Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi

I'm actually going to be addressing this exact question on a post for Moz in the coming weeks - so keep an eye out for that.

But in short, here's what I do;

Analytics

1. run a report for landing tag pages (with a filter) - over the last three months
2. apply an advanced segment to see google only traffic
3. dump the report into a CSV

Webmaster Tools

1. view a impressions / clicks report by top pages (not keyword) - also zoom out as far as you can
2. filter for web only (not images)
3. dump the report into a csv

VLookup in Excel

using a VLookup in excel - combine the two reports matching data to the URLs (you'll end up discarding some non-tag pages from wmt) - the end result will be a master spreadsheet, with the following columns;

• URL
• Impressions
• clicks
• avg position
• visits
• pages/visit
• avg visit duration
• % new visits
• bounce rate

(These are all the default report metrics. I actually prefer a custom landing page report in analytics, but this works fine.)

Analyze

Then, you do your sorting, filtering etc - to decide how valuable the tag traffic has been. In general, you're trying to look for an overwhelming reason for the value add of having those pages in there. they might get visits, but what's onsite behavior? maybe they get visits, but perhaps only from a small handle of tag pages?

In the post I do, I'll cover more about how to analyze this report etc.

As Klarke put so well, the actual posts should rank in their place. Those tend to have better results when people land on those.

Remove

If you decide to remove, do so carefully. Do it on a weekend or just before a downtime. If you use Yoast simply select to noindex tag archives.

Also, rememeber to exclude tags from your XML sitemap.

Then watch webmaster tools etc and watch for their removal.

--- I did this process on a site with 9,000 tag pages in the index and results were very good.

-Dan

As long as they are in fact, two different websites, with different content on each site, there's no concern for any duplicate penalties.

-Dan

This one's a little mysterious for sure!

Your theme seems to be allowing a number added after the URL - like any of these actually load the page (without a 404)

• http://www.ministryofsearch.net/services/1/
• http://www.ministryofsearch.net/jobs/100000/
• http://www.ministryofsearch.net/about/873918/

BUT - words don't work;

http://www.ministryofsearch.net/about/dog/ <---gets a 404 page, that's what should happen with the numbers.

Somehow your theme is allowing these numbers to be added. Some thoughts;

• Check your permalink settings. Could be a simple surface level fix like that
• If you're comfortable with .htaccess see if there's any setting in there that would allow these pages to load (you can view .htaccess right within Yoast->Files)
• Comb through your plugins and see if any are allowing this setting
• Worst case, you may need to take this back to whomever developed your theme.

The end result, is you don't want pages to be able to load with those numbers at the end like that. Anything besides the exact URL (or tracking parameters) should return a 404.

Hope that helps you get in the right direction!

-Dan

Hi Tommy

You can do as Aran suggests - a redirect would be fine for feeds you don't want being crawled.

But more importantly, you may want to consider not indexing subpages (like this one: http://www.mediaanalys.se/blogg/page/2/) - you can make this setting in Yoast.

Let us know!

-Dan

Build trust with content that people actually use. This might mean its good enough to;

• bookmark to refer to later

• email to a friend or collegue

• refer back to later yourself

• get shared on social naturally

• get linked to natually

Content that does this is

• helpful (new info or old info just more detailed or done better than anyone, or put in a new way)

• entertaining - gets people to laugh, cry, feel inspired

• teaches something

• shares something personal

• innovative.

I always refer to this to jump start my brain with ideas.

-Dan

Again - don't forget users! Titles with category names up front tend not to get clicked on so much as having the post title up front.

I would highly encourage a human approach as well as getting your keywords in the titles for Google.

-Dan

I would honestly write your titles mainly for humans. Personally I feel;

Post Name - Site Name

to be the best format.

-Dan

Samuel

Mat's right - you need to speratae the "access denied" pages into two buckets;

• those which you want indexed

• those which you don't want indexed.

For those you want indexed, take them on a page by page basis to figure out why access is being denied. They might not all be because of password protection.

-Dan

"Agents" Thanks very much for the answer and appreciate the help...

I think in the case of this site, since it is a very simple blog, swapping the tags and categories won't completely break the site or the SEO.

But for the sake of preventing any misunderstanding in general, categories and tags are fundamentally quite different. Many people do swap their use, and get away with doing so because the sites are simple.

First, refer to the "Categories vs. Tags" section in my post on the Moz blog

To reiterate the basic differences here:

Categories

• Can have a hierarchy (be nested as parents and children)
• Are used best as a "menu" - like if the entire website is a blog, the categories are designed to fit into your main menus - this is built right into the wordpress functionality. This menu can be the main menu at the top, or in the sidebar
• A category archive can be the homepage
• 5-8 categories (the main buckets of topics on your blog) is best. If you want more, you can nest them
• Categories always existed, from the beginning of wordpress
• When used in this proper fashion, the category archives should be indexed by engines.

Tags

• Tags have NO hierarchy (they can't be nested)
• They are not to be used in the menu of a site - the main menu or sidebar menu. You see them a lot as a "tag cloud" in the sidebar or at the bottom of posts. They work better as this type of navigation, if users want to find articles similar in a much more specific way.
• A tag archive can NOT be the homepage
• You can use as many tags as you want, but they should not be the same as categories. They should be more detailed than categories.
• Tags didn't always exist from the beginning of wordpress, they were added after.
• When used in this best practice way, I always advice to NOT index tags (at least at first). Tag pages will be thin, almost duplicate and of little use to the searcher. MUCH better landing on a category archive or better yet a post its self.

-Dan

Jay

It does get a little insignificant if its a small site (let's say under 50 pages excluding the blog).

Subfolders are a great way to categorize your content and structure the site so that users and engines can understand the relationships. This is particularly useful on a larger site, where this type of categorization is more important.

I'd say, small site - not a big deal. Make them short and avoid repetitive keywords.

BUT if you anticipate this growing into a larger site, you're going to want that flexibility. Thinking long term it is a little limiting to have a theme that doesn't allow for this option.

-Dan

I recently came across an article that also stated it had no SEO value, and I have never personally seen it to bear any value as well. I'd say you'd be safe to bet that it didn't

-Dan

David

It seems the error has been corrected in Google. However it remains in Bing. One huge thing I'd recommend would be the addition of an XML Sitemap. Bing has been known to say they follow it strictly, as long as there's no errors in it.

You're using Yoast SEO, so simply go into the Yoast settings and turn it on. Perhaps the addition of the XML sitemap will give a clear directive to Bing to index your homepage.

I didn't really check a lot further, but the sitemap is good to have in any case, so you may want to start there.

-Dan

Hi There...

Definitely check out the SEO for WordPress post I did for Moz. I wrote it for those very types of questions.

However, to answer a little more specifically in your case, I would;

Index

• Categories
• Pages
• Posts

Noindex

• Author
• Dates
• Media
• Tags
• Search results

Follow

• Everything

Disable

• Nothing (in your case, you have two authors, so make the pages accessible, just not indexed)

NOTE: This is assuming (as Saijo says) you have the structure set up correctly. Usually this means;

• 5-8 Categories
• As many tags as you want
• Categories are more general (the 5-8 topics covering the whole blog)
• Tags are more specific fine tunings of categories
• Categories and Tags are all different from one another

Hope this helps!

-Dan

David

Just an FYI - if you open a new question you're more likely to get a response. Not that we mind so much, but I only saw this question because I received an email since I'd already replied to the thread. No worries, just an FYI

Anyhow... just taking a quick look here...

I ran a site: search in Bing, and it appears your home page is not in the index.

It IS in Google's index, but ranks 3rd when I do a site: search.

The short of it is, something is causing both Bing and Google to devalue the index page.

This could be for a variety of reasons, but I suggest you perhaps check out the new Bing webmaster tools as well as check for any errors/warnings in Google webmaster tools.

A quick look and I don't see anything - but when I get more time to check it out, I'll take a better look.

-Dan

Leigh

Just making sure you're all set. As far as I know, this will not raise a flag in terms of authorship.

What Williams is talking about is the "author archive" and if you're using an SEO plugin (I recommend Yoast) you'll want to noindex author archives and I even disable them for a single author blog. They end up looking like a duplicate of the main blog page if its a single author blog.

-Dan

Hi Derek

I checked out the site real quick.

Technically 'www' is a subdomain. So you should have www.accupos.com and blog.accupos (or just accupos.com for the main site).

When Google Analytics says "mutiple subdomains" they mean a website that has a root domain (accupos.com) with more than one subdomain it can load with - in your case it should be blog and www - but somehow you've got what's called a "sub subdomain"

So you should first look into how/why its set up like this and just have blog.accupos.com (without the www) This is something you'd have to likely work with IT or your developer to fix.

Then in analytics you'd select "One domain with mutiple subdomains" and you'd be all set.

-Dan

Hi

I actually think WordPress now does the redirects and fixes internal links now when you update the permalink. Try just updating it and see if they get fixed. (Although it may not catch internal links you've added within posts etc, just in the main menu).

If WordPress doesn't do this, just change the URL, change all internal links as needed and also use a 301 redirect.

A fast way to look for bad internal links is with Screaming Frog SEO Spider.

Hope that helps!

-Dan

Hi Derek

You can use the same analytics code as you do for the rest of the site. It makes sense in this case.

I would recommend using Yoast's Google Analytics plugin for WordPress - this way you don't need to put the tracking code into the WordPress code, the plugin will do it correctly for you.

Hope this helps!

-Dan

There's a deeper issue going on - the pages with trackbacks aren't actually accessible from your site's menu the way it is now - these pages:

• http://redlandsorthodontics.com/orthodontics/children/child_braces-2/
• http://redlandsorthodontics.com/testimonials/redlands_braces_for_children/

All the pages with the trackbaks are being linked to (accidentally) from images.

Try to follow this chain

• This image -> http://redlandsorthodontics.com/wp-content/uploads/redlands_braces_for_children.jpg
• on this page -> http://redlandsorthodontics.com/testimonials/
• links to -> http://redlandsorthodontics.com/?attachment_id=362
• which redirects to -> http://redlandsorthodontics.com/testimonials/redlands_braces_for_children/
• which has the trackback -> http://redlandsorthodontics.com/about-us-2/meet-the-staff/redlands-orthodontics/trackback/ on it which has the 302 redirect.

You need to:

• Remove the links from the images. Go to media->select an image->edit->and select "link to NONE"

That should straighten it out.

-Dan

Hi Joel

Pages or Posts do not affect search rankings, but as Mark very well points out they differ in functionality.

• PAGES are for static (not tied to a date) content. Pages are like what you'd get on a regular 'ol website.
• POSTS are for dated content, like an ongoing blog or new items. Posts are what you'd typically think of as a blog.

This article I did on WordPress for the Moz blog might help you further.

-Dan

Thanks for the update Larry. Please hit us up if you want anyone to revisit it for you.

-Dan

Hi Larry!

Sorry no one's been by to answer the question yet - perhaps your site URL(s) would help. Feel free to DM it to me if you don't want to say it here and I'll answer back here publicly.

Thanks!

-Dan

Hi

You definitely don't need to do anything crazy like create special redirects. The Yoast solution should work.

If it still doesn't - do this;

1. Go to the post/page
2. Open image to edit
3. Under 'link URL' choose 'none' or 'link to image' - see screenshot

-Dan

Hi Martin

Adam's pretty much got it - rel next/prev would take care of it (that's what Yoast's SEO plugin for WordPress does).

Only other option might be to noindex page 2, 3, 4 etc with a robots noindex meta tag. This would have only the first page indexed. Its another common solution.

As far as how to do this in Drupal, I'm not experienced with that platform, so not sure - but those are the two best solutions you'd want to use.

-Dan