Block /tag/ or not?
-
I've asked this question in another area but now i want to ask it as a bigger question. Do we block /tag/ with robots.txt or not. Here's why I ask:
My wordpress site does not block /tag/ and I have many /tag/ results in the top 10 results of Google. Have for months. The question is, does Google see /tag/ on WordPress as duplicate content? SEOMoz says it's duplicate content but it's a tag. It's not really content per say.
I'm all for optimizing my site but Google is not penalizing me for /tag/ results.
I don't want to block /tag/ if Google is not seeing it as duplicate content for only one reason and that's because I have many results in the top 10 on G.
So, can someone who knows more about this weigh in on the subject for I really would like a accurate answer.
Thanks in advance...
-
Thanks for all the info. Last question, does having a list of monthly archives on the bottom of my site hurt in terms of dup content? I just have at the bottom the month/year and when you click it, it shows all the posts in that month. Should I be removing this or does it matter?
-
It would be meta noindex. Yoast is my plugin of choice. Happen to have a little article right here if you need to see if its "safe" to remove them from a traffic standpoint.
-Dan
-
I use All in one SEO pack and have checked noindex for the tags and the categories and the archives. I suppose it doesn't make any difference if I do it there or in the robots.txt file. Either way their being blocked. Do you know if there's a penalty for having blocked them in WP and the robots file?
-
I'd say noindex, follow them - many SEO plugins can do this for you, Yoast SEO for example. That way Googs can still crawl them, which may assist with discovery, but won't index them.
-
Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
So, I suppose the best and proper way to block it is by robots.txt correct?
-
You mean "more about this" than me? I run 3 businesses on 3 Wordpress blogs. I've done the research. Many of my clients are Wordpress users. But here's what others think:
- Yoast thinks it's duplicate content: http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/#advancedseo
- David Fuller ranked for tags then didn't: http://www.seomoz.org/q/wordpress-tags-duplicate-content Same link Dan at Evolving thinks you should noindex tags as well.
- WPMU and Matt Cutts think it's duplicate content: http://wpmu.org/categories-tags-and-how-to-avoid-duplicate-content-on-wordpress/
- How to Tech thinks it's duplicate content: http://howtotechtips.com/remove-wordpress-duplicate-content-search-results-and-tags-from-google/
- As you said, SEOMoz thinks it's duplicate content.
- Many Warriors suggest noindexing tags for dupe content reasons: http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/373744-wordpress-tags-death-me-duplicate-content-question.html
- 3 other pro SEOs say to noindex here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/solving-link-and-duplicate-content-errors-created-by-wordpress-blog-and-tags
Google search shows
_No results found for _"tags do not create duplicate content".
No results found for "tags are not duplicate content".
And 2.5 million results for tags "duplicate content"
The short term answer is that you're ranking for them now so leave them be.
The long term answer is it's duplicate content and you need to fix it.
Even if your tag pages don't show the entire post, multiple tag pages show the same excerpt. This is duplicate content. By itself - not even talking about the post.
**You said: **_SEOMoz says it's duplicate content but it's a tag. It's not really content per say. _
If you want to see with your own eyes the duplicate content, please post a URL.
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
-
Deleting Tags without Penalty?
Hello - We have a site with over 1,000 tags. We added too many and would like a fresh start as they are creating a lot of duplicate pages on the site. What is the best way to go about deleting all of these tags without being penalized by Google? Is there a way to tell Google direclty to stop crawling them? We would prefer to not have that many pages just sit as 404 errors on the site. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | FamiliesLoveTravel0 -
What do you do with product pages that are no longer used ? Delete/redirect to category/404 etc
We have a store with thousands of active items and thousands of sold items. Each product is unique so only one of each. All products are pinned and pushed online ... and then they sell and we have a product page for a sold item. All products are keyword researched and often can rank well for longtail keywords Would you :- 1. delete the page and let it 404 (we will get thousands) 2. See if the page has a decent PA, incoming links and traffic and if so redirect to a RELEVANT category page ? ~(again there will be thousands) 3. Re use the page for another product - for example a sold ruby ring gets replaces with ta new ruby ring and we use that same page /url for the new item. Gemma
Technical SEO | | acsilver0 -
Sudden decrease in indexed AMP pages after 8/1/16 update
After the AMP update on 8/1/16, the number of AMP pages indexed suddenly dropped by about 50% and it's crushing our search traffic- I haven't been able to find any documentation on any changes to look out for and why we are getting a penalty- any advice or something I should look out for?
Technical SEO | | nystromandy0 -
SEO / Word Press feature
We are wanting to refresh old posts on our blog and schedule them to get “republished” to the home page of our blog on a future date. However, when we edit the “Published” settings date and set it to a future date, the post gets removed from the blog and put back into a “Scheduled” status. Many of these posts are “evergreen” and bringing in traffic so we don’t want to have them get removed from our site. So to recap, we need the ability to be able to reschedule already published posts to get “re-published” back on our home page without having them get removed from the site. Does anyone know of a plugin or solution to this problem? Any help would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | eyepaq0 -
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect?
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect? If this scenario requires a 301 redirect no matter what, I might as well update the URL to be a little more keyword rich for the page while I'm at it. However, since these pages are ranking well I'd rather not lose any authority in the process and keep the URL just stripped of the ".html" (if that's possible). Thanks for you help! [edited for formatting]
Technical SEO | | Booj0 -
Canonical tag problem
Hello I'm newbie here i dont know very well about seo but i would like to ask your help? I'm running report about my website and on report I dont have canonical tag on my products. But if i check from on page report link by link it shows that I have canonical tag. At the same time if i check my pages code i can see below canonical tag codes? Do we use canonical tags wrong? What can cause this different information? Could you please help me? Is it important to use canonical tag beginning or end? I'm using now trial version and trying to understand report is correct what is my mistakes. Thanks in advance My code is
Technical SEO | | FRUTIKO0 -
Duplicate Title Tags
Hi, Are these 2 title tags different enough? Notice only the 's' on Templates is switched <colgroup><col width="559"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | Studio33
| Invoice Templates | Invoice Template | invoicing Software | Invoice Software Invoice Template | Invoice Templates | invoicing Software | Invoice Software | Thanks0 -
Title and description tags
Hi everyone! What is the maximum length a title tag should be and what range should a seo description be for best practice?
Technical SEO | | PeterM220