't try and compensate for it by switching stuff around, it'll probably just protract the wait for it to be indexed properly.
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  • Profile picture of the author Branlan17
    Ok lol. It is frustrating indeed to see my category page ranking in the top spot on page 2 while the post itself is indexed, but not in the search results for the term.
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    • Profile picture of the author kiliki
      Originally Posted by Branlan17 View Post

      Ok lol. It is frustrating indeed to see my category page ranking in the top spot on page 2 while the post itself is indexed, but not in the search results for the term.
      One little trick that might work is to inlink directly to the post url at the bottom of another post to give the google bots a extra help in knowing that there is a specific url that is being linked and use the keyword term as the specific textlink you want to rank. I've seen one seo expert demonstrate this technique and had a new post ranking in less than 10 minutes specifically the way he wanted it to rank. Granted, the blog he was showing off on was being crawled constantly and had incredible page rank, but it was a cool demo.
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  • Profile picture of the author Branlan17
    I think I may just not use categories from now on anyways, I don't think they influence a posts SEO, since you can tag with keywords already, but are rather for user navigation, if I'm right? But since I have a site menu that makes it easy to find each page anyways, they are probably unnecessary and confusing SEs for no reason. I didn't change the posts to pages, I left them in tact, but I did get rid of the category pages and submit a new sitemap to google. Other than that, I'll just keep on writing
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    • Profile picture of the author kiliki
      Originally Posted by Branlan17 View Post

      I think I may just not use categories from now on anyways, I don't think they influence a posts SEO, since you can tag with keywords already, but are rather for user navigation, if I'm right? But since I have a site menu that makes it easy to find each page anyways, they are probably unnecessary and confusing SEs for no reason. I didn't change the posts to pages, I left them in tact, but I did get rid of the category pages and submit a new sitemap to google. Other than that, I'll just keep on writing
      Depending on how you use categories, they can be a fantastic way to help visitors navigate your site and organize data nicely. I am not sure that eliminating them altogether is a good idea since it does add benefit to SE's and does not necessarily confuse them. Study a little about canonical tags and settings and it could be more clear on what you should do.
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  • Profile picture of the author heavens9002
    don't worry sometimes it takes time...
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  • Profile picture of the author Branlan17
    Unfortunately, with my host, having direct access to adding a canonical tag for every page (category page, date page, blog home page, etc.), but I DO have access to the code for the postp age I actually want to be the canonical page, can I put any sort of tag on THAT page to indicate it is the preferred version, or is the only way to put the tag on the OTHER similar pages and point them to it?
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  • Profile picture of the author MaryPabelate
    Banned
    It is basic, root section is given higher ranking so you should understand....

    home page > categories > pages > posts
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