Category landing pages are an underused SEO tool on websites. We explain how to get more value from these pages with WordPress SEO strategy.
If you aren’t using categories on your WordPress website, you’re missing out on a huge SEO opportunity and a way to make your website more navigable for your visitors.
Categories are great for e-commerce stores, portfolios, blogs and more. A category landing page helps bring together similar pieces of content to showcase customers based on their interests. So instead of seeing all of your products, they can browse the ones that are related to their interests based on a category.
And these categories help tell search engines more about the content that’s on your website and the value it brings your customers.
We’ll explain how to use categories and essential elements of your category landing pages that will help you experience great results for your SEO.
Creating categories on your WordPress website is not enough. These categories do provide a page you can link to, but they are often missing essential elements to provide SEO value. Here are five essentials to consider when developing category landing pages on a WordPress website.
Before you develop your category landing pages, make sure you have good keyword research for your website. You’ll want your category landing pages to be based on that research to give them the most SEO value.
Now, that does not mean that you should create a category for every keyword you’re targeting on your website. Instead, look to the most important keywords and subsets of content within your website. Those are the categories you want to develop.
For example, if you sell socks on your website, you might not want to create a category for red socks. Instead, a more valuable category landing page might be tube socks, compression socks, cut-off socks. That way you’re getting more into your customers’ search intents instead of random categories as you see them from your brand’s perspective.
A category landing page should not just be a listing of products. Add some text to the page to provide context for your users.
Going back to the sock example, you might write content that explains the key selling points of your products. Explain what’s in your socks or the way that they are sustainably made. This will help give that page more SEO value but also valuable content that can lead to a sale.
Look to develop about 300 words of content, but don’t just use fluff. If the page does not lend itself to 300 words, only write the amount of content that makes sense based on the category and its contents.
To get SEO results from your category landing pages, you need to customize your page title and meta description. These aspects of a page should be custom on every page of your website with no exclusions. Leaving them empty will harm your website’s SEO value.
Be careful not to be too salesy in your meta descriptions. While you want to include the page’s target keywords, you don’t want it to look like keyword stuffing or statements that aren’t focused on the value you bring your customers. Write what your customers would want to read to compel them to click.
Designate a featured image for your category landing pages. This will help customers create a visual connection with your website and it will give it even more SEO value.
Start by selecting an image that makes a clear connection between your page’s content and the image content. Name the image file with clear language and try to include your keyword if possible. Add it to your media files and be sure to give it alt text as this is another essential element of SEO.
Linking out to your category landing pages will help users navigate your website and add even more SEO value to your site. Try to link to the page using anchor text that matches the category landing page target keyword. Doing this will further help Google understand the content on that page.
Category landing pages are just one aspect of creating a WordPress website that’s focused on your customers and optimized for search engines. For strategic website design and maintenance, contact New Light Digital. We’re a full-service digital marketing agency providing valuable tools and strategies for our customers.
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