Category descriptions

  • ahamaton

    (@ahamaton)


    7 years, 11 months ago

    Hi
    I want to optimise my categories however, I have noticed the description I add doesnt show on the front end but it can be found in the source code. I dont mind it not showing on the front end, in fact I prefer it however, I am concerned Google will see it as black hat. There seems to be a standard note under category descriptions saying
    “The description is not prominent by default; however, some themes may show it.”
    Does this mean that if my theme doesnt fix this I could be penalised by google ?
    If this is the case I dont understand why wordpress would do this as I want to use this feature ?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Edward Caissie

    (@cais)

    7 years, 11 months ago

    @ahamaton – Displaying the category’s description is most often controlled by how the theme author has chosen to use the “list category” function (or similar) within the theme. Again, depending on the the theme, this may be a case of “hidden” (which is not common) or often times setting a function parameter to not display the description.

    I would not specifically call this “broken” or requiring a “fix” although you might want to contact the theme author to see how best to adjust the theme to your preferences.

    I did have a quick look at your site and although I am not familiar with the code or layout (and did not find the category description in the example URL) if you know the HTML container the description is being written to you could add some custom CSS to set its display property to none while you work with the theme author to get to a better option.

    ~ Cais.

    Thread Starter ahamaton

    (@ahamaton)

    7 years, 11 months ago

    Thanks Edward
    Unfortunately the theme’s author stopped supporting me about a year ago. I was paying him for premium support because I am not experienced, but he felt I needed too much support and refused to respond to respond to my requests for support (-: It was fantastic I have just been doing the best I can ever since then.

    Anyway, regards your point, I’m not bothered about the text showing per say. Its more a matter of leveraging keywords. So I will add SEO titles and descriptions for each category with a focus keyword. However, generally to optimise a key word or give it more authority you need to include it in the text. So I am just wondering if I should add text purely to give the keyword more authority. However, if google cant see the text does that mean it wont give the keyword any more authority and thus mean I would be wasting my time ? I dont know if you have any experience with that sort of thing but this is the conundrum I am trying to get my head around

    Edward Caissie

    (@cais)

    7 years, 11 months ago

    @ahamaton – SEO is not one of my strong suits although essentially if a search engine cannot see the text (as in via the page’s source code when rendered) then it will not index it and any work you put into improving the SEO/SEP for the categories and/or their respective pages would not likely provide much benefit as is although this does not mean it could be useful down the road if you changed themes and/or made modifications to your theme to display the description on the page(s).

    ~ Cais.

    Thread Starter ahamaton

    (@ahamaton)

    7 years, 11 months ago

    Thanks Edward. thanks for the advice

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

The topic ‘Category descriptions’ is closed to new replies.