Categories: Index vs No Index

byEricCantu

14.4K followers

Updated 5 days ago

A question I received recently asked about whether categories should be indexed or not. Categories are a great way to help organize your content, both for your readers and for Google itself as it helps it to understand the hierarchy of your articles.

As a rule of thumb, you don't need your categories to be indexed. For the most part, your category pages will just be listings of the articles that fit into that category without any unique or helpful content added. If you are adding unique content to these category pages like introductions or an in-depth walkthrough talking about the category itself you could choose to index them, but it's really not necessary to have those category pages trying to rank in the SERPS.

Save your indexing for your unique and helpful content like the articles you're publishing. And also remember that in the big picture of things, especially starting out, small technical aspects of affiliate marketing like indexing vs no indexing of categories doesn't mean nearly as much as focusing on publishing quality content, which we all have an abundance of article ideas ready to publish in our hubs.

If you notice you've had your categories indexed for a while now, it's really nothing to worry about. This is a very minor aspect of your business and you can change that setting and move right along. Don't let the small things take your time away from your content.

Push out that content in volume!