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
-
Homepage Gateway for Website Divisions (Residential / Commercial) Bad for SEO?
When a website offers multiple divisions for products and services would it be a good SEO practice to implement something as Culligan does by having their homepage be a sort of gateway to the different divisions of site (home, office, commercial, industrial)? 2DaYz
Web Design | | m-johnson0 -
Will having two wordpress themes installed hurt seo?
We currently have 3 sites built on WordPress that have little to no blogging capabilities. Currently, all published posts show up on a /category page which does not resemble the traditional blog format and is not aesthetically pleasing. We would like to have a more traditional blog and are considering installing a second wordpress theme on the site which will strictly be used for /blog and all the posts. My question is will having the second WordPress installation on the sites hurt us in any way on the SEO front and if we go this way should we place the install in a subfolder or on a subdomain? Is there anything else we need to worry about with making this transition? Thank you in advance for the advice! Patrick
Web Design | | PlanetDISH0 -
Hi, I have a doubt. If we want to hide unwanted text in a web page its possible with "" tag. And my question "does a search engine crawl those text? help me.
I want to hide a lot of text behind my site page. I know its possible with that tag. But in what way a search engine looks at those text? Hidden or they are crawled and indexed.
Web Design | | FhyzicsBCPL0 -
How to correct error in customized posttype WP site
Hi folks Can anybody help me. I foolishly, dogedly followed a Lynda.com tutorial for developing an 'online portfolio in WP'. Little did I know that my initial assumption - to use the 'twenty twelve' rather than the 'twenty eleven' theme would land me in such deep water. I was attempting to learn php on my own. All went well, until, --- the index page for the customized post type. Now I have two beautiful customized posttypes, 'companies' 'coverage' and no idea how to create an index page for either. I can't do the next step! I have tried every permutation - changing the permalink settings, changing them back, desperately searching for any handle to the nebulous links within the menu section. The only thing I can do (and have done for now) is to link the menu item 'company' and the menu item 'coverage' to a single post. Then the poor visitor has to scroll through the posts individually. I tried contacting the tutor and Lynda.com, to no avail! I have searched forums and found this is a common problem, but because I am so confused and novice to php they might as well be speaking Chinese. To compound my problems, looking through 'Wordpress SEO' for Yoast, I am painfully aware I can't go to the first basic step and fix the peramilinks to 'Postname' as that just makes my flakey menu collapse like a pack of cards. Help!
Web Design | | catherine-2793880 -
AJAX endpoints returning 404 errors in GWT. Why!?!?
Hi guys, So I'm working through a large dataset of 404 errors and trying to clean up the site's crawl-ability. A piece of the puzzle I can't seem to wrap my head around has to do with AJAX endpoints. It looks like GWT thinks these are URLs that don't exist and, therefore, is reporting them as 404 errors. Anyone experience this before?
Web Design | | brad_dubs0 -
Yes or No for Ampersand "&" in SEO URLs
Hi Mozzers I would like to know how crawlers see the ampersand (& or &) in your URLs and if Google frown upon this or not? As far as I know they purely recognise this as "and" is this correct and is there any best practice for implementing this, as I know a lot of people complained before about & in links and that it is better to use it as &, but this is not on links, this is on URLs. Reason for this is that we looking to move onto an ASP.Net MVC framework (any suggestions for a different framework are welcome, we still just planning out future development) and in order to make use of the filter options we have on our site we need a parameter to indicate the difference on a routing level (routing sends to controller, controller sends to model, model sends to controller and controller sends to view < this is pattern of a request that comes in on the framework we will be using). I already have -'s and /'s in the URLs (which is for my SEO structuring) so these syntax can't be used for identifying filters the user clicks or uses to define their search as it will create a complete mess in the system. Now we looking at & to say; OK, when a user lands on /accommodation and they selects De Kelders (which is a destination in our area) the page will be /accommodation/de-kelders on this page they can define their search further to say they are looking for 5 star accommodation and it should be close to the beach, this is where the routing needs some guidance and we looking to have it as follow: /accommodation/de-kelders/5-star&close-to-the-beach. Now, does the "&" get identified by search engines on a URL level as "and" and does this cause any issues with crawling or indexation or would it be best to look at another solution? Thanks, Chris Captivate
Web Design | | DROIDSTERS0 -
SEO to Drive Leads
Dear friends, I have clients asking for SEO to drive leads. I have no experience on it, how could I do that? Is there any web layout I can suggest to my client? Another question is how do I implemented the layout on the web structure? I usually structuring my website based on keywords. For example: Homepage niche: plumbing Category: london plumbing, plumbing service, etc Content: Finding London plumbing service in your area, what kind of plumbing service you should pay attention? So, based on these layout, my SEO efforts goes to the content, instead of the homepage. Now, the question is how do I increase conversion with these strategy? Is placing a form above the fold would be wise, then place the content below it. Please advice 🙂 Thanks for your kind support, Albertus
Web Design | | toeplly0 -
How do you deal with lack of understanding about SEO?
Since I subcontract out to web design people or work doing SEO for small businesses, I am wondering how others (and if others) deal with non-compliance with good SEO practices. For instance, I had a web designer change a few of the terms for a website because the client wanted another term they thought was better instead of sticking to the SEO they contracted for and she diluted the site architecture in the process. A former small business client called for some changes and I discovered she had made some changes she "thought were good terms." Do you encounter such issues, and if so, how do you deal with them--or do you just oblige the request? Also, I've been getting requests to do "partial" seo instead of entire sites. Is that ever a good idea and if so, how would you handle it? If not, how do you successfully dissuade a client from doing so? (Both small biz and web design peeps)
Web Design | | TheARKlady0