My cat's cuter than your cat. (or he used to be before he died)

Thank you everyone. So glad my un-embarrassed part convinced my embarrassed part to just dive in and ask the question. This was all a lot of help. And because I'm in a bit of that cycle you describe, Philip, I have some second-line questions now.

Tom, I just love that the part in my question that was most poignant to you was the concern I have towards the hosting blogger. Seems to me if the generosity is extended by an invitation or acceptance, it's important to consider whatever consequences there could potentially be created by our actions. That stuck out in your response.

Also Tom, you bring up something else that I've been "confused" about: syndicated content. Here I go again with the potentially embarrassing questions:

• What is the difference between duplicated content vs syndicated content?
• Why is syndicated not considered duplicated?
• And then there's....for instance, the old, now dangerous practice of article submissions which creates duplicated content if that same content or article is on your website. How is that not considered syndicated? Does it simply rely on the basic intent of the site you are submitting the article to?

One more: please tell me if I'm getting this correctly and which would be best. If one were to guest blog and believe the content would be especially relevant to their own followers it's OK to post the same post on their own blog but best to noindex OR rel=cononical it passing up potential juice for yourself, but still getting to offer up the content.

Using snippets makes sense. I've been doing those across the board for my own blog and have occasionally wondered if any of that could be considered duplicate content if I use a quote from the blog post or if I repeat the same snippet...does any of that matter?

Once again, Thank You. I love getting help and really appreciate it.

This feels like a question I should know the answer to and I'm a tad embarrassed to ask, but the part of my brain that gets tripped up by somewhat simple things sometimes, is begging to ask just to confirm my understanding. I want to make sure I have it right it prior to giving advice.

When one guest blogs I assume that it is critical to create content that is original and unique to that one instance of the guest blog. That means, do not also put that post on your own blog and do not submit it to any other blogs for inclusion. This is both for duplicate content issues and also to respect and not put in jeopardy for duplicated content, the blog owner you are guesting for. Is this correct?

Are there any scenarios in which there might be a deviation of this "rule"? Like some use of canonicals or anything else?

Egol, I was thinking the same thing while I was out on a hike just now and you beat me to it. It is so logical- so much talent here right under our noses and we get to learn so much about members here by their interactions and smarts. No place like home.

SEOMoz has a page dedicated to recommended companies. I am placing the link below:

http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended

Good luck! You are right to use caution when hiring for SEO, so I recommend using the SEOMoz  list!

Thanks so much, Mike. Good to know I can let this go and I've done my due diligence with checking it all out.

I wish our WP would always create the 301's automaticallybushmen needed, but it doesn't seem to. I just installed Redirection plugin today for a URL change I wanted to make.

I'm really sorry to be confusing! It's hard to find the precise language for stuff when you don't really understand it well enough. ;o) I really appreciate that you have stuck with this and are trying to understand my concerns.

Pasted here from my last comment: "I was saying that the metarobots/nofollows were for blog posts, but in looking again, I am realizing these are blog post Comments and Replies, so I understand why WP would automatically put the noindex/nofollow on those. I typo-ed and put "robots" instead of "index". Sorry!"

So, in other words, I found that the noindex/nofollows that SEOMoz is reporting are for the blog comments which means all is well on those. I don't want Google to index comments and my replies to comments.

I'm going to see if I can ask my other question more clearly:

What I am still trying to determine is how to cut down on the number of notices and warnings by fixing or changing the conditions that are causing them.

I do not know what to do programming-wise to either create meta descriptions since they are "missing" and fix title tags that are too long for the archive and author type pages that are generating those notices and warnings. I don't know whether to use noindex, nofollow or block robots so that they won't matter.

I also don't know how/where the 301s were generated as we did not implement those manually or knowingly.

I hope this is better said and more understandable. Crossed fingers as I push "Post Reply".

Thanks much, John! And Mike!

404s:
These are now fixed. Thanks, Mike, for finding them. I tried to subscribe to Screaming Frog awhile back and had a roadblock due to my system. (older MacBook Pro and I can't update the OS any further)

Blog Archives:
I have wanted to use archive pages for alternate ways a user can find posts. I tend to like those on other blogs. But thank you for the article link. I look forward to reading that.

I am happy to hear the duplicated descriptions on archive pages is ok. I'm guessing you mean the post excerpt with the thumbnails? But I don't quite understand why SEOMoz is telling me that I am missing descriptions then AND I don't know how to access archive pages to insert meta descriptions onto them. Or author pages for that matter.

301's:
We did not implement 301s and I don't have a clue as to why they are there except that I change the name of the Gina Fiedel page. So I guess WP automatically created a 301?? That seems odd. And for the others, I have no idea. They are author pages generated from the User page in the admin and one is our website contact page with an inquiry form.

Noindex/nofollow: "These are blog articles but only some of the posts. Don’t know why we are generating this for some and not all. And half of them are for the exact same page so there are really only 4 originals on this list. The others are dupes."

What the heck did I mean by that? Just kidding- I figured it out. I was saying that the metarobots/nofollows were for blog posts, but in looking again, I am realizing these are blog post Comments and Replies, so I understand why WP would automatically put the noindex/nofollow on those. I typo-ed and put "robots" instead of "index". Sorry!

Mike- I am still wondering which tag(s) is/are recommended for the notices and warnings. I'm not sure what to request from our programming team on this.

Again! Thank you both for all the time you've spent on this. So grateful.

Thanks, Mike.

I agree about 404s! Thank you for locating those. Interestingly, the 404s that SEOMoz is picking up are the ones I was guessing are cached because those were fixed within minutes of being created.What I didn't realize is that there were additional internal links to these pages within blog posts. How'd you find those?

I would like to fix to avoid the warnings and notices continuing to generate, can you please explain the norobots vs noindex and how I should set those?

Since there are 8 norobots, how will these effect rankings?

thanks again!

I have been watching my Notices, Warnings and Errors increase since I added a blog to our WordPress site. Is this effecting our SEO? We now have the following:

2 4XX errors. 1 is for a page that we changed the title and nav for in mid March. And one for a page we removed. The nav on the site is working as far as I can see. This seems like a cache issue, but who knows?

20 warnings for “missing meta description tag”. These are all blog archive and author pages. Some have resulted from pagination and are “Part 2, Part 3, Part 4” etc. Others are the first page for authors. And there is one called “new page” that I can’t locate in our Pages admin and have no idea what it is.

5 warnings for “title element too long”. These are also archive pages that have the blog name and so are pages I can’t access through the admin to control page title plus “part 2’s and so on.

71 Notices for “Rel Cononical”. The rel cononicals are all being generated automatically and are for pages of all sorts.  Some are for a content pages within the site, a bunch are blog posts, and archive pages for date, blog category and pagination archive pages

6 are 301’s. These are split between blog pagination, author and a couple of site content pages- contact and portfolio. Can’t imagine why these are here.

8 meta-robot nofollow. These are blog articles but only some of the posts. Don’t know why we are generating this for some and not all. And half of them are for the exact same page so there are really only 4 originals on this list. The others are dupes.

8 Blocked my meta-robots. And are also for the same 4 blog posts but duplicated twice each.

We use All in One SEO. There is an option to use noindex for archives, categories that I do not have enabled.  And also to autogenerate descriptions which I do not have enabled.

I wasn’t concerned about these at first, but I read these  (below) questions yesterday, and think I'd better do something as these are mounting up. I’m wondering if I should be asking our team for some code changes but not sure what exactly would be best.

http://www.seomoz.org/q/pages-i-dont-want-customers-to-see

http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.html

Our site is http://www.fateyes.com

Thanks so much for any assistance on this!

Thanks, Andy.

I can't say 100%, but I am as sure as possible that the URL was created as a redirect. I checked on archive.org and wayback machine doesn't have URL archived. So, then, I also understand you to be saying that the links this company has obtained through blog commenting with CommentLuv aren't worth much and may be considered to have been manipulated.

And I think you're also saying that chances are, it's not worth my while in terms of search engines to pursue commenting on blogs with CommentLuv, but it may help me get more traffic to my blog. And that would make me happy.

I appreciate the advice to not just look at one type of link. I am not. I just tripped on this thing and got curious enough to pursue more info. Finding ways to get more traffic on my blog is something I have been investigating - links aside. Seems to be a don't put the cart before the horse kind of thing.

Hi Casey,

My feeling is that whenever a vendor is unwilling to be transparent, provide reports or discuss specific strategies they may be someone worth steering clear of. Saying he has never had problems in the past is waffling and not responding to or addressing your actual request. You are entitled to the information and if it's not willingly given that is a red flag. Additionally, this tasks he is performing do beg some qualifiers since they verge on outdated and/or less than completely safe practices. I would investigate further and/or locate an alternative.

Hope this is helpful.

Egol, I was thinking the same thing while I was out on a hike just now and you beat me to it. It is so logical- so much talent here right under our noses and we get to learn so much about members here by their interactions and smarts. No place like home.

SEOMoz has a page dedicated to recommended companies. I am placing the link below:

http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended

Good luck! You are right to use caution when hiring for SEO, so I recommend using the SEOMoz  list!