A word-of-wisdom about Duplicate Content and Blogs

I've been developing blogs with Wordpress for years now and just learned this huge lesson.

Duplicate content is a HUGE problem with Wordpress "out-of-the-box".

I was finding that my blog's index page was being indexed while my actual post page was not. Plus, many of my categorie pages were indexed over actual posts... and on and on and on.

So I finally gave a noindex meta tag on all pages except posts, pages, and the index. I even noindexed the feed.

And, (and this is BIG) I write each meta description out and I don't post full blog posts on the front page... I just include the meta description and a link to the post. You can see an example at lifecoachreview.com if you don't know what I mean.

Anyways, the result has been that many of the indexed pages that were total trash have been wiped away and the GOOD pages are getting a lot more love from Google.

-Brad

PS. If this tip helped you out, please link to my web design site (all the links and anchor text are in my sig). I really appreciate it if you get the chance!!!

PPS. Don't just let this slip through your fingers, this noindexing thing makes a HUGE difference.

 

Hey there. Thanks for posting some good useful information. I think it will be helpful to a lot of people here.

 

Thanks for the tip Brad.

 

nice tip, thanks alot.

 

Wordpress and SEO (or rather lack of it) is an old problem. JoostDeValk has made some good free plug-ins to address the issue, they will consolidate your Pagerank to where it counts and eliminate duplicate content due to the Wordpress multiple URL for each entry issues:

Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin

And: Meta Robots WordPress plugin

• Prevent indexing of your search result pages, while still allowing the search engines to follow the links on them, by adding noindex,follow robots meta tags.
• Prevent indexing of your login, register and admin pages by adding noindex robots meta tags.
• Add noodp an noydir meta robots tags, allowing you to opt out of DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory descriptions.
• Prevent Yahoo! and Google from indexing your feeds by adding a meta tag to their head-section.
• Disable author and date-based archives.
• Nofollow the category listings on single posts and pages to prevent PageRank leakage.
• Edit your robots.txt from inside WordPress.

Both are a must have if you're the least bit serious about your Wordpress site.

 

thanks for the info kentucky & sweetfunny

goodluck

 

I tried to DL that zip but it is just an empty folder. But I do thank you for the info in your post and I did DL the other plug in.

 

Hmm thats odd, i know Joost is actively working on these Plug-ins adding even more features as we speak.. We may of caught him in the middle of an upgrade.

I'll let him know anyhow, thanks.

 

Ok, I really would like to check that out.

 

hi

this is great thread

thanks a lot

 

Great info. Thanks sweetfunny and rawwebdesign. I need to address this issue, it seems.

 

Thank you for posting your experience.

 

a great tip thanks, I really must look into further developing seo into my wordpress blog

 

Good news and good news, i let him know and the download is functioning again. Also Wordpress 2.3 will have the canonical URL issues resolved in a similar manner to this Plug-In "out of the box".

Permalink Redirect WordPress Plugin

 

That's a great info. Let me try it out and il get back to it