Removing Media from Wordpress
-
I've run the seomoz on page report and found an interesting issue.
I'm using wordpress and it seems that every picture I add to my articles seem to be added as separate pages to the site.
I'm having to go to each and every picture and creating a meta tag and description to it. I still get duplicate content issues with the same.
On my Disqus system, I get the same pictures added just as a page or article would look like.
What can I do to avoid this?
-
I actually never learned to enjoy coffee, so it's no sacrifice at all. But you'll have to pry my Earl Grey from my cold dead hands
-
Ha! I'm trying to quit. _Again. _
-
Great that you got what you were looking for, Alex. Looks like you got a bunch of useful info from the responses. Would be great if you could designate the replies you found were "good answers", both to reward the author and to help future readers of the question.
And I had a mug of tea in your honour - not going near that coffee stuff
Paul
-
You're welcome Alex! I am having a coffee right now
Thanks so much to Paul and Brett too!
-
I don't know what to say. Sometimes there are easy solutions to seemingly impossible problems.
I can't say how grateful I am for you guys and the seomoz community. You have saved me from having to deal with about 10000 pages that had totally stumped me.
Have a coffee latte on me and thank you.
Alex
-
Hi Alex
What both Brett and Paul said is correct. Let me break it down for you a little more.
When Adding Media
- when you add your image - DON'T select "attachment page" - screenshot
Here's what each option does;
- custom URL - you can link the image to anything you want - an external link, another internal post, or to the source of the image itself if you need to attribute credit.
- media file - this is for if you click on the image, it just opens the actual image file. this is totally harmless, and in some cases many people like it, as it allows you to see the image larger. this is the one I usually choose by default.
- attachment page - that's the one giving you problems. it creates a new page for every image. so I never use this choice.
- none - no link as used at all. you can't click on the picture or anything.
Noindex Media
With the Yoast SEO plugin, you can also noindex media pages. See this screenshot for how to do so.
The means, no matter if you still end up with some media/photo pages indexed and missing titles etc, it won't be an issue.
Recap
OK - here's your steps;
- Moving forward, don't select "attachment page" when uploading media.
- Use Yoast to noindex media pages.
- Use Yoast to add a title and description template to media pages, in case they still get indexed.
Hope that helps!
-Dan
-
This situation is quite easy to resolve if you are using the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin.
Under the plugin's settings, go to the Permalink Settings page. The second section down offers the option to "Redirect attachment URLs to parent post URL." Put a checkmark in the box, click Save, and from now on, those individual image-only pages will automatically redirect back to the post on which they appear.
No idea if the same option is available in other SEO plugins - I've so long standardised on Yoast's plugin I'm not up to date on the others any more.
Brett's point about changing where images link will also work, but the plugin approach above means you don't have to go back an retroactively edit all your images.
Hope that helps?
Paul
-
I think when you are adding images to your site, you are setting them to Link to: Current Url rather than Media File or None. If you go back and edit your old images and make sure they are linking to the image or have no iink at all, I think you should be fine. Hope this helps!
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
-
Should existing canonical tags be removed where a 301 redirect is the preferred option?
Hi, I'm working on a site that is currently using canonical tags to deal with www and non-www variations. My recommendation is to setup 301 redirects to deal with this issue instead. However, is it ok to leave the existing canonical tags in place alongside the new 301 redirects or should they be removed? My thoughts are that this is not a canonical issue and therefore they should be removed? If 301 redirects are not possible it would be better have them that nothing at all but I don't think we need both, right? Any feedback much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | MVIreland0 -
Utilising Wordpress Attachment Pages Without Getting Duplicate Content Warnings.
I have a wordpres site that relies heavily on images and their usefulness. Each post links to larger sizes of the images with links back to the post and the "gallery" all images uploaded to the post. Unfortunately this goes against the "rules" and our attachment page show as duplicate content in Google (even though the image titles are different). There must be a way to utlise and make the most of attachment pages without getting duplicate content warnings?
Technical SEO | | DotP0 -
Duplicate content issue with Wordpress tags?
Would Google really discount duplicate content created by Wordpress tags? I find it hard to believe considering tags are on and indexed by default and the vast majority of users would not know to deindex them . . .
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
WWW wordpress multisite network for Main
I have a year old site with not many links, and my original intent was non www so http://rootdomain.com However, since its a subdomain multisite, I have received notice from google webmaster tools because of poor quality on one of my subsites.maindomain.com I do have the google account setup to be "root domain only" - however, i am still being penalized it seems. So should I convert my wordpress main site to use WWW. and modify my google webmaster/analytics profile, update my site links, etc. Or what do you suggest?
Technical SEO | | inllc0 -
Will rel canonical tags remove previously indexed URLs?
Hello, 7 days ago, we implemented canonical tags to resolve duplicate content issues that had been caused by URL parameters. These "duplicate content" had already been indexed. Now that the URLs have rel canonical tags in place, will Google automatically remove from its index the other URLs with the URL parameters? I ask because we have been tracking the approximate number of URLs indexed by doing a site: search in Google, and we have barely noticed a decrease in URLs indexed. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | yacpro130 -
Pages noindex'ed. Submit removal request too?
We had a bunch of catalog pages "noindex,follow" 'ed. Now should we also submit removal request in WMT for these pages? Thank you! LL
Technical SEO | | LocalLocal0 -
Remove Bad Links Or Build New
Hello, After deeply assessing our back links we have come to the conclusion that we have too many links that have been devalued and also some spammy looking links.... Our next question is do we remove these bad links and start a fresh or do we just build new white hat links?? Thanks, Scott
Technical SEO | | ScottBaxterWW0 -
Why has Google removed meta descriptions from SERPS?
One of my clients' sites has just been redesigned with lots of new URLs added. So the 301 redirections have been put in place and most of the new URLs have now been indexed. BUT Google is still showing all the old URLs in the SERPS and even worse it only displays the title tag. The meta description is not shown, no rich snippet, no text, nothing below the title. This is proving disastrous as visitors are not clicking on a result with no description. I have to assume its got something to do with the redirection, but why is it not showing the descriptions? I've checked the old URLs and he meta description is definitely still in the code, but Google is choosing not to show it. I've never seen this before so I'm struggling for an answer. I'd like to know why or how this is happening, and if it can be resolved. I realise that this may be resolved when Google stops showing all the old URLs but there's no telling how long that will take (can it be speeded up?)
Technical SEO | | Websensejim0