Should I prevent Google from indexing blog tag and category pages?
-
I am working on a website that has a regularly updated Wordpress blog and am unsure whether or not the category and tag pages should be indexable.
The blog posts are often outranked by the tag and category pages and they are ultimately leaving me with a duplicate content issue. With this in mind, I assumed that the best thing to do would be to remove the tag and category pages from the index, but after speaking to someone else about the issue, I am no longer sure. I have tried researching online, but there isn't anything that provided any further information.
Please can anyone with any experience of dealing with issues like this or with any knowledge of the topic help me to resolve this annoying issue.
Any input will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Paul
-
Of course if you used the link juice you save by not indexing the tag pages towards your articles this "could" bring in just as much traffic or more than you lost by blocking those pages. I guess that is my question... does blocking out certain pages on your site put your sites link juice towards other pages?
-
I have decided to add content to the tag and category pages to make them more valuable and reduce the risk of duplicate content issues. The pages also only feature short snippets from the posts so hopefully this shouldn't be too much of a problem with the addition of fresh content.
Thanks
Paul
-
If most of your posts have the same tags and categories, your tag and category archives will look a lot each other and look like your main page which could lead to duplicate content issues. Many people choose either tags or categories to be indexed and the other blocked. If you can make your tag or category archive pages excerpt only, they will be good for navigation and not be as likely to look like duplicates. Like EGOL said, category pages can be a pretty big draw - especially when they are full of excerpts that are keyword-rich.
-
I used my robots.txt file to block my tag pages and they were removed from googles index as they should have been however I didn't notice a ranking boost. I curious what others have to say on this topic too.
-
Thanks!! Good answer! I'm going to leave the pages as they are.
Thanks
Paul
-
Find out how much traffic you would be walking away from if you block them from the index. My category pages bring in huge traffic - more than most websites receive. I sure would not block them. Also those pages attract a lot of links, likes, etc. If I block them from the SERPs those benefits would be gone.
My advice is to understand the website better.. Then make a decision based upon data.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate Page getting indexed and not the main page!
Main Page: www.domain.com/service
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ishrat-Khan
Duplicate Page: www.domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service 1. My page was getting indexed properly in 2015 as: www.domain.com/service
2. Redesigning done in Aug 2016, a new URL pattern surfaced for my pages with parameter "products-handler"
3. One of my product landing pages had got 301-permanent redirected on the "products-handler" page
MAIN PAGE: www.domain.com/service GETTING REDIRECTED TO: www.domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service
4. This redirection was appearing until Nov 2016.
5. I took over the website in 2017, the main page was getting indexed and deindexed on and off.
6. This June it suddenly started showing an index of this page "domain.com/products-handler.php/?cat=service"
7. These "products-handler.php" pages were creating sitewide internal duplicacy, hence I blocked them in robots.
8. Then my page (Main Page: www.domain.com/service) got totally off the Google index Q1) What could be the possible reasons for the creation of these pages?
Q2) How can 301 get placed from main to duplicate URL?
Q3) When I have submitted my main URL multiple times in Search Console, why it doesn't get indexed?
Q4) How can I make Google understand that these URLs are not my preferred URLs?
Q5) How can I permanently remove these (products-handler.php) URLs? All the suggestions and discussions are welcome! Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
How to increase Page authority of old blog posts
Hi, How can I increase the page authority of old blog posts? There are many posts that are ranking well (Page 1 lower or Page 2) - but I want to make them rank higher by making the post more usable, better UI, design, content relaunches etc - these all would inherently mean improving Page authority also eventually. What are some concrete steps I can take to improve page authority of blog pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pks3331 -
Substantial difference between Number of Indexed Pages and Sitemap Pages
Hey there, I am doing a website audit at the moment. I've notices substantial differences in the number of pages indexed (search console), the number of pages in the sitemap and the number I am getting when I crawl the page with screamingfrog (see below). Would those discrepancies concern you? The website and its rankings seems fine otherwise. Total indexed: 2,360 (Search Consule)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Online-Marketing-Guy
About 2,920 results (Google search "site:example.com")
Sitemap: 1,229 URLs
Screemingfrog Spider: 1,352 URLs Cheers,
Jochen0 -
Google Processing but Not Indexing XML Sitemap
Like it says above, Google is processing but not indexing our latest XML sitemap. I noticed this Monday afternoon - Indexed status was still Pending - and didn't think anything of it. But when it still said Pending on Tuesday, it seemed strange. I deleted and resubmitted our XML sitemap on Tuesday. It now shows that it was processed on Tuesday, but the Indexed status is still Pending. I've never seen this much of a lag, hence the concern. Our site IS indexed in Google - it shows up with a site:xxxx.com search with the same number of pages as it always has. The only thing I can see that triggered this is Sunday the site failed verification via Google, but we quickly fixed that and re-verified via WMT Monday morning. Anyone know what's going on?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Optimize the category page or a content page?
Hi, We wish to start ranking on a specific keyword ("log house prices" in italian). We have two options on what pages we should optimize for this keyword: A long content page (1000+ words with images) Log houses category page, optimized for the keyword (we have 50+ houses on this page, together with a short price summary). I would think that we have better chances with ranking with option nr.2 , but then we can't use that page for ranking with a more short-tail keyword (like "log houses"). What would you suggest? Is there maybe a third option for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohanMattisson0 -
Rel=canonical tag on original page?
Afternoon All,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jellyfish-Agency
We are using Concrete5 as our CMS system, we are due to change but for the moment we have to play with what we have got. Part of the C5 system allows us to attribute our main page into other categories, via a page alaiser add-on. But what it also does is create several url paths and duplicate pages depending on how many times we take the original page and reference it in other categories. We have tried C5 canonical/SEO add-on's but they all seem to fall short. We have tried to address this issue in the most efficient way possible by using the rel=canonical tag. The only issue is the limitations of our cms system. We add the canonical tag to the original page header and this will automatically place this tag on all the duplicate pages and in turn fix the problem of duplicate content. The only problem is the canonical tag is on the original page as well, but it is referencing itself, effectively creating a tagging circle. Does anyone foresee a problem with the canonical tag being on the original page but in turn referencing itself? What we have done is try to simplify our duplicate content issues. We have over 2500 duplicate page issues because of this aliasing add-on and want to automate the canonical tag addition, rather than go to each individual page and manually add this tag, so the original reference page can remain the original. We have implemented this tag on one page at the moment with 9 duplicate pages/url's and are monitoring, but was curious if people had experienced this before or had any thoughts?0 -
Why is google showing our blog like this?
Why is our blog title saying "the blog" before it in Google? X4vTU.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tatango0 -
Removing pages from index
Hello, I run an e-commerce website. I just realized that Google has "pagination" pages in the index which should not be there. In fact, I have no idea how they got there. For example, www.mydomain.com/category-name.asp?page=3434532
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexGop
There are hundreds of these pages in the index. There are no links to these pages on the website, so I am assuming someone is trying to ruin my rankings by linking to the pages that do not exist. The page content displays category information with no products. I realize that its a flaw in design, and I am working on fixing it (301 none existent pages). Meanwhile, I am not sure if I should request removal of these pages. If so, what is the best way to request bulk removal. Also, should I 301, 404 or 410 these pages? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, Alex0