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!
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
-
Help finding someone to handle crashing site/site optimization.
I need someone who can handle website/WordPress issues as they come up.For example, my site has gone down 4 times tonight, and my host can't figure it out. They also keep recommending that I optimize my site, but I don't know how. I need a go-to web person for this sort of thing. Any recommendations?
On-Page Optimization | | cbrant7770 -
Site update and what to do about current keyword rank
Hi im in the process of giving my site a major update as its only one page and not responsive . The the new site will have a homepage with a list of my services with a small description of each and each service will link to its own page. My one page site at the moment ranks number one in my area for a low competition keyword (moz keyword score of 13%) of course this sends me very little traffic. With my new site im also going for more keywords but these will be Moz KWD 30% and 40%. I know this will be quite hard and take some time but i'm pretty sure I know what I need to do to get there. Now my question is what do i do with my current home page (only page) that ranks for that low comp keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | juun
I dont want to lose my rank for that, so do i make a new page on my new site that is optimized for that keyword, but then I don't want to 301 my homepage to that so I guess as its such an easy word to rank for my new page would soon rank for that? What are your thoughts and advice please, thanks in advance.1 -
SEO For Replacement Site
I have a client with a website that has gotten a bit outdated. We've already built his new website and optimized it, but I'm trying to figure out the best way to replace the site while doing the least amount of damage to his current Google rankings. He's ranking #1 for some very competitive keywords that are responsible for the bulk of his revenue, so we want to jeopardize that. We've already built a new site and written all new content, although the homepage page title, h1 header and meta descriptions will all remain what they currently are. I'm also trying to keep the keyword density as close to the current site as possible. I am aware of transferring all existing site URLS using 301 redirects. Can anyone provide any tips that I should use when replacing the site? Should I expect a slight rankings drop or am I worrying about nothing?
On-Page Optimization | | atstickel0 -
Can you have more than 1 site on the first page if site look and content is completely different but keywords are the sam.
I have a client that wants to build another completely different site than his main site and optimize it to have 2 websites on the first page for his keywords. The content and look and feel of the website would be completely different. One of his competitors is doing it and getting away with it. What is your advice.
On-Page Optimization | | Roots70 -
How is my on-site SEO looking like?
I know this is a broad question. My site's content has been written more than one year ago and haven't been changed so far. Our main goal is to make the application hosted in the site work better every day, so we don't worry much about writing content. The URL is http://www.onlinelogomaker.com
On-Page Optimization | | rpedri0 -
Remove internal site SERPS from Google Index?
1. Internal Serp pages did not have a robots meta tag 2. As a result, client site has thousands (~4,400) of internal site SERP pages in the Google index. 3. We added the NoIndex, Follow attribute to all internal SERPS 4. We Disallowed: domain.com/internal-search-operator in Robots.txt 5. No new SERP pages are being indexed, but the other 4000 something that were already there are still in the index weeks later. 6. The pages are dynamically created and still work, so I can't use the Remove Content tool from google, because the pages don't 404. Is there any way to get these pages out of the index besides just waiting and hoping google eventuall drops them? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | delegator.com0 -
Best information organization for a new site?
I'm launching a new stain removal website, and wanted to know what would be considered the best way to organize the content? Since most articles will roughly involve "removing X from Y" or "how to remove Z," I can see two ways... 1. Organize articles by Stained Items, Stain Agents and perhaps Cleaning Detergents. 2. Spread the categories out more, to try and group stained items according to categories... E.g. Hard surfaces, delicates, fabrics, ceramics etc. Any thoughts on which of these two might be the best way to organize the site, or are there any better suggestions? Not sure what the main considerations are here... Either of these two seem equally user-friendly.
On-Page Optimization | | ZakGottlieb710 -
How to optimize a wordpress blog
I’m helping a client optimize a word press blog, and I’m not that familiar with Wordpress. The site is www.athleticfoodie.com. At first I was treating it like a normal website, where the categories would be optimized like pages on a website. However, I now realize that categories don’t have any content on them, so I can’t really optimize anything other than the names. Are the following things the best way to handle on-page optimization for a blog? Optimizing the homepage & domain: Find ways to incorporate the most important keywords into the elements on the main frame of the site: Navigation menu, Widgets, Category names, Alt Images. Optimizing the categories: For the posts within the categories (i.e., photos), work to make sure the category keywords are worked into the post titles (but not too much to seem spammy) Optimizing specific posts. Work keywords into the text and images. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee340