Thread:Project:Support desk/How to remove Category Links but keep their Functionality?

My Versions: MediaWiki: 1.16.5, PHP: 5.2.17, MySQL: 5.1.61

Basically I don't like the way MediaWiki displays categories. The page name looks ugly like this: "Category:List of Playstation Games" instead of this "List of Playstation Games". Also I don't like the way categories are displayed, they are displayed in columns which doesn't allow long page names to display on 1 line.

I prefer to create a page with any name I want and then use the Nice Category List extension to show all the pages tagged with a category so I get a list like this:


 * Page 1
 * Page 2

Unfortunately in articles I then have lots of links to useless category pages which I don't want as I've added tags to the articles. Is there any way to keep the functionality of the tags but to not have the Category links display at the bottom of articles as it's hurtful to Search Engine Optimization? I know I can hide them with CSS but the search engines still see the links.