SEO for a category

[DanHorvat]

How does Google rank a page which isn't a single article but a category listing? E.g. instead of having a 500-word article about a bookmaker at www.site.com/bookie, it opens a category with 20 different articles (each one having 500 words) about a bookmaker.

All things being equal, would a category listing outrank a single article?

Should there be specific text on that category listing (e.g. "welcome to a category about this bookmaker, this bookmaker is so good and here are the articles about it") or could ranking be achieved just by having a normal page with a three-article newsflash and links to articles with intro text and an image (no unique content on that page but links to 20 pages with a lot of content)?

Any tips?

[baldidiot]

If it were me I'd have a base article with general information about the bookie and then link through to the individual articles, rather than just leaving it as a category.

I tend to do this type of thing with tips pages either as excerpts (like this) or as straight links (like this) as I've never found category pages that great at ranking.

For what you're talking about, again if it were me, I'd probably have 500 words of general information about the bookie and then link out to the specific articles. Nice idea though - for the articles are you talking news type content or guides (eg: football betting at the bookie, bonuses at the bookie etc..).

[DanHorvat]

You're right. At the end of the day it's HTML although it's generated dynamically, and what you see on the page is what the crawler sees.

The crawler also discovers 20 links to 500-page articles and my question is do they give the category listing more weight for the keyword.

Perhaps one way would be keeping the /bookie page but not expecting to get any hits, instead naming other articles /bookie-review, /bookie-bonus...or /bookie/review and /bookie/bonus if the latter would give some weight to the /bookie folder. Or it would just give less weight to "/review" and "/bonus" as it's on the second level.

* scratching head *

Both news and guides.

P.S. What's the font on footballbettingsites menu and headlines, is it Lucida? Normal font or some condensed version?

[DanHorvat]

Any other advice, anyone?

[baldidiot]

P.S. What's the font on footballbettingsites menu and headlines, is it Lucida? Normal font or some condensed version?

It's BebasNeueRegular - hadn't heard of it before doing this site though!

[Christiaan]

I would advice you to use /bookie/review and keep the /bookie page. A category or tag page can also get traffic. And then you should link back to the category from each page so the linkjuice goes also to the category page.
Of course it would even be better if you would also link to that category page from other websites. So Google sees that page as "interesting".

On my own site for example I put the casino name in a tag of each article. The casino brand "Circus" in Belgium has its tag page http://www.goedgekeurdegoksites.be/tag/circus-casino/ this page gives you all articles related to Circus Casino. That tag page ranks higher then the review page of this casino.
I also use categories. If you rank good enough and Google starts to understand the structure of your website it will also start generating site links for the category pages. For example the casino category page http://www.goedgekeurdegoksites.be/casino/ gets its own sitelink in search results.

[DanHorvat]

Alright. Again, several ways to do this. Let's use Bet365 as an example.

/bet365
Category which holds some intro text and links to all articles. I'll definitely have that and will name it like that.

Now let's assume three sites are doing the above, and each names the Bet365 review uniquely, like this:
/bet365/review
/bet365/bet365-review
/bet365-review

All things being equal, which would rank first for "Bet365 review" on Google?

[Christiaan]

You have to use /bet365/review or /bet365/bet365-review. So it is easier for Google to understand that the article is a page of the /bet365/ category. For the ranking I don't think it makes a difference but I think it does make a difference if Google starts creating sitelinks.

If there is a difference between /bet365/review and /bet365/bet365-review, only Google knows. But I think it doesn't matter if you use bet365-review or just review.

[emmaw]

If I'd have a base article with general information about the bookie then link through to the individual articles, rather than just leaving it as a category.