Should I be no indexing categories?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Alan Bleiweiss: Having posts outside of category silos is based on an archaic myth that "the closer to the root, an individual page is, the stronger it is for SEO". And that`s bullshit. It`s a fallacy. It defies human logic, and topical organization. Humans don`t go to your main navigation to see every post linked from there, because individual posts are not the most important pages on the site. They exist, from a nav perspective, layered down, and for that reason, URLs need to reflect human experience. This is proper best practices Information Retrieval.
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  Jeremy L. Knauff: 99.9% of people should not noindex category pages. Yes, you should use them. I plan to write a detailed article on exactly how to set them up and why to do it that way in the next week or so. I`ll share it here when it`s published. Also yes re: Yoast.
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  Chase Reiner: So let`s say site structure should look like: examplesite.com/seo/post-about-seo/ the post page (should or shouldn`t be linked to from menu?) (should or shouldn`t be indexed) (if being indexed - should or shouldn`t be showing preview snippets of text?) (should or shouldn`t be combining all of those category posts into one page AKA blog with everything in it (similar to how you would see multiple playlists in a Youtube channel)
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  Alan Bleiweiss: 99.9% of site owners should NOT noindex categories. Categories are the umbrella phrases for the site. Post URLs should NOT be outside category silos. They are sub-pages of those categories.
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  Chase Reiner: Even Moz just uses site/"blog"/post I really don`t understand why it`s necessary to have this happen, what are the downfalls of not having category pages?
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  Alan Bleiweiss: Chase, here`s some free guidance. It`s not a comprehensive answer, because only a proper audit can answer that. Having said that, here`s a baseline recommendation: 1. Your site offers SEO videos. Yet you have no .com/seo-videos/ page, which is critical because it`s your primary offering. That page needs to be a main navigation accessed page, and it needs to communicate your offering with strong content that helps visitors understand exactly what you offer. I would also recommend having a sample video on that page, in addition to the content. 2. Blog Silo Scenario Your blog posts need to be defined by individual categories. You don`t have a clear, easy to define set of topical groups that I could see in just a few minutes. From what I saw though, it could be https://chasereiner.com/blog/ https://chasereiner.com/blog/seo/ https://chasereiner.com/blog/social-marketing/ And if that`s the case, then I would do the following, as an example: https://chasereiner.com/blog/ https://chasereiner.com/seo-audit-checklist-2017/ https://chasereiner.com/help-seo-2017/ https://chasereiner.com/content-marketing-2017/ https://chasereiner.com/twitter-marketing-2017/ https://chasereiner.com/pinterest-marketing-2017/ These then become https://chasereiner.com/blog/ https://chasereiner.com/blog/seo/ https://chasereiner.com/blog/seo/seo-audit-checklist-2017/ https://chasereiner.com/blog/seo/help-seo-2017/ https://chasereiner.com/blog/seo/content-marketing-2017/ https://chasereiner.com/blog/social-marketing/ https://chasereiner.com/blog/social-marketing/twitter-marketing-2017/ https://chasereiner.com/blog/social-marketing/pinterest-marketing-2017/ Note however, that you need to have a blog category navigation sidebar box to support this, that links to each of the categories. Critical tasking: Set up 301 server redirects for existing post URLs to point to their new destination URLs. Ensure your sitemap xml file includes links to all your live URLs that you want indexed, and ONLY live URLs you want indexed. Ensure any links you have internal to the site point to the proper live URLs. Test those redirects to make sure they are actually 301 redirects. 3. Your video posts have almost no crawlable HTML based content. There are two ways to resolve that: A. Add a full transcript of the video onto the post, beneath the video. This helps add crawlable content, however it`s annoying for human readability. B. Write separate, unique content that communicates what the problem is that the video answers, explains why it`s a problem, and then discusses the concepts you present in the video.
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  Chase Reiner: Can I ask what would be the downside of keeping posts like .com/postname?
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  Chase Reiner: Also, should you index author archives?
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  Steve Wiideman: I personally remove WordPress`s default /category/ in blog posts using Yoast, but set my taxonomy to /%category%/%postname% so that I get a real category name NOT just the default nonhelpful word "category" in my URL. This allows me to have a simple, but controlled URL structure.
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  Chase Reiner: The only way I see this helpful is for users who want to go to see more of your posts and the next level down. But in that scenario you can just put related posts in your articles sidebar (which may even be more helpful because your categories are only going to show your feed which you may not want to show the latest article but your most popular article instead.
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  Webado C Webada: TLDNR But don`t use the category or the tag in the url especially if you have posts in multiple categories or tags and particularly if you are going to change the category or tag name. You`` have a mess or redirection to implement.
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  Neil Cheesman: my farthing`s worth.... Firstly, what content do you have now and more importantly - what content do you foresee having? Some people rank just fine with very few web pages on a website and don`t really need categories. Secondly - IF you have a category `page` then make sure that page isn`t cannibalizing another page/url for a key word/phrase ranking. I have seen some `categories` exist not physically, but where relevant internal content is linked together... isn`t that an `intuitive` category? In my industry (which is competitive) - THE key factor is still backlinks... and of course content... and `trust/mentions etc.... BUT..... I believe categorizing can help rankings... IF there is sufficient content to merit having categories... unique for the category page and for the pages/urls within the category. My most important advice would be - that regardless as to what you do in terms of structure... spend time on thinking about/and getting advice on the base structure.... as 3-5 years down the line, you don`t want to be thinking `sh*t this isn`t right - and I need to change the permalink structure....`
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  Chase Reiner: Joost de Valk thoughts?