On-Site Optimization Issue!
-
Hello,
I have some confusion about how to structure my site to better in on-site optimization.
I am using WordPress. Therefore, there are many things that I need to consider as following:
- Static Page for homepage OR Latest posts?
- Archive, Category, Author, Attachment and Tag pages - To put meta robots (no index, follow) or not to prevent duplication?
- If I use Static Page for homepage, do I need to add meta robots (no index, follow) to POINT 2 above or not?
- If I use Latest Posts for homepage, do I need to add meta robots (no index, follow) to POINT 2 above or not?
- To have breadcrumb or not?
- To have recent posts, comment, tag clouds or popular posts/comments widget or not?
- To have social sharing icons and related posts in single post or not?
If you don't mind adding more tips that I don't know it would be very great!
Thanks!
-
Hi Dina,
Federico is correct, Moz Analytics will flag any duplicate content issues it finds on your site. While it is impossible to prevent creating duplicate content altogether on a smaller Wordpress site that contains tag, category, and archive pages, the easiest way to prevent duplicate content issues is to follow Federico's recommendations (not because these pages are not useful to your users, but because they can create duplicate content).
I would also make sure that you only include excerpts of your blog posts on the front pay of the blog (vs. the full posts), and take care that pagination does not create duplicate content issues for you as well. While no-indexing paginated pages is not the ideal method for preventing duplicate content issues (in my opinion), it is the easiest for many people. (You can read about alternative ways to handle pagination here.)
Finally, it sounds like you are not offering any of the brand's own products and services on the blog. If this is the case, I would make the blog's home page the front page (that is, the home page for the website.)
I hope that helps!
Thanks,
Christy -
Moz does it for you if you have a PRO+ account
Anyway, the thing here is that archive, tag and author pages (pagination) do not provide ANY value to the user or Google itself, therefore it should be better no noindex while leaving the follow tag to let the pagerank flow to the pages that DO matter: POSTS.
-
My main concern is content duplication. WordPress has several kind of pages such as category, archive or tag etc.That's why I am confusing how to prevent duplicate content.
P.S: How to check my site for duplicate content?
-
Those are kind of small sites which are having 30-40 pages of articles. The sites are mainly for review the products or services but also have informational articles, too.
I have 4 or 5 main keywords to target, and I heard that static page for homepage ranking better than using latest posts for HP.
-
Hi Dina,
1. Depending on wordpress theme and whether you have enough useful contents on the HP, I would suggest using a static page for Homepage. If you simply have a blog with different articles, I would use the latest posts as homepage.
2. I use categories as the top navigation header so i wouldn't use no index/follow on that but i would put no index/follow on archive and tag pages to prevent duplication. Furthermore, pages on archive/tag pages should already be under Category so it doesn't provide search engines anything useful/unique so it makes sense to make it no index/follow.
3. If you use static page for homepage, it will have unique contents and provide visitors with useful information so you shouldn't put no follow/index.
4.I say depending on how much of the latest post it is showing. If it only show snippets, i wouldn't put no index/follow since you do want your HP to be found/crawled. However, if it displays the whole post for all of your latest posts, then yes.
5. I like to have breadcrumb so that visitors and even bots can track the path to a certain page. but for user experience purposes, i would include breadcrumb.
6. I would put recent posts/popular posts if it is useful for visitors. If it helps visitors find more related posts that they are interested. go for it.
7. Yup, social sharing helps your posts get more visibility and increase traffic. Recommend using it. Once again, if putting related posts help reader navigating the site / finding useful contents. Go for it.
Rule of thumb, provide good user experience
-
Hi there, thanks for your question! Federico's provided some good advice that I'd like to take a bit further. In order to help you answer Q1, would you mind providing some more details about your site's primarily goals? Regarding Q2, you may want to consider adding unique static content to your category archives and indexing them once you get a solid number of posts build up for each one.
I look forward to hearing from you! In the meantime, here's a great post by Dan Shure about setting up Wordpress sites: Are You Setting Up WordPress for SEO Success?
Cheers,
Christy -
Hi,
- Whatever you think is more interesting to your visitors.
- Archive, category, tags, author should be noindex, follow. Attachments index and follow (no robots tag basically).
- No, if the content is different, you don't
- Same as above.
- Is it better to your visitors if you add breadcrumbs?
- Same as above, depends on your site and how "attractive" it gets if you add/remove those widgets. I would probably put the latest posts only.
- YES, totally. Sharing buttons are a MUST nowadays. Related posts will keep your readers in your site if they are interested in finding more on whatever topic they were reading.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Thoughts on archiving content on an event site?
I have a few sites that are used exclusively to promote live events (ex. tradeshows, conference, etc). In most cases these sites content fewer than 100 pages and include information for the upcoming event with links to register. Some time after the event has ended, we would redesign the site and start promoting next years event...essentially starting over with a new site (same domain). We understand the value that many of these past event pages have for users who are looking for info from the past event and we're looking for advice on how best to archive this content to preserve for SEO. We tend to use concise urls for pages on these sites. Ex. www.event.com/agenda or www.event.com/speakers. What are your thoughts on archiving the content from these pages so we can reuse the url with content for the new event? My first thought is to put these pages into an archive, like www.event.com/2015/speakers. Is there a better way to do this to preserve the SEO value of this content?
On-Page Optimization | | accessintel0 -
How to use canonical with mobile site to main site
I am pretty sure that the mobile version of the main site needs to be the same canonical link from what I understand. I am trying to find good docuementation that supports this. Even better if its from Google or Matt Cutts. I have a main domain like http://www.mydomain.com the mobile version of this is http://www.mydomain.com/m/ Should my canonical be rel="canonical" href="http://www.mydomain.com"/> for both these pages?
On-Page Optimization | | cbielich0 -
Over Optimization - What exactly is it?
I keep hearing this term "over optimization" and people assuming they have received an over optimization penalty. I also hear people say, "You need to optimize every page on your site." So at what point does a site become "over optimized?" Are there any good reads around here that explain this better?
On-Page Optimization | | kadesmith1 -
On Page Optimization Report
Does this tool also guard against an instance of over-optimization or keyword-spamming?
On-Page Optimization | | webfeatus0 -
Site wide 301 or canonical links.
Hi guys, I'd like add code to my header file to specify www. as opposed to just http:// for the canonical links across my entire site. How can I do this? I'd like it to be site wide code that I can just add to my header.php file which is included across the site.
On-Page Optimization | | absoauto0 -
Suggestions on plans to optimize my site? (NOOB)
I am currently trying to plan how to optimize my site based on keywords. I read and I understand site architecture and usability http://www.seomoz.org/blog/site-architecture-for-seo , but I am still somewhat confused about how to target each keyword per page or when http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/splitting-keyword-targeted-.gif Let me give you an example. We build databases for SME's using 3 different technologies. One of them is MS Access. Based on PPC campaigns and keyword research some of the possible keywords might be ms access programmer ms access consultants access database experts According to the link provided, should these be separate pages? I feel if they were, our site nativigation would be cluttered and clients would not be benefiting from them at all. It might even lead to some redundant data which I believe is bad right? My feeling is to make one page and target one keyword, but I'm not sure. For example, see one of our top ranking competitors http://www.justgetproductive.com/content/access-programmer/index.php Please, look at the footer? Is that actually how I should structure my links? I hope the answer is NO! Then again, if I do just have one page targeting one keyword, what do I do about the others? Do I just try to use blog posts/articles addressing those keywords? Do I not target them at all? Thanks for any advice, please keep in mind I am just getting started. My approach is to create a plan to outline everything before I put a lot of time into it.
On-Page Optimization | | emcacace1 -
Best way to link to an affiliate site.
I have a site that promotes a single affiliate product. Would it be better to have a "buy" button in the content that goes straight to the external affiliates website or should I send it all to an internal page that redirects thus only having 1 external link to the product site.
On-Page Optimization | | jafabel0 -
Is it necessary to optimize every page of a site
I recently took over the SEO work for a website that has a limited budget. I'd like to use the resources to get as much as I can for a few pages on the site (keyword research, on-page optimization). Are there pitfalls to not optimizing every page on a site? If so, what are they?
On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee340