OK,
for the coders this may seem like a no-brainer but I have been searching for like ages to find a solution to this, and I've got to give credit to JTPratt's blog for the solution.
Have you ever wanted a category page that really acts like a page, plus with the idea of having each category "page" link back to the homepage for better internal linking seo, or indexing or less duple content? This is a workable solution:
1) Use "The Top Level Categories" plugin - this basically makes it so each category looks like a real page i.e no
site.com/category/bluewidgets
but
site.com/blue-widgets
(like how regular pages look)
(the folks at themezoom apparently have done some testing and they think G gives more weight to categories which are treated like silos vs. pages, i.e. you have a whole folder on blue-widgets vs. one html page, i.e. blue-widgets.html (by the way they have also tested and have discovered that blue-widgets.html gets treated like two words vs. blue_widgets.html i.e. you could show up for "blue" or "widgets" conceivably for the first not the second)
2) Add a category description
3) in archives.php or category.php under themes, look for this:
<?php /* If this is a category archive */ if (is_category()) { ?>
<h2 class="pagetitle">Archive for the '<?php echo single_cat_title();
RIGHT UNDER THAT add
<?php echo category_description(); ?>
In the description you can use html and add a summary, links (I link back to the main page so for example if the site is about "widgets" you can have the red widgets page link back to the homepage with "red widgets", same for the blue, the green, etc...when the spider comes around the silo-ing really helps as it knows that your site is all about widgets based on the themes/categories/silos + internal links)
Anyway, like I said, this may be a no-brainer for coders but for the non coders, this description really helps.
I found it surfing JT Pratt's blog page on wordpress category pages (link for props to him :xmas-smiley-016:
PS
oh the other main benefit is that one can do link building to the category pages which will be changing over time (as you add content) but can still maintain its' central theme due to the the way you've laid out the category description that will appear at the top....
for the coders this may seem like a no-brainer but I have been searching for like ages to find a solution to this, and I've got to give credit to JTPratt's blog for the solution.
Have you ever wanted a category page that really acts like a page, plus with the idea of having each category "page" link back to the homepage for better internal linking seo, or indexing or less duple content? This is a workable solution:
1) Use "The Top Level Categories" plugin - this basically makes it so each category looks like a real page i.e no
site.com/category/bluewidgets
but
site.com/blue-widgets
(like how regular pages look)
(the folks at themezoom apparently have done some testing and they think G gives more weight to categories which are treated like silos vs. pages, i.e. you have a whole folder on blue-widgets vs. one html page, i.e. blue-widgets.html (by the way they have also tested and have discovered that blue-widgets.html gets treated like two words vs. blue_widgets.html i.e. you could show up for "blue" or "widgets" conceivably for the first not the second)
2) Add a category description
3) in archives.php or category.php under themes, look for this:
<?php /* If this is a category archive */ if (is_category()) { ?>
<h2 class="pagetitle">Archive for the '<?php echo single_cat_title();
RIGHT UNDER THAT add
<?php echo category_description(); ?>
In the description you can use html and add a summary, links (I link back to the main page so for example if the site is about "widgets" you can have the red widgets page link back to the homepage with "red widgets", same for the blue, the green, etc...when the spider comes around the silo-ing really helps as it knows that your site is all about widgets based on the themes/categories/silos + internal links)
Anyway, like I said, this may be a no-brainer for coders but for the non coders, this description really helps.
I found it surfing JT Pratt's blog page on wordpress category pages (link for props to him :xmas-smiley-016:
PS
oh the other main benefit is that one can do link building to the category pages which will be changing over time (as you add content) but can still maintain its' central theme due to the the way you've laid out the category description that will appear at the top....
