Why do we want the *first* page of a category indexed?

  • Is it considered *always* desirable to have the first (main) page of a WordPress category indexed? (e.g. “https://example.com/category/hardware”)

    I ask because the plugin I’m using explicitly *doesn’t* noindex the first category page (implicitly page=1) even when you set it to do this although it does this to subpages (?page=2 and so on).

    The Yoast SEO implies this is the way things should be done as well: “It made all the sense in the world to noindex, follow [subpages of archives], and have Google index just the main page, the first page of your (f.i.) category archive.”

    Thanks,

    – Raspberryade

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • I see two things.
    1) People talk about the duplicate content issue, where the same content can be found at multiple URLs. That makes me think to noindex tag pages if you allow category pages.

    2) If the search engine scans the archive page and records that it had keywords “dogs” and “cats” and “horses” today, then shows the page on a “dogs” search next month, but by then you’ve posted lots more things and “dogs” is no longer on the first page of the archive, what good did it do to scan the page? So if you multiply that over all the archive pages, it’s a mess.

    Thread Starter Raspberryade

    (@raspberryade)

    @joyously ; Thanks, but I’m not certain whether noindexing tag pages would make a difference.

    Category pages are already going to have duplicate content anyway (from the first pre-<!– more –> section of the article pages themselves) and if an article appears in more than one category, that intro content is (additionally) going to appear on more than one category page.

    #2- I think you’re saying that *you* don’t get their logic either?

    I still don’t get their reasoning for allowing indexing of the first cat page only(!)

    – Raspberryade

    Well, sort of. It seems to me that none of the list pages would be indexed, because they are all the same content in different orders (date, cat, tag, search, blog page), and as you add content they are changing.
    But then again, if you point the bot at the first page of a list, it will find links to all the rest.

    Thread Starter Raspberryade

    (@raspberryade)

    @joyously ; Okay, thanks for your response!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • The topic ‘Why do we want the *first* page of a category indexed?’ is closed to new replies.