Noindex tag, categories, archives? SEO help needed

  • I am sure this is not a new topic, but there seems to be lot of people who think I should noindex categories, archives or even tags because it can affect my ranking thanks to duplicate content.

    On the other hand, some people say that Google now is more intelligent and can make the difference between a blog and duplicate content.

    What do you think is best?

    BTW, I wonder what would be the utility of tags if I noindex them…

    Thanks!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • I am at loss about the issue of “noindex”. If I stop the search engine from crawling “category”, “archives”, “tags” etc., how and where would it index?

    I am trying to figure out which is more important, for SEO, tags or categories?

    It’s a matter of time and efficiency having to select two set for each post.

    Essential your pages are internally linked properly for your users as well as the spiders.

    [spam link moderated]

    The real answer to this question lies in the fact that there is no such thing as a duplicate content “penalty.”

    Duplicate content is viewed as a LACK of good content, not as something to penalize you for.

    Google sees all their links around your blog, from tags to categories to other internal links all as a good thing… They even say so. However, when those tag and category pages have duplicate content in the form of post excerpts on them, then googlebot looks at them as pages and thinks, “that isn’t original… Next…”

    The best thing to do, if you have a way to do it with your theme, would be to place a chunk of original content on those tag and category pages. (And therefore index all pages.)

    There have been many plugins created with the intent on doing exactly this, namely:

    1. Category Page by Pixline
    2. All Category SEO Updater by Bradley G. Smith
    3. Tui’s Category Intro For Archive by Stephen Baugh

    -However all three of these plugins appear to be completely broken right now and I too need to find a replacement for this functionality!

    Anyone out there have a lead for us?

    sparro

    (@jeanfayette)

    I’m not sure how you could insert unique content on tag pages without a tonne of conditional statements in your theme, but you can easily get unique content on your category pages by using the description element and then inserting it into your category template – ie: 

    <?php echo category_description( $category ); ?>
    sparro

    (@jeanfayette)

    I didn’t realise when I responded yesterday, but WP 2.8 now support a Tag description also. You can add these by navigating to Posts > Post Tags.

    Call them as follows:

    <?php $tag_descr = tag_description(); ?>

    More info here: https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Tags/tag_description

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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