Wordpress site structure - Pages or Categories

by 7 replies
7
Hello,

I am in the process of structuring my new wordpress site.
I have one main home page and 4 categories. Then of course there are pages like about, privacy policy and contact.
Those 4 categories pages will basically list the snippets of the posts (as published by the date).

However I wanted to be more creative and add some additional content and maybe some info-graphics to those leading category pages.
Unfortunately the category page template is quite limited. I can only add some "description" and that's pretty much it.

My question: could I use real Pages instead of Categories?
Those will serve as main landing pages and as parent pages for all other posts (the same way as categories).
From the url perspective the links are going to be identical, example - domainxyz.com/web-design/
You cannot tell if it's a page or category (I removed the "/category/" part from the permalink slug).
Am I missing something here? From the SEO perspective - is it a good idea or not? Does Google penalize something like that?

Thanks,
Meg
#search engine optimization #categories #pages #site #structure #wordpress
  • If you want to do proper SEO, use pages. OR you can add some custom fields in your categories section like meta title, keyword, etc.
  • Hi Meg,

    You can use conditional tags to create custom category pages on which you can place unique descriptions and add whatever else you want before the snippets.
  • You can build this structure with pages or categories. If you'd use pages you'd need something to bring the article lists there. I'm sure there are plugins for this, but I'd just quickly code a WordPress shortcode.

    I'd choose categories if the article listings are a major part of that page. You can certainly customize the category pages. There's some fields there by default, and plugins such as Yoast SEO add a few more. However, using the extra fields might not be easy if you're not a coder. You'd need to add them to the category pages if your theme doesn't do it by default.

    If you end up using categories, make sure that they're not marked "noindex". That's to prevent duplicate content, but if you're using categories as major pages you don't want that to happen.
  • Thank you all for your contributions.

    ..Still would like to see more insights on this topic.

    Does Google recognize this specific leading "Page" or "Category" set up?
    If so with what implications?

    To me using the Page (as a main landing Category page) gives me more freedom in terms of putting/pulling there any content I want.
    I know the Category pages can be "customized" as well.. It's just seems more cumbersome.
    Of course, regardless of using the "Page" or "Category" I'll make sure all of them will be indexed.

    Going forward I'd hate to find out later on that this approach is not "clean" or ideal from the SEO point of view..

    I'd like to hear more from some experts here with a real hands-on Wordpress experience..

    Thanks,
    Meg
    • [1] reply
    • They might, but if you set up the categories properly it should not make much difference. Almost exactly same HTML, just some more WordPress archive features.

      Then do that. My view is that of a site builder who doesn't want to deal with content updates. If you feel that you want to hand-edit the archives that's certainly something you can do.

      And as I said, there's certainly plugins that can pull an archive listing and have it sit on some random page.

      You're not printing a brochure. If you find out that something doesn't work, then change it. SEO is an ongoing process in any case, and so is running a website. If you're starting from scratch there's not much to worry about.

      I'm not sure what you're looking to hear. You're describing some very mundane structures that can be changed in minutes.
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • I guess I wanted to see some examples, or learn more from someone who's done it.
    But that's ok, I've decided to go with leading Pages instead of Category Pages.

    Thank you for all your contributions and help!
    Meg
    • [1] reply
    • Sorry, can't post client sites on a public forum.

      I've built WordPress sites for five years so I've seen quite a few scenarios. We can discuss your chosen one a bit more if you wish, but you'd need to ask more specific questions. For example shortcodes are a very handy feature that I use nearly every day. Whip up a (WP)DB query, loop through the results, code the HTML, tie the function to a shortcode, place it on a page, and you're done. That's the entire recipe from my point of view.
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