WordPress (.com) and SEO
-
I am in my 30 day trial and very interested in my results. I think I am probably in a small minority in having the same web site up and running for approaching 17 years (registered in January 1995 :)) but only now am I looking at SEO seriously (to the extent that I want to learn more myself, as opposed to having others promise great fortune!)). Anyway, before committing to SEOMoz on an ongoing basis I want to understand just how actionable the information on my dashboard is. With that in mind, here's the first of what is (hopefully) a series questions that about low-hanging fruit I might be able to check off quickly.
I recently brought up a new blog on WordPress.com (note - hosted by WordPress, not a self-hosted implementation). I have had this blog running for less than a month and have just 18 posts. And I am being overwhelmed with thoudands of errors/warnings from SEOMoz. These fall into a few categories:
- Duplicate content: As I understand it, each TAG I associate with a single blog post creates a unique URL. For example, if I have a single post with tags for "flowers", "wine" and "cakes", I get URLs generated such as <blog url="">/flowers, <blog url="">/wines and <blog url="">/cakes. Obviously, tagging posts is a common scenario. Must I just accept these duplicate content warnings?</blog></blog></blog>
- Title element too long: These are self generated by WordPress.com and the default format includes the date the post was submitted (which takes a bunch of characters followed by the title used). Many of the posts are well over 70 and this seems really easy to do.
- Missing meta-description: As far as I can tell, Wordpress.com doesn't give me an option to specify these.
So, must I just accept these issues if I use WordPress.com (which, again, seems like a very common scenario) and how negative is this to me?
Thanks.
Mark
-
OK, it looks like I will have to bite the bullet and host WordPress Looking at that now but a few more SEO-related questions...
With WordPress.com I set up the domain feature such that my blog was at http://blog.<mysite>.com</mysite>. The default installation for WordPress (if I host it) seems to be http://www.<mysite>.com\blog</mysite>. Are there any specific SEO-related drawbacks to using the second format? I have no idea how easy it is to modify the installation to support the first format but I am happy to switch to the second if there are no drawbacks.
Also, given that Google, etc has crawled against my WordPress.com blog (so, the first format above) would you anticipate a penalty in switching from the first format to the second? Would this not show up as (yet another) duplicate content hit and, if so, how long would this typically take to work itself out (once the first format above is no longer available)?
Thanks again.
Mark
-
Thumbs up for suggesting a wp install to his current site. Without this, theres no point doing SEO because the blogs not run your site and you would not get any sweet nectar from it.
-
Hi Mark,
There are several plugins for wordpress that you can use to get around this dupe content issue with tags, categories, author pages etc. The fact that you are running a hosted WP and not your own install means you can't add these extra plugins as far as I am aware. Again using a hosted WP you also can't change the URL structure to a custom one.
So you mention you have a 17 year old site. Is the setting up of the blog on WP to drive traffic and some links to your main site?
Have you considered adding a wp install to your own site, and ading those 18 articles you've written to your site, that way you can take advantage of all the great SEO plugins and optimisie everything as needed.
Some SEo plugins for WP i like are
http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/
http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/
Derek
-
Thank you for the response. Yes, that is pretty much the way I've been thinking about this but...
- The perfectionist in me wants to "get to zero". This may not be possible or even necessary but converging on that is something I'd like to consider.
- More importantly, if I accept these issues - and maybe I have no choice - then I have a TON of noise and it's difficult to see the important stuff. So, to my surprise, I have THOUSANDS of errors and warnings. If new ones come up they migh be very important - but if all my "accepted" warnings are still there I may well miss them.
If I come to the conclusion that these issue for WordPress are non-factors (and I am not there yet) then it would be good to be able to "hide" these from the dashboard so that the remaining, hopefully actionable, ones are not hidden in the noise.
Thanks,
Mark
-
Honestly, I take everything from the dahsboard as a suggestion. Just cause the dashboard says something is a 'warning' or 'error', doesn't mean that the same logic isn't driving traffic, sales, leads, etc. Look at the suggestions, but make sure you're not shooting yourself in the foot by 'fixing' something.
I guess the value is that you have an unbiased set of eyes (even if they are artificial!) keeping a watch on your site, especially when you implement changes which may send crawlers for a loop.
Just my take on it. We don't really use it much but when we do, we have found issues that we otherwise would not have.
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
-
Does Plus Sign "+" in url affect SEO and Ranking?
there are customized pages on the client's site, they contain brand pages related to Samsung, iPhone, ZTE, LG, Motorola, and HTC Mobile phones.
On-Page Optimization | | dietsuave
For Example:
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-apple+phone
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-zte+phone
https://www.unlockninja.com/unlock-samsung+phone
Should I recommend them to change the URL structure. ?0 -
SEO, 301s & backslashes at end of URL
Wordpess started adding "/" (slashes) at the end of my urls and I've left them up for some time. Will removing them hurt search rankings or do I need to do a 301 redirect? For example - www.site.com/page1/ changed to www.site.com/page1 Are there any other ramifications I may not be thinking about besides just search rankings.
On-Page Optimization | | MSpencer1 -
Any issue with my On page SEO
Kindly review my website and let me know if there is any issue with On page or I am missing anything? Home page - http://www.ayurjeewan.com Deep Page - http://www.ayurjeewan.com/natural/divya-triphala-churna/
On-Page Optimization | | MasonBaker0 -
Is it SEO-wise to edit an already published article?
One of the pages on the website is #7 on the first page for a highly competetive keyword. Since I would like to improve rankings and the page is not optimized (e.g. keyword density is 0), is it SEO-wise to edit an article and create a good on-page optimization? Of course, the ultimate goal is to be in TOP 3 for a specific keyword.
On-Page Optimization | | zorsto1 -
On-page SEO optimization
hi there! Is it possible not to be in the first 20 or 30 positions in the SERPs after executing onpage SEO actions (keyword optimization, metatags, ....) even for keywords for which there's not "too much" competition? Is there a way of visualize the pages indexed by the google bot? (the pages especifically, not the number) in order to discard indexing problems? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr1 -
What is the best out-of-the-box optimized WordPress Theme?
I've reviewed other answers on this forum and searched the web. Still looking for a good answer that's actually specific and can explain why. I've looked at studiopress.com themes, pagelines.com which I love but doesn't appear to have much optimization out of the box, http://themeforest.net/item/udesign-wordpress-theme/253220 http://www.vklabx.com/wordpress-themes/wordpress-theme-ad-flex-niche.php PS - not looking for answers that involve the use of SEO plugins, but if there's a theme you know of that takes minimal editing to improve optimization I'd be interested as well. Thanks in advance, hope this can help someone else as well
On-Page Optimization | | Aqua0 -
Improve Site SEO
Hey Guys I was wondering if you could give me advice to improving my SEO. I have used all the tools on this site and have improved it a lot already, but wondering if there is any glaring issues, that I could fix now www.treelifedesigns.com
On-Page Optimization | | treelifedesigns0 -
How do Maximize WordPress with 2 SEO Plugins
I have 2 WordPress SEO Plugins, Yoast and All-in-One SEO. I have tried like heck to make them work together, but every time I crawl my site here, I get multiple error messages. My question is, how can I tweak the title settings to avoid having multiple meta desctiptions, titles etc.
On-Page Optimization | | TheSportsDaddy0