: Is it possible to get SEO traffic to category pages on a site that has low quality user generated content from social bookmarks? I have a website like Digg, Reddit etc. I don't want SEO traffic

@BetL925

Category pages are not very good for SEO. Those pages look a lot like search results themselves. They have lists of links from which the user needs to make a choice to get to the content they want. Google has said that they don't want search results pages in search results and that they will even penalize sites that index their site search results. Category pages aren't going to get your site penalized, but they aren't much better for users than search results. Google would rather send users directly to the page they are interested in rather than send them to a list to choose.

Which comes back to quality content. If you don't have content that is going to satisfy users, it will kill your rankings. Google notices when users skip over your site, or return to the search results quickly after clicking. That type of user behavior will push your listing off the first page of the Google search results very quickly

Social bookmarking can add value, but I've rarely seen it satisfy users on its own. Users typically need other features such as discussion, reviews, images, or video too.

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