Category Page Header Tags?

[wikibum]

I never thought that category pages as important because I never try to rank them. However, now I am seeing some of my category pages rank for broad keywords. I am also paying attention to every single page on my websites. Nothing is an after thought anymore.

I ran an audit on a few ranking competitors and I noticed that they don't use H2 tags on the category page results. For example, if I go to a category page about Tennis Tips. All the posts listed there are just text. None of the posts listed have a H2 tag on them. There is literally only 1 H1 tag and some H3 tags. No H2 tags.

My question is. How do you structure your category pages? Do you add an H2 tag to the listing titles or just leave them as text/paragraph? I always assumed they are H2 but I guess I was wrong.

 

[BrandEngineer]

I don't see why you wouldn't use h2 unless there's another major heading on the page that supersedes post titles (e.g. adding additional keywords by grouping posts within the category into sections by review type). That's a decent strategy actually.

Take the following top outdoor gear sites, for example:

• https://www.outdoorgearlab.com/camping-and-hiking
  • Latter approach, section headings as h2 with extra keywords and h3 for post titles
• https://gearjunkie.com/camping
  • Former approach, no section headings and h2 for post titles

Generally speaking, skipping heading levels is non-semantic HTML. Even lighthouse audits warn you about it. I doubt changing them from whatever they are now to h2's would make a huge difference, but it's probably worth doing if your competition isn't.

Go take a look at 5-10 major authority sites and how they do it. Not small potatoes but well-established monsters. I bet the majority of them use some kind of heading in this scenario – most likely h2 or h3.

 

[illmasterj]

Is this for a blog or ecommerce? I find blog categories are typically more generic so they are harder to rank for, but in either case if I have something specific enough to rank for I will often put a full blown blog post on that page, and cover most of it up so it's only visible with the click of a "Read more" button.

 

[wikibum]

I don't see why you wouldn't use h2 unless there's another major heading on the page that supersedes post titles

That's what I am thinking. I might have been over thinking when I wrote this post lol. Even though my competitors don't have H2's, doesn't necessarily mean that it is the correct way of doing.

Is this for a blog or ecommerce?

Blog posts. Each post list title is an H2 and it links to that specific post.

 

[illmasterj]

As an example, I've ranked category pages for terms like "marijuana laws by country".

That blog category has 500+ words talking about how marijuana laws around the world differ, but doesn't go into each of the countries.

The blog posts are then written to rank for "marijuana laws in canada" and so on.

If you get creative with the introduction of these articles and your theme uses some sort of "Read More" or "Excerpt" functionality (exists in WP), your category page ends up rendering like an epic length blog post with high level info about the laws in each country (each post title can be set up as a H2 in your theme).

Internal linking and heading tags aren't perfect, but if it's something relatively low competition, you get the benefit of scaling without giving too much thought.

An alternate option is to display a normal page or post over the top of the category URL. You lose the automation/content repurposing element but it allows you to really fine tune the content.

 

[wikibum]

If you get creative with the introduction of these articles and your theme uses some sort of "Read More" or "Excerpt" functionality (exists in WP), your category page ends up rendering like an epic length blog post with high level info about the laws in each country (each post title can be set up as a H2 in your theme).

For sure, I get what you are saying about adding an intro paragraph to the top of the category page. That makes sense.

For pagination, instead of the Read More Infinite Scroll, I show pages. page/1 | page/2, etc.. Not sure which is best to be honest. Reason I use pagination with page numbers is that it might be easier for Google to index those pages (rather than take a chance and have them go through the javascript button) and find all the content. Again, not sure if this is correct/better but that is how I have it setup right now.