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
-
How to Boost Your WordPress Website Speed to 95+ (Without Premium Plugins)
I'm reaching out for some advice on improving my WordPress website's speed. I'm currently using a free theme for this fusion magazine and aiming for a score of 95+ on Google PageSpeed Insights. I'm aware that premium plugins can significantly enhance performance, but I'm hoping to achieve similar results using primarily free solutions and manual optimizations.
Technical SEO | | mohammadrehanseo0 -
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 -
Removing a site from Google index with no index met tags
Hi there! I wanted to remove a duplicated site from the google index. I've read that you can do this by removing the URL from Google Search console and, although I can't find it in Google Search console, Google keeps on showing the site on SERPs. So I wanted to add a "no index" meta tag to the code of the site however I've only found out how to do this for individual pages, can you do the same for a entire site? How can I do it? Thank you for your help in advance! L
Technical SEO | | Chris_Wright1 -
How to remove Parameters from Google Search Console?
Hi All, Following are parameter configuration in search console - Parameters - fl
Technical SEO | | adamjack
Does this parameter change page content seen by the user? - Yes, Changes, reorders, or narrows page content.
How does this parameter affect page content? - Narrow
Which URLs with this parameter should Googlebot crawl? - Let Googlebot decide (Default) Query - Actually it is filter parameter. I have already set canonical on filter page. Now I am doing tracking of filter pages via data layer and tag manager so in google analytic I am not able to see filter url's because of this parameter. So I want to delete this parameter. Can anyone please help me? Thanks!0 -
If I change Tags and Categories in Wordpress blog post, will it negatively affect SEO and cause 404s?
Hi, I have belatedly come to the conclusion that I have been using tags and categories when blogging in wordpress incorrectly. The result is that Google seems to prefer to show my archives and tags in search results rather than the post itself. Not good UX. As the site is only a few months old, am I best to learn my lesson and tag and categorize correctly moving forward or Should I go back in to these posts and clean them up & categorize and tag correctly. If I do this, will it cause 404s and hurt my SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | johnyfiveisalive2 -
Bulk URL Removal in Webmaster Tools
One of Wordpress sites was hacked (for about 10 hours), and Google picked up 4000+ urls in the index. The site is fixed, but I'm stuck with all those urls in the index. All the urls of of the form: walkerorthodontics.com/index.php?online-payday-cash-loan.htmloncewe The only bulk removal option I could find was to remove an entire folder, but I can't do that, as it would only leave the homepage and kill off everything else. For some crazy reason, the removal tools doesn't support wildcards, so that obvious solution is right out. So, how do it get rid of 4000 results? And no, waiting around for them to 404 out of the index isn't an option.
Technical SEO | | MichaelGregory0 -
Wordpress Redirect Plugin Vs Manual .htaccess?
Hi everyone, I need to 301 redirect my old pages to new ones but i am confused between whether to choose plugin for this or i should manually rewrite the code on .htaccess file. Please give your suggestion and if you think i should use plugin then which one?
Technical SEO | | himanshu3019890 -
Way to spider Wordpress site
I have an old Wordpress site and I want to move it to a new server and take it off Wordpress (too many hacks). I am trying to spider the site so as to get static, non-Wordpress, pages. I am having trouble doing this. When I spider the site, it changes the URLs. For instance, if the URL is www.domain.com/page/ the URL I get out of the spider is /page/index.html And those are not the URLs in the search engine indices. There are about 2000 pages on this site, so it is not feasible to set up 301 redirects. I tried using these spidering programs: WinHTTack Website Copier and PageNest Does anyone know of another method of turning a Wordpress site into a non Wordpress site?
Technical SEO | | DanCrean0