SEO for categories, tags and taxonomies

Category, tag and other taxonomy archives are pages too. A well-described category page can rank for broad topics, while thin tag pages can clutter the index. RankKit SEO lets you set defaults for a whole taxonomy and override them for single terms.

Defaults for a whole taxonomy

Go to RankKit SEO → Settings → Content types and scroll to the Taxonomies card. Each public taxonomy (Categories, Tags, product categories and any custom taxonomy) has:

Setting	Default	What it does
Title template	%term% %sep% %sitename%	The SEO title of each term's archive.
Noindex	On for Tags and Formats, off for the rest	Keeps every archive in this taxonomy out of search and out of the sitemap.

The meta description of an archive defaults to the term's description (the Description field WordPress shows on the term screen). See Settings for posts, pages and custom post types and Title and description variables.

Edit SEO for one category or tag

1. Go to Posts → Categories (or Posts → Tags, or the screen for your custom taxonomy).
2. Click a term's name to open its edit screen.
3. Scroll to the RankKit SEO section.
4. Fill in the fields and click Update.

Field	What it does
SEO title	The archive's title in search results. The placeholder shows the taxonomy's template; leave it empty to use the template. Variables such as %term% work here.
Meta description	The archive's description. Leave it empty to use the term's description.
Indexing → Hide this archive from search engines	Sets this one archive to noindex.

The section is on the term's edit screen only, not on the quick "Add New" form, so add the term first and then edit it. You need the SEO fields permission (Role manager). Changes are logged in the Change Log.

Tip A short, helpful term description does double duty: many themes show it at the top of the archive, and RankKit SEO uses it as the meta description.

What archive pages output

• Title and description from the term's fields or the taxonomy defaults.
• Canonical URL: the term's archive URL. On page 2 and later, the canonical points to that page, for example /category/pickles/page/2/.
• Robots: noindex when the term or the whole taxonomy is set to noindex.
• Schema: the page is marked up as a CollectionPage.

On page 2 and later, the title gets the page number added, for example "Pickles – Page 2 of 3". To keep those pages out of the index, turn on Noindex page 2+ of archives in Settings → General (Set up titles and meta descriptions).

FAQ

Should I noindex categories?

Usually not. Categories group your content by topic and often deserve to rank. Noindex categories that are nearly empty or duplicate another archive.

Can I set a social image for a category?

Not from the term screen. Social shares of an archive use the Default share image from Settings → Social. See Social sharing.

Do my Yoast SEO or Rank Math category titles carry over?

Yes. The importer copies term titles and descriptions from Yoast SEO, Rank Math and SEOPress, plus noindex from Yoast SEO. See Switch from another SEO plugin.