Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Google Not Indexing Pages (Wordpress)
Hello, recently I started noticing that google is not indexing our new pages or our new blog posts. We are simply getting a "Discovered - Currently Not Indexed" message on all new pages. When I click "Request Indexing" is takes a few days, but eventually it does get indexed and is on Google. This is very strange, as our website has been around since the late 90's and the quality of the new content is neither duplicate nor "low quality". We started noticing this happening around February. We also do not have many pages - maybe 500 maximum? I have looked at all the obvious answers (allowing for indexing, etc.), but just can't seem to pinpoint a reason why. Has anyone had this happen recently? It is getting very annoying having to manually go in and request indexing for every page and makes me think there may be some underlying issues with the website that should be fixed.
Technical SEO | | Hasanovic1 -
What's the best way for users to upload their images to my wordpress site to promote UGC
I have looked at lots of different plugins and wanted a recommendation for an easy way for patients of ours to upload pictures of them out partying and having fun and looking beautiful so future users can see the final results instead of sometimes gory or difficult to understand before and after images. I'd like to give them the opportunity to write captions (like facebook or insta posts and would offer them incentives to do so. I don't want it to be too complicated for them or have too many steps or barriers but I do want it to look nice and slick and modern. Also do you think this would have a positive impact on SEO? I was also thinking of a Q&A app where dentists could get Q&A emails and respond - i've been doing AMA sessions and they've been really successful and I would like to bring it into out site and make it native. Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool1 -
Why add .html to WordPress pages?
A site I may take over has a plugin that adds .html to the pages. I searched online but I’ve only found how to add it rather than why to add it. Is it needed? If I remove it, I’ll have to be careful with SEO / indexed pages and redirects. The site is running 3.x.x and 90% of the plugins have not been updated in over 5 years including this one. Before I update to 4.7.x, I am trying to understand the landscape (pros / cons) on why something could be used and if I need to find a suitable replacement for it.
Technical SEO | | acktivate2 -
Removing site subdomains from Google search
Hi everyone, I hope you are having a good week? My website has several subdomains that I had shut down some time back and pages on these subdomains are still appearing in the Google search result pages. I want all the URLs from these subdomains to stop appearing in the Google search result pages and I was hoping to see if anyone can help me with this. The subdomains are no longer under my control as I don't have web hosting for these sites (so these subdomain sites just show a default hosting server page). Because of this, I cannot verify these in search console and submit a url/site removal request to Google. In total, there are about 70 pages from these subdomains showing up in Google at the moment and I'm concerned in case these pages have any negative impacts on my SEO. Thanks for taking the time to read my post.
Technical SEO | | QuantumWeb620 -
Removing images from site and Image Sitemap SEO advice
Hello again, I have received an update request where they want me to remove images from this site (as of now its a bunch of thumbnails) current page design: http://1stimpressions.com/portfolio/car-wraps/ and turn it into a new design which utilized a slider (such as this): http://1stimpressions.com/portfolio/ They don't want the thumbnails on the page anymore. My question is since my site has a image sitemap that has been indexed will removing all the images hurt my SEO greatly? What would the recommended steps to take to reduce any SEO damage be, if so? Thank you again for your help, always great and very helpful feedback! 🙂 cheers!
Technical SEO | | allstatetransmission0 -
Notice of DMCA removal from Google Search
Dear Mozer's Today I get from Google Webmaster tools a "Notice of DMCA removal" I'll paste here the note to get your opinions "Hello, Google has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that some of your materials allegedly infringe upon the copyrights of others. The URLs of the allegedly infringing materials may be found at the end of this message. The affected URLs are listed below: http://www.freesharewaredepot.com/productpages/Ultimate_Spelling__038119.asp" So I perform these steps: 1. Remove the page from the site (now it gives 404). 2. Remove it from database (no listed on directory, sitemap.xml and RSS) 3. I fill the "Google Content Removed Notification form" detailing the removal of the page. My question is now I have to do any other task, such as fill a site reconsideration, or only I have to wait. Thank you for your help. Claudio
Technical SEO | | SharewarePros0 -
How to rewrite WordPress permalinks for reverse proxy?
Our main site, www.domain.com, is on an IIS 6 server. When we started our blog, we wanted to put it in a subdirectory (domain.com/blog), but we couldn't because our IT people refused to support it. Instead, we built it on a third-party Apache server and configured it to open under blog.domain.com. However, I came across this SEOmoz post about the glories of reverse proxies, so I've persuaded our IT people to take a swing at it. We got it to work on a staging server, but the permalinks won't change (still appear as blog.domain.com/slug). The IT guys say it's due to a configuration problem with WordPress. Can somebody out there point me in the right direction as far as working out the URL issues with this?
Technical SEO | | ufmedia0 -
Which is the best wordpress sitemap plugin
Does anyone have a recommendation for the best xml sitemap plugin for wordpress sites or do you steer clear of plugins and use a sitemap generator then load it up to the root manually?
Technical SEO | | simoncmason0