Different WP Taxonomies seen as duplicate content
-
Hey guys,
We're seeing Moz report "duplicate" content on pages like: mysite.com/interesting-category/ and mysite.com/interesting-tag.
Why exactly is this, and is there something that we should do about this? Obviously some of the same posts will intersect on pages like category, tag, author pages.
Thanks
-
Thank you so much for the detailed debrief Nigel. Very helpful!
-
Hi Andy
There is no problem using tags and categroies on a Wordpress site as long as they are handled correctly with whichever SEO plugin you are using.
Categories - Should be seen as a natural hierarchy for the site so I would fill in the Meta titles and description and add some fleshy text to those page so that the you are describing the content for the user. It's also great for SEO and sets those pages aside from others on the site as the content is unique - 300 words plus, (preferably a single line of text at the top and a beefier section below)
Tags - these are a pain in the butt and I would simply noindex/follow them so that they do not show up in SERPS. I see these as simply an extra form of grouping for the user. They generally create skinny content pages of little value and should be completely downgraded.
There is often confusion between functionality and SEO as they rarely go hand in hand. You need to present the best view for your reader, user, customer - that is the priority. At the same time you have tools like noindex and canonicals to get you round the problems of skinny content and duplication.
If you stick to the one page/one keyword (or tight, contextually similar group of keywords) then you will be fine.
When it comes to author archives I noindex them and when it comes to article snippets then the shortest one available or none at all - as every line of text that is repeated on different pages is duplication.
Regards Nigel
-
Once again, Authors on the site will have their own archive pages as well. A chronological list of all posts by that author. So if you tag or categorize without purpose and the tags and categories have no separation you will have duplicate content across all three types of archive pages.
Here is a good post explaining tags and categories. http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/categories-vs-tags-seo-best-practices-which-one-is-better/
Don,
-
Thanks for the reply Don. Solid points, all of them, however not really ideal case-scenario, not solution.
Tags are more helpful than Categories on a per-page basis (especially on our end) so we'd rather use those. This presents a diff problem, because using 4 tags on a post would duplicate it across the tax page for all 4 tags OFC. I'm really curious what others think of this as well, simply giving upgood user functionality doesn't seem to be a smart strategy in my eyes. I would probably go ahead and noindex nofollow all other taxonomies except on.
By the way - this situation happened with a category vs author page. So not even cat vs tag. Even more annoying!
-
Hi Andy,
I recommend using tags or categories not both on your WordPress website. You see, they are essentially the same thing. A Tag or Category will create an archive page once it the taxonomy is created. All posts or content that is either categorized or tagged with will display on the tag or categories archive page.
So if you have a post called Why I use Moz, and that post is categorized as SEO and Tagged as Best SEO Practices. You just created 2 new archive pages with the same post. Creating duplicate content. Now because these archive pages are in chronological order, new posts that are tagged and categorized using the taxonomies given above, the archive pages will always be duplicated because the content never differs.
To combat this use one or the other. I prefer categories. You will not get an extra SEO benefit for tagging your posts or categorizing them. This is for user experience and will have little effect on your ranking. However if you use tags and categories wrong you can get lower rankings for duplicated content.
Thanks,
Don
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
-
How to promote your blog content
Hi there, we've been blogging for a while now. Some of our content ranks quit well, other posts don't seem to be ranking at all. The weird thing (I think it's weird...) is that we recently published a post and focussed on a phrase that competes with over 400 million indexed pages, and after 3 weeks we're on page 3, and for other posts with only 2.5 million indexed pages we rank past page 5 (ok, this post is already 1,5 year old, does this matter?). To give you some background info, we moved our blog in January in a new subdomain, and redirected the old url's, but didn't actively promote the old posts. Would promoting the old articles through social media help us boost the rankings for these articles (the articles are "best practices", "how-to's", ...). Where / how do you promote your content after you published it on your blog? I find it hard posting in LinkedIn groups related to finance while I have the "online marketing manager" title on my profile. Why would a finance professional read an article shared by a marketing dude? As LinkedIn's API doensn't allow to post into groups anymore, do you actually go through all your relevant groups every time you publish a new blog to share the article?
Content Development | | jorisbrabants1 -
What are the effects of posting on a blog site using copied content from your site if you source the site on the blog site?
I have noticed that some of my pages from my site are posted to different blog sites and directory submissions they are word for word what is on my site but at the bottom of the page it does list my site as the source and there are links in the text back to my site. Is this going to negatively effect my rankings or is it ok since my site is sourced in the article?
Content Development | | steve2150 -
Looking for a content marketing agency alternative to Brafton.
We've worked with Brafton for a while now and aren't happy with their service. So we're looking for an alternative content marketing agency not a digital marketing agency. Do you have any recommendations? Thanks in advance.
Content Development | | workathomecareers0 -
Free Duplicate Content Checker Tools ?
Hi Moz, I am really looking for free tools which can carry my content duplication issue, as i visited http://moz.com/community/q/are-there-tools-to-discover-duplicate-content-issues-with-the-other-websites suggested copyscape which is paid. I want FREE to handle my duplication issue.' Thanks in Advance. Best,
Content Development | | Futura
Teginder1 -
Stolen Content and a Panda Penalty
Hey Folks Question for those folks that have spent some time helping people with the recent penalties and the like. I have a client who has a clear Panda Penalty, huge drop in traffic on the initial Panda date and a further drop on the second date. Much smaller incremental drops on subsequent recent updates as well. From digging in it seems fairly cut and dry - copyscape shows another 250 or so sites with content from this site and there are nearly 2000 external URLs with duplicate content across these sites. We are talking complete, shameless copies of all of the text, sometimes the images as well. The client claims the content is all 100% unique and is his content and that the other blogs must have stolen his content resulting in the penalty - which, if it is true, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, kind of sucks. Now, many moons ago, way before Penguin or Panda (maybe around 2006) I had a client that had suddenly lost all traffic and their historical rankings. No funny business, it was a small company, had been online since around 2000 and they were pretty much the first of their kind and always did very well from organic search. As it turned out, the content from the site had not really changed since it was set up and as lots of companies had sprung up offering a similar service they had seen their content copied wholesale, across many sites, all over the world. We attempted to contact many of these sites and got some results but many were just old, abandoned copy cat sites on advert supported hosting that had ceased to trade so we maybe got rid of about 20%. Well, in the end we just decided to rewrite the content, we did this and sure enough, the site bounced back to it's previous standing and has been pretty much there ever since. Now that was kind of easy, the site had maybe 20 pages, and it needed a sprucing up but in this case the site has around 500 pages so doing a rewrite is not going to be so easy. Problem is, I don't see removal requests being particularly successful either. So, I see the options and steps as being. Contact all the sites and request the removal of the content use the Google content removal facility:
Content Development | | Marcus_Miller
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals File a DMCA takedown for anything remaining Report Scraped Pages to Google:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGM4TXhIOFd3c1hZR2NHUDN1NmllU0E6MQ&ndplr=1 Submit a spam report for all sites involved ? Submit a reconsideration request to let Google know what we have been doing (unlikely In a nutshell, do everything we can to get this content removed and then documenting this to Google in the hope we catch hold of someone who hears our plight. Interestingly enough, this is a sensitive one, so no URL but I would welcome any thoughts or experiences any of you may have had with similar problems. There is a little extra info here from Matt Cutts + Barry Schwartz that kind of tallies with my approach above but would really like to hear any feedback. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-stolen-content-13243.html Cheers all Marcus0 -
Content placement
Does content placement on a page have any effect, bring up top as opposed to bottom as opposed to embedded within? On my product detail page it comes up last after image, social section and add to cart
Content Development | | Dirty1 -
For a consumer facing blog, how often do you recommend updating content to develop good rankings? I understand that it's really dependent upon the niche/competition, but what are some best practices? Content is expensive. Thanks
For a consumer facing blog, how often do you recommend updating content to develop good rankings? I understand that it's really dependent upon the niche/competition, but what are some best practices? Content is expensive. Thanks
Content Development | | CSOD19990