Do Child Categories have any influence on Parent Categories, when it comes to SEO/SERP?

Question

I am currently working on a WordPress e-commerce website, where the chosen shopping platform is WooCommerce.

I am in the early stages of planning, where I am currently focusing on the overall site architecture.

Naturally, I will want the website to compete within search engines. With this in mind, I will be wanting to get my site structure set up as effective as possible.

With this in mind, I am just wondering if Child Product Categories have any effect/influence on Parent Categories? Both their SERP and associated Keywords.

Let's say I have the following Parent and Child Categories (Within each of the Child Categories, I have inserted a few Keywords):

Parent Category:

Eye Wear

Child Categories:

Sun Glasses:

• Glasses
• Red Sun Glasses
• Blue Sun Glasses

Reading Glasses:

• Glasses
• Cheap Reading Glasses
• Expensive Reading Glasses

With all things being equal, 'Reading Glasses' should rank higher for 'Expensive Reading Glasses' than 'Sun Glasses'. Where my query lies, is that since 'Reading Glasses' is placed within 'Eye Wear', therefore www.example.com/eyewear/reading-glasses, will the 'Eye Wear' Parent Category benefit from the fact that it's Child Category is competing successfully for 'Expensive Reading Glasses'?

In other words, would the Parent Category being able to tell the search engines:

Hey, I am about Glasses. Not only is my page about Glasses but I have Child Categories about Glasses too!

I should add that I will be sure to include Breadcrumbs on each Page. Therefore, 'automatic' link juice will be sent through the Directories, regardless of whether I insert a link to the Parent Categories, within the content itself.

Note: The above is just an example for the purpose of this question. It is not based on any Keyword research.

Answer 1

In short - no, parent categories don't have any influence on their child categories. What does have themost and important influence - their internal linkage.

Example

you have categories nesting like

• eye wear
• reading glasses
• sun glasses

There is no any difference, whether you have them like

• www.example.com/eyewear/,
• www.example.com/eyewear/reading-glasses/,
• www.example.com/eyewear/sun-glasses/,

or do you have

• www.example.com/eyewear/
• www.example.com/sun-glasses/
• www.example.com/reading-glasses/

But it is very (if not mostly) important, how they are interlinked. What means interlinking:

www.example.com/eyewear/ should have links to:

• most popular reading glasses (links to products),
• links to category /reading-glasses/
• most popular sun glasses (links to products),
• links to category /sun-glasses/

www.example.com/sun-glasses/ should have links to:

• most popular reading glasses (other users bought → links to products),
• link to category /eyewear/ (breadcrumb)
• link to category /reading-glasses/ (list of another categories)

Got the idea?

Answer 2

Yes. What you're doing there is building a proper semantic core which will help you optimize category for the topic rather than optimizing a single page for a keyword.

If done properly with right keywords and internal page rank distribution you'll get what you described in your question.