Thread Starter
hbk747
(@hbk747)
Okay I figured it out.
Basically when I use no “posts page” then the articles page shows up in the page sitemap and not in the post sitemap.
I however have another question. What I have done is created essentially 2 parent categories called “Articles” and “Research Papers”. Each parent category has 3 sub categories. Now when I was making the website initially, I did not know that categories have their own pages so I made separated pages also by the same names i.e. “Articles” and “Research Papers”. I kept the slug the same for the related category and page. For example, the slug for the “Articles” category was “articles” and I kept it the same for “Articles” page as well.
When one types in paradigmshift.com.pk/articles, it takes the person to the CATEGORY page, rather than the page (page). Even if one would go to the sitemap right now and go to “page-sitemap.xml” and clicks on “articles”, it would take the person to the category page.
Right now the sitemap shows all the categories in the “category-sitemap.xml” folder i.e. “Articles” and “Research Papers” and all their subcategories. While the “page-sitemap.xml” shows all the pages including “Articles” and “Research Papers” (that when clicked go to the category page). My question is: Is this bad practice? Am i going to confuse search engines with this sitemap? Should I just delete the “Articles” and “Research Papers” PAGES while keeping the categories?
I use the categories (not the pages) in my main menu as well. So, shall i just stick to the category pages for “Articles” and “Research Papers” and delete their PAGES counterparts? or should I do the reverse (in the case of PAGES being more important or something in SEO)?
I hope I was able to be clear.
I would really appreciate your help with this as I have recently submitted my sitemap and so do not want to confuse search engines.
Hi @hbk747,
If you set a page as the posts page, we expect this page to appear on the post sitemap. By default, this page does not appear in the page sitemap.
We’re not sure why it’s possible for you to set a category archive as a posts page, but we don’t expect the URL appearing in two sitemaps would cause a problem.
Hi @hbk747,
To follow up on your second post, the type of WordPress page that you decide to use for your top-level menu, like categories or pages, doesn’t have any impact on SEO.
However, it is not a good practice to have a category and a page using the same permalink if you expect them to display different content. It’s not always predictable which type of page WordPress will display, so your category URLs and page URLs should all be unique.
To fix the problem, you can change the slug, change the permalink structure under Settings > Permalinks, or delete one of them.
Hope that helps!
Thread Starter
hbk747
(@hbk747)
@priscillamc you were super helpful!
I am just going to delete the “Articles” and “Research Papers” pages (and not categories) since they themselves point to the categories and the pages themselves have no content in them.
With regards to my original query that you answered. Is it recommended that a page be set as the “posts page”? I have set my homepage as the homepage and I have left the posts page as empty currently. This works for me because the posts page that I want to use will be a category page (titled “Content” that I will make soon) and since category pages cannot be added in the “posts page”, I think leaving it empty would be best, correct?
Thanks again!
@hbk747 It’s okay to leave the ‘Posts Page’ setting empty. This setting is to configure a page to show your site’s posts, in order to have them be accessible to a user.
However, if you already have your site’s posts organized and available through other pages (such as your ‘Articles’ and ‘Research Papers’ category pages) then it’s okay, and moreover preferable in organizational terms, to leave the ‘Posts Page’ setting empty.
You can also find more information on these settings in the WordPress documentation available here: https://wordpress.org/support/article/settings-reading-screen/
Thread Starter
hbk747
(@hbk747)
Thanks @devnihil
You guys were very helpful!
Understood.
I shall delete the redundant pages and keep category pages and will also keep posts page empty.
Thanks again!
Hi @hbk747,
Glad we helped! We’re marking this issue as resolved. You’re welcome to create a new issue if you need further assistance.
