Should I remove the ?replytocom variables in wordpress?
-
I'm using Yoast's wordpress plugin and there is an option to remove the replytocom variables. I'm curious what everyone's thoughts were on that, and if I should do it.
Here's the site if you need to see it.
Thanks!
-
Hey, guys, this is a very old post but because it might be useful to people in the future I thought I would update the URL that Ryan did a. great job posting but no longer goes to the correct place. No one can control what I third-party site changes there URL structure to rite?
you can use this plug-in called
?replytocom= replaced with #replytocom=
-
Mine is not indexed in the Google Search, but in Google Webmasters and SEOmoz they showed the error !
Should i remove those links via URL parameters ?
Not indexed, someone here told me some plugins are helping you, i have All-in seo plugin and removed the comluv plugin(for more spam in my blog). other plugins are like share social network That's it.
Any help for me and my blog will be much appreciated !
-
Thanks Ryan! Have a great 4th of July!
-
What do people not using this plug in do? I'm assuming not many people do this, right?
I presume they accept the WP default options. Our practice and understanding of SEO is what allows us to analyze and make decisions regarding tidbits such as the one you mentioned.
You think there is any benefit to doing it, or just one of those "hey why not" sort of things?
I do think there is a benefit. You are impacting a LOT of links. Every comment on your site. It may be a tiny 1% benefit type of thing, but the change applies site wide and will presumably be in place for years.
-
I''ll try to find the link where he talks about using pages instead of posts and share it. Curious to hear your thoughts on it.
I'll go ahead and select that option, thanks for your help. (On a side note, what do people not using this plug in do? I'm assuming not many people do this, right?)
You think there is any benefit to doing it, or just one of those "hey why not" sort of things?
-
Regarding the new pages instead of posts idea, do you have a link to share?
Regarding the comment url, the page with the comment should be fully indexed either way. By changing the link, you are helping search engines better understand your site. The comment links do not represent a new page or new information.
Google clearly understands WP sites exceptionally well. I am confident you can choose various options and they will still understand those links represent comments. With that said, I would still go with Yoast on this one.
Actually, SEOmoz does it too. Take a look at their blog comments.
-
Thanks for taking the time to check into it. One I'm concerned with is how this will effect long tail seo / indexing of the comments. How will this effect my organic traffic? (will it hurt it?)
I don't see these sorts of pages coming up in google now, so I'm not sure what selecting that option does (and how it effects the site.)
Yoast does a few things different with his site, and I don't always follow his lead. For example he suggets making new pages instead of new posts for your blog posts. He's the only one I've ever heard say this, or do this.
-
I just took a look at Yoast's site and I now better understand the option to remove the variables. I recommend selecting that option. From the Yoast site:
method remove_reply_to_com [line 939]
string remove_reply_to_com( string $link)
Removes the ?replytocom variable from the link, replacing it with a #comment- <number>anchor.</number> Tags: access: public Parameters: string $link The comment link as a string.
Example: http://yoast.com/user-contact-fields-wordpress/#comment-110294
-
hmm..thanks for the feedback. So do you suggest not blocking those? (and I'll message yoast also and see what his thoughts are.)
Thanks.
-
I understand the logic behind blocking removing the variables. They are a lot of extra links on the page which some webmasters might prefer to manage.
What I would prefer is to reform the link so it was something like: http://noahsdad.com/treadmill-training-progress#replytocom=22729
I am guessing the "respond" portion of the URL acts as if someone pressed the reply button which seems unnecessary. If someone clicks the link whether in search results or otherwise and is taken directly to the comment, they should be quite happy. If they wish to reply they can hit the reply button.
Google ignores anything after the # character in a URL. Therefore Google would see these as simply a link to the page which should already be indexed.
Perhaps you can ask Yoast about his thoughts.
-
Thanks for the kind words, I agree, he is a cutie. Will blocking those cause the comments not to be indexed though?
-
Yup - removing those will save you the trouble of duplicate content - since Google by default is crawling those as different URLs. By default, if you have comments enabled, there's a link at the bottom of posts with that parameter in the url (the same as the blog post url - see here ---> http://noahsdad.com/treadmill-training-progress/?replytocom=22729#respond ).
Noah is cute!
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
-
Removed everything from my webpage still not de-ranked
Hi, How long is the delay to de-rank once you remove everything from a page ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Should remove 404 page
Hello, I upload a new website with new web addresses and my current addresses don't work anymore. I don't want to do redirects. Should I just remove the old address from google index using their tool or let google do it on its own. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics1 -
Default Robots.txt in WordPress - Should i change it??
I have a WordPress site as using theme Genesis i am using default robots.txt. that has a line Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php, is it okay or any problem. Should i change it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rootwaysinc0 -
We are looking for an SEO Company to hire to assist in upgrading a site to Wordpress
Does anyone have a good recommendation or better yet personal experience with one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCMotors20 -
Do I even bother to remove links
Hi, I'm noticing increasing numbers of scraped directory links pointing back to the websites I manage. Much of this info appears to be scraped from a well known (and respected) directory. I don't build links to an of the websites I manage - and none have more than 200 linking root domains currently - not that many. The problem is I focus on quality links and the scraped links are incredibly weak on the whole. Diluting the quality links. I've noticed a certain paranoia in the SEO community about removing / disavowing links, and yet I'm tempted to ignore the rubbish (unless part of a major negative SEO push) and just get on with the job, focusing on quality content that drives natural links, and social media work.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How best to structure wordpress site.
I need help on how to structure my wordpress site to avoid duplicate content issues. Basically I have a main category page for each of my targeted keywords (about 12). From each of those though I want to create a category for each county in the uk and then about 15 towns within each county. This means I'm creating a LOT of categories. Eg: /plumbers/lincolnshire/lincoln x 15 other counties and towns /local-plumbers/cambridgeshire/cambridge x 15 other counties and towns (I have about 12 main keywords I'm going after) I'm basically creating a category for every town in the UK going after long tail keywords. What is the best way to manage this in wordpress? Advice from another question I posted on here is to write a unique category description for each one as the posts in each category are almost identical. The other problem here is I'm ending up with hundreds of links on a page. (They can't all be seen by the user as I'm using a drop down menu plugin). Any advice appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Plugins to protect Wordpress Blog Posts?
Ive noticed there are quite a few websites copying the content from my site I have in Google news. After speaking to a friend, they told me that there are plugins to help prevent this from happening or leaving some sort of finger print in the copied content. My site uses author tags already. Does anyone have recommendations of plugins to use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
Wordpress No 404
Hello, My issue is that in wordpress 404 does not seem to be working properly. An example of this is: sitename.com/category/catname loads the files in that category but I can also type sitename.com/category/asdasfaasd/catname and it still goes to the posts in that category and does not 404. I can replace the misc text with anything and it does not 404. My worry is that this can be used to exploit duplicate content. I've looked at a couple of other sites and they do the same. I'm using Yoast as my SEO plugin and my theme is elogix from themeforest. I've tried disabling all plugins, cloudflare and changing theme and the same issue exists. If anyone can help it would be extremely appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LukeHutchinson0