How to handle pages I can't delete?
-
Hello Mozzers,
I am using wordpress and I have a small problem. I have two sites, I don't want but the dev of the theme told me I can't delete them.
/portfolio-items/
/faq-items/
The dev said he can't find a way to delete it because these pages just list faqs/portfolio posts. I don't have any of these posts so basically what I have are two sites with just the title "Portfolio items" and "FAQ Items". Furthermore the dev said these sites are auto-generated so he can't find a way to remove them.
I mean I don't believe that it's impossible, but if it is how should I handle them? They are indexed by search engines, should I remove them from the index and block them from robots.txt?
Thanks in advance.
-
great!
-
The code worked fine, thanks again for your help!
-
Most likely, but I would double check with your developer - since I might be unaware of anything out of the ordinary!
-
Thank you for your answer! Can I use this code in the .htaccess?:
Redirect 301 /portfolio-items/ http://mysite.com
-
Great - the info helps. To be honest, this isn't a huge issue if left alone, or if you do the redirect. But if you're worried about users landing on the wrong page, you can 301 redirect to the homepage and that should be just fine.
-
They told me this:
Salman wrote:
Hi There,
These are not pages or posts which you can remove by just clicking on a button. These are custom posts types and you can not directly remove slugs within current setup. You have following options though.
-
Add some code to unregister these custom post types.
-
Use a plugin to re-write slugs
-
Use .htaccess to redirect users when this URL is access. This might work
BEGIN REMOVE SLUG CUSTOM POST TYPE RULES
RewriteRule ^portfolio-items/(.+)/$ /$1 [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^faq-items/(.+)/$ /$1 [R=301,L]END REMOVE SLUG CUSTOM POST TYPE RULES
I hope you understand that the solution you need is not possible with our current set of options and will require some customization of the theme. We’d love to help you with this customization but we are only able to provide support for basic theme issues and bug fixes. We do provide support for small customizations but unfortunately this request is beyond that.
There aren't any similar pages, I guess I 301 redirect them to the home page. It's three pages, will this have any negative effects?
Thanks for the help, highly appreciated!
-
-
If you can't delete them, you should probably 301 redirect them to the most similar page, or just the homepage. You can redirect them in the .htaccess file or use a redirection plugin: https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/
-
Thanks for all the answers! Sorry, I didn't have a chance to respond earlier.
Unfortunately, I still couldn't fix this. I talked to the original devs (on their support forums) and they couldn't help me further with this. It's about these 3 pages:
/themefusion_es_groups/group1/
/portfolio-items/
/faq-items/
I don't know what else I could try..
Best regards!
-
Hi There
Just checking, any luck with this? Can you clarify what you mean by "sites"? Those both look like sub-folders? Can you explain a little more in context how they fit into whatever domain you're on?
-
Where are they linked FROM? Are they pulled in a menu or a sidebar or are they linked internally somewhere else? If they are not being used, you simply need to delete links to them and they will disappear.
-
You an either block them via the robots.txt file or just 301 redirect them to the sites homepage or an applicable page.
I would just 301 redirect them.
Thanks,
Jake
-
Hi,
Quite interesting what you developer says There is no such thing in Wordpress as Impossible, but let's say if there is no other way to handle it, you could download the Yoast plugin (wordpress seo) and set those pages to noindex, follow and from robots.txt disallow access to the two pages.
Still I would check what is causing the "auto-generated" pages. If it is a bought theme, go ask the original developer. I'm quite sure that there will be an easy way to fix it. (drop me a private message and we can check it out together)
Gr., Keszi
Later Edit: Hint: Maybe you (or your developer) should check into the custom post types.
-
If those pages are being created due to those being tag options you should try deleting the tag to see if it stops wordpress from generating the page.
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
-
No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag
I'm getting an error in Search Console that pages on my site show No: 'noindex' detected in 'robots' meta tag. However, when I inspect the pages html, it does not show noindex. In fact, it shows index, follow. Majority of pages show the error and are not indexed by Google...Not sure why this is happening. Unfortunately I can't post images on here but I've linked some url's below. The page below in search console shows the error above... https://mixeddigitaleduconsulting.com/ As does this one. https://mixeddigitaleduconsulting.com/independent-school-marketing-communications/ However, this page does not have the error and is indexed by Google. The meta robots tag looks identical. https://mixeddigitaleduconsulting.com/blog/leadership-team/jill-goodman/ Any and all help is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Sean_White_Consult0 -
I hope someone can help me with page indexing problem
I have a problem with all video pages on www.tadibrothers.com.
Technical SEO | | TadiBrothers
I can not understand why google do not index all the video pages?
I never blocked them with the robots.txt file, there are no noindex/nofollow tags on the pages. The only video page that I found in search results is the main video category page: https://www.tadibrothers.com/videos and 1 video page out of 150 videos: https://www.tadibrothers.com/video/front-side-rear-view-cameras-for-backup-camera-systems I hope someone can point me to the right way0 -
Local Landing Pages struggling with rankings although I've done most things needed. Any idea?
Hi Mozzers, I am wondering if someone could advise if there's anything obvious here as to why my local landing pages suck ranking wise even though I have done all of the following. http://goo.gl/Lr4HXa I am trying to rank for Garden tool hire Bristol on my landing page. Main category page is garden tool hire Consitant NAP - Citations. Local branch address on Page , in title tag, H1 tag and the address is in on page content which is unique. Schema.org has been set up with address in this aswell etc. Pagination set up and view all page has concanical tag pointing to page 1 Speed not an issue as this is a fast site. Currently all the product links on the page are H3 tags but I've seen this on lots of other sites. All my NAP Citations point to the parent branch pages although I don't have any individual deep links pointing to this page. Unique Content I currently don't have internal links to relevant articles on my blog page as I have those on my main category landing page as you can see here - http://goo.gl/sO9A9U but I can add these as well to all my location specific landing pages if you think it would help. Any thoughts greatly appreciated Pete
Technical SEO | | PeteC120 -
Can Not Save the SEO Settings on Attachement/Media Page
I am trying to save SEO settings to a wordpress gallery attachment page for a picture. When I fill up all info and hit save all the writing disappear from from the form. Is it a software bug or there is a solution for it??
Technical SEO | | ExpertSolutions0 -
Determining When to Break a Page Into Multiple Pages?
Suppose you have a page on your site that is a couple thousand words long. How would you determine when to split the page into two and are there any SEO advantages to doing this like being more focused on a specific topic. I noticed the Beginner's Guide to SEO is split into several pages, although it would concentrate the link juice if it was all on one page. Suppose you have a lot of comments. Is it better to move comments to a second page at a certain point? Sometimes the comments are not super focused on the topic of the page compared to the main text.
Technical SEO | | ProjectLabs1 -
Why Can't I Get on Google?
I've employed many of the suggestions of SEOMoz and getting a Grade "A" on a particular keyword. I'm now #4 on Yahoo and Bing. However, my site hasn't cracked the top 50 in Google. Why? I see a similar pattern with other keywords, many on yahoo and bing but only a few of my subpages get #45-48 on Google. Any ideas? http://www.gospelebooks.net
Technical SEO | | mrjgardiner0 -
Page not Accesible for crawler in on-page report
Hi All, We started using SEOMoz this week and ran into an issue regarding the crawler access in the on-page report module. The attached screen shot shows that the HTTP status is 200 but SEOMoz still says that the page is not accessible for crawlers. What could this be? Page in question
Technical SEO | | TiasNimbas
http://www.tiasnimbas.edu/Executive_MBA/pgeId=307 Regards, Coen SEOMoz.png0 -
How to handle sitemap with pages using query strings?
Hi, I'm working to optimize a site that currently has about 5K pages listed in the sitemap. There are not in face this many pages. Part of the problem is that one of the pages is a tool where each sort and filter button produces a query string URL. It seems to me inefficient to have so many items listed that are all really the same page. Not to mention wanting to avoid any duplicate content or low quality issues. How have you found it best to handle this? Should I just noindex each of the links? Canonical links? Should I manually remove the pages from the sitemap? Should I continue as is? Thanks a ton for any input you have!
Technical SEO | | 5225Marketing0