Word Press Seo Errors/ Questions
-
Hi my name is Tina I am new here I hope you guys can help me out. I thought building my new site with Word Press was going to simplify things, however I have a ton of errors, and I am not sure what they are, or how to fix them.
I am hoping someone could share with me a solution for these errors.
I have 28 rel=canonical errors, I am not sure what this means, I understand it to mean my pages are similar, and this is to set a heirarchy between my pages. Please correct me if I am wrong.
If I am correct would this be necessary to add if my main keyword was "widgets" and my home page was optimized for "widgets" and my next page was "blue widgets" and so on.
While my pages are similar they are all optimized for different versions of my main keyword some using long tail keywords. Do you know of a plugin that can help solve this problem?
Also does anyone have a plugin they recommend for G+ my G+ authorship verification is causing an error as well?
I am using Head Space 2 I have used this seo plugin numerous times with great success it has been my favorite seo plugin. However, we have a portfolio that shows our clients websites, and on those pages Head Space will not let me enter a description tag. What plug in do you guys recommend with more control over each page?
Another interesting issue is on one of our pages I optimized it for our Canadian clients, and now every page has been listed in Google.ca for the keywords it should have on Google.com.
We are listed on Google maps, verified in Google places, and our address is on the site so they know we're from the USA however, the majority of our keywords are only listed in Google.ca. We're on page one for all of them, we are in the top three on most of them so that's not bad, but we want to be listed in Google.com as well. Any suggestions on this?
-
Tina-
Couple of things. Lets make sure you understand what "canonicalization" is......when the search engines determine the best version of a single page that can be pulled up using more than one URL. In the process different URL's would be able to display the same identical content.
This could be happening for a number of reasons and might not make a big difference in your SEO or it could be hurting your SERP values. Essentially you want to make sure that your rel=canonical issues are simple redirects that are necessary so that you aren't being penalized for duplicate content. To make sure this is correct work through the errors and make sure that your sitemap is set up correctly and you are effectively using your url descriptions to tell the search engines what the various pages contain. It does make sense to make sure that your URL is as descriptive as possible.
If you want to get the simplest and easiest explanation of rel=canonical issues, read Matt Cutts blog posting from a few years back. We use it in our SEO playbook. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonical-link-tag/
I would recommend 2 plugins for you with wordpress (I have done over 30 wordpress sites in the last 6 months and we havetested a bunch of them).
Wordpress SEO by Yoast. This is an all in one SEO plugin which will solve your "description tag" issue and will give you much more flexibility for basic and advanced SEO. Here is the link: http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/#utm_source=wpadmin&utm_medium=plugin&utm_campaign=wpseoplugin
There is another plugin called redirection by John Godly. It manages your 301 redirects and keeps track of your 404 errors (rel+canonicals) and helps you clean up your site. It is solid and easy to use.
Another issue you might be having with your duplicate content can be avoided by creating original content., if you have one page with a widget and another with a blue widget and another with a pink widget and all the verbiage is the same, except for the color, then you have duplicate content. Use the rel=canonical to make sure you don't get penalized for duplicate content. Another solution is if on the widget pages you can provide several different descriptions of the widgets that go beyond colors, then you start to create unique content and you get SEO value for each separate widget page without having to do a rel=canonical. We have several ecommerce clients that have 10-15 variations of the same product and we have helped them develop unique content for each one, (hundreds of extra pages of content), which has dramatically increased their relevancy and quality score for their specific keywords....but it has to be unique.
Your last issue is related to Canada and search results. This really relates back to your internal sitemap structure. Remember, Google and other search engines send spiders to your site to crawl. They only know what they can see and what you tell them. if you dont do a good job of sitemap/url structure and definition, they are going to try and figure it out themselves. If I was you, I would create a separate url structure for your canadian group that would be something like....www.dropshippingsupplies.com/specifickeywords_canada_locations Then all of the SEO value stays with your core site but you designate that those pages and keyword content are related to Canada. You should also make sure that you have geotargeted keywords in the core content of the page....so that you mention canada or the cities and towns where you aretargeting, within that core content.
Hope this helps..
Mark
-
Thanks anyone else have a suggestion?
-
Tina, you are going to run into a few SEO issues with Wordpress but don't worry to much about over optimizing since Wordpress is still one of googles most favored platforms. Ultimate SEO plugin is best and really try to consider the following: 1) title tags Wordpress will automatically title the page universally leading to duplicate page title issues 2) meta tag discription Aside from those two I usually do not use the other options as they are not needed when developing a natural/organic white hat type of site. Ps, a neat trick is to not use the Wordpress platform for the entire structure of the site but just the content areas. Giving you in essence 2 power house domains as you are able to upload a Wordpress through the root file under another keyword. Drop a line and I can explain further ... Hope this helps Your pal Chenzo
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
-
What website changes (technical) SEOs can ignore confidently? Google's perspective!
Hi community members, I am looking after SEO at our company and there are lots of changes happening about our website; especially technical changes. It's hard for me to look after every deployment of the website like change of server location, etc. We generally agree that every change related to website must be notified by SEO to understand the ranking fluctuation and how search engines welcome them. I just wonder what technical deployments of a website I could confidently ignore to save time and give a go ahead to technical team without interrupting or waiting for my approval. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz1 -
Opencart vs. Wordpress/Woo
There are two issues facing me today. One is that my two e-commerce stores need updating after some 4 years, but I am seriously considering switching from Opencart to Wordpress/Woo. Opencart is a nightmare to work with at the best of times. Whenever I try to edit the footer of my current sites for instance nothing changes, the customisation of pages is sloppy and although the site works fine for perhaps the first 6 months, anytime after that it just slowly falls apart. Wordpress however features incredible customisation, is easy to edit the code but it lacks the backend functionality that Opencart is good at. Does anyone know the downsides of changing to Wordpress/Woo in respect to SEO?
Web Design | | moon-boots0 -
Needs clarification: How "Disallow: /" works?
Hi all, I need clarification on this. I have noticed we have given "Disallow: /" in one of our sub-directory beside homepage. So, how it going to work now? Will this "Disallow: /" at sub-directory level going to disallow only that directory or entire website? If it is going to work for entire website; we have already given one more Disallow: / at homepage level blocking few folders. How it is going to handle with two Disallow: / commands? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Have an eBook. What is best practice for SEO?
Hello We have a free eBook - its a great resource and great piece of content. It is available to download on our website here - http://re-timer.com/the-product/how-to-sleep-better/ The book is available as a whole or as individual chapters (i.e. http://re-timer.com/app/uploads/2015/07/Chapter8.pdf?b0df38). The PDF chapters appear to be doing well in Google search for certain keywords. I can't measure this in GA though. I would like the eBook to assist the SEO of my website overall. If I create a web page and 'embedded' the PDF into it will Google still crawl this page? At the moment we are also using this to collect email addresses, this is a nice to have and it is OK if people get the eBook without doing this (if they find a chapter in Google they currently don't have to enter their email address). I'm sure lots of people have eBooks now. What is best practice and the best way to use this as a tool to maximise SEO for the whole website (http://re-timer.com)? Thank you! Laura
Web Design | | LauraFalls1 -
Will changing product from Grouped to Simple on my magento category page affect my SEO?
Hi all, A category page on my site http://www.porcelainsuperstore.co.uk/wood-effect.html currently ranks number 3 on Google for the keyword "Wood Effect Tiles" We're currently reorganising some of our product and I would like to know if this is going to affect the SEO and ranking for the above page and keyword. The majority of products on that page are magento grouped products. I would like to change the page so that it displays only the different constituent simple products rather than the grouped products on the category page. My question is, will this have any impact on SEO? I intend on leaving all other data on the category page the same - so the metadata and the description/title etc. Any help/comments would be much appreciated! Ben
Web Design | | piazza0 -
Homepage Title Question? Multi-Keywords or All Encompassing Keyword
Okay so I am currently redesigning my company's webpage. I am making it responsive and giving it a more up to date look with newer features, etc. A facelift, basically. While updating the site i'm also doing some on-page optimization here and there, and am curious about the page title for my homepage. My company offers video production, web development & design, and web marketing. While we do offer each service individually, we are really trying to sell the combination of all three services to our clients and show them how they can work together effectively. Now my question is, in my homepage title, should i list each service offering keyword (which is what i do now) like this : "Video Production - Web Design - Web Marketing • Company Name" Or, should i try to find one keyword that kind of sums up what we do, like this: "Magic All-Encompassing Keyword • Company Name" I'm thinking that since three sort of unrelated keywords are in the page title, it may be viewed as over-optimizing and we won't see as good of results as just focusing on one keyword, which leads me to think that i should try to sum all of our services into one "all-encompassing" keyword such as "media production", which isn't the best choice, i'm just throwing it out there for the sake of this discussion. Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Web Design | | RenderPerfect0 -
SEO For Lead Generation
From an SEO point of view, is it okay to have a sites focus to be Lead Generation? We will do a small amount of blogging and we'll also have longer form sales pages on the site... but the main focus would be lead generation pages that we'd target for the SERPs. TO ME... this seems fairly spammy. If we had 50-60 landing pages with only 100-300 words of copy on them. If this is "okay" then how much should we altar up these landing pages in terms of content? None of them will be direct copies... but I just want to make sure that we stay above a ratio that would be good for SEO. Then lastly... How many main terms can we expect to target with a landing page? Should we focus each landing page to a keyword, or can we target a few and still rank effectively?
Web Design | | lifeseo0 -
HTML5, semantic web & SEO
HTML5 is supposed to revolutionize the way browsers, web clients and services are supposed to "understand" information on the web. I have been planning on converting my site to HTML5 ever since it went into a working draft last spring, however I wanted to know if upgrading to HTML5 would offer any SEO benefits or if it would actually have a negative effect on how my site is perceived on the web. I guess my real question here is "Do search engines recognize HTML5 sectioning?" Is content found in semantic sections like <header>, <footer>, <nav>, <aside>, treated any different than content inside generic HTML4 containers like, or ? </aside> </nav> </footer> </header>
Web Design | | TahoeMountain400