Index or Noindex Wordpress Categories?
-
I've read a few different opinions on this, but I'm still unclear as to the best practice. I use my categories more like tags. Let's say I write a post about about seo, local marketing, and indexing. I would use the categories "seo"+"marketing"+"indexing". Therefore, that same post will show up in all three category pages. If these category pages are all set to be indexed, what impact does that have on my post being indexed? Should I noindex all of the categories except for the main ones to avoid too much duplicate content? Or do you recommend noindexing all of the categories? I know some seo plugins make this easy to do (I'm using Yoast).
The only reason I'm hesitant to noindex all categories is because some of them rank well for their subject. I also already tried noindexing about a month ago and lost a lot of blog traffic, so I reversed it. Now some of my category pages have overtaken my post rankings, which makes it harder for the reader to find the content, but my overall blog traffic is back up.
With my situation, what is the best thing to do long term? I just started using my blog a lot more so I want to know that I have it setup correctly. Thanks in advance!
-
Correct! I show a teaser preview from the actual content on the homepage. The excerpt I write as a brief summary of what the article is about. Best of luck!
-
Well I've been wanting to redesign my main blog page anyways - make it slightly different from the category and archive pages, so if it'll help I'll do it.
Just to clarify, how does your blog homepage differ from the category pages? No excerpts on the homepage?
-
You don't have to do what I did. I have websites that don't do this, and they are just fine.
I'm not sure what your current setup is, but if it's not a lot of work for you, it's definitely worthwhile to do my method. It won't make or break you, but it'll help for sure.
-
Thanks for your quick response. So are you saying I should only have the excerpts on category pages? Right now I have them on the main blog page and category pages. On your main blog do you just have title links/pictures?
And I'm glad to finally hear that category pages should remain indexed from someone.
-
I've never understood the argument that category pages should be noindexed. They have always been an excellent source of traffic for me, too.
It's said that it could be considered low quality content. If you treat your category pages as just another page in your website (a healthy category introduction/description does wonders) it can be a nexus for broad search terms.
As an example of where this works very well, I have one category in a computer networking blog I have about TCP/IP. It's part of a series that explains the protocol, and the category page essentially is the 'guide' page, linking to each step in the guide to learning TCP/IP. I have the excerpts used only in category pages, so each category page also has unique preview content for each post.
Your specific worry is that you have posts in multiple categories. The thing is, there won't be the same posts in every category page so there will be a mashup of content. Some duplicate content is not bad. In addition to the category description, you'll be fine so long as you don't have synonymous categories.
You're fine in keeping them indexed. I would think you are crazy if you did otherwise
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
-
How to know how much pages are indexed on Google?
I have a big site, there are a way to know what page are not indexed? I know that you can use site: but with a big site is a mess to check page by page. This is a tool or a system to check a entire site and automatically find non-indexed pages?
Technical SEO | | markovald0 -
My video sitemap is not being index by Google
Dear friends, I have a videos portal. I created a video sitemap.xml and submit in to GWT but after 20 days it has not been indexed. I have verified in bing webmaster as well. All videos are dynamically being fetched from server. My all static pages have been indexed but not videos. Please help me where am I doing the mistake. There are no separate pages for single videos. All the content is dynamically coming from server. Please help me. your answers will be more appreciated................. Thanks
Technical SEO | | docbeans0 -
Duplicate content. Wordpress and Website
Hi All, Will Google punish me for having duplicate blog posts on my website's blog and wordpress? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Mike.NW0 -
WordPress post indexation speed
Has anyone noticed any increases in the length of time it takes for WP posts to get indexed by Google? I have a website with the following: domain.com - CMS with lots of pages/content blog.domain.com - subdomain for the blog using WP It's odd.. the pages on the main site are indexed almost immediately. The posts on the blog are taking between 2-5 days. The blog posts are all unique content, here's an example of a recent one: blog.looksfishy.co.uk/2013/three-rivers-angling/
Technical SEO | | edwardlewis0 -
Update index date
If I update the content of a page without changing the initial url and google crawls my new page, will the index date (that appears in the SERP) change to the latest update? In positive case how many change should I do to consider an update? tks
Technical SEO | | fabrico230 -
Does Google index has expiration?
Hi, I have this in mind and I think you can help me. Suppose that I have a pagin something like this: www.mysite.com/politics where I have a list of the current month news. Great, everytime the bot check this url, index the links that are there. What happens next month, all that link are not visible anymore by the user unless he search in a search box or google. Does google keep those links? The current month google check that those links are there, but next month are not, but they are alive. So, my question is, Does google keep this links for ever if they are alive but nowhere in the site (the bot not find them anymore but they work)? Thanks
Technical SEO | | informatica8100 -
Image Sitemap Indexing Issue
Hello Folks, I've been running into some strange issues with our XML Sitemaps. The XML Sitemaps won't open on a browser and it throws the following error instead of opening the XML Sitemap. Sample XML Sitemap - www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xml.gzError - "XML Parsing Error: no element foundLocation: http://www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xmlLine Number 1, Column 1:"2) Image files are not getting indexed. For instance, the sitemap - www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xml.gz has 6,000 URLs and 6,000 Images. However, only 3,481 URLs and 25 images are getting indexed. The sitemap formatting seems good, but I can't figure out why Google's de-indexing the images and only 50-60% of the URLs are getting indexed. Thank you for your help!
Technical SEO | | CorbisVeer0 -
Block a sub-domain from being indexed
This is a pretty quick and simple (i'm hoping) question. What is the best way to completely block a sub domain from getting indexed from all search engines? One item i cannot use is the meta "no follow" tag. Thanks! - Kyle
Technical SEO | | kchandler0