Duplicate content + wordpress tags

[giankar]

According to SEOMoz platform, one of my wordpress websites deals with duplicate content because of the tags I use. How should I fix it? Is it loyal to remove tag links from the post pages?

[gurrambharath]

Hi Giankar,

If Tags is not the Primary way of Navigation for your Blog, Then You can remove all your tags. I mean delete them. Otherwise you can no-index your tags so that it will not cause any duplicate content issues.

I hope this helps !

[giankar]

Thank you for your reply. Currently, I'm receiving good amounts of traffic to some www.domain.com/tag/blah-blah pages, will those pages be harmed if I make tags noindex?

[squareplug]

I'm dealing with similar issues on another platform (as are many others I'm sure) I would think twice before deleting them, especially if you are getting traffic from them. You have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages and realize it will probably never be "perfect"...something I personally have a hard time coming to terms with!

If you aren't using excerpts, (and instead, showing entire articles on index pages) that has helped immensely on a couple of websites I've helped in reducing duplicate content.

[gurrambharath]

If you're receiving very good amount of traffic then it will be a very bad idea to no-index tags, because you'll not receive any more traffic if you do so. i think you understood what it means by no-index, search engines will not index your tags.

For any site there would be 2 types of navigation:

1. through categories.

2. through tags.

Most People recommend using only one as a primary navigation and de-index other, since indexing both will cause duplicate content. There are some gurus like Yoast.com who recommend de-indexing both, which is the rule i'm following now.

So, i explained you what happens, if you feel that you're getting more traffic through tags, then you should de-index categories or viceversa.

If you need to index both, then i recommend you to wait for other pro members suggestion.

[squareplug]

I also wanted to mention...you might want to read this post. Cyrus Shepard suggested  when I was asking a similar question and I think it really helps..

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/serious-robotstxt-misuse-high-impact-solutions

[Bookkus]

I also have the same problem, with categories and tags.

Should I add www.site.com/categories/ to the robots.txt or is that a bad idea?

[evolvingSEO]

Hey There

I wrote a post which walks through how to decide what to do with tags. Essentially, here's what I would do;

(This assumes you have Yoast SEO for your SEO plugin).

• Noindex tags by default.
• Except set only the ones receiving traffic to index (this is the part you need Yoast for).
• Do not overlap your categories and tags (keep them different).
• Minimize tag usage in general - put a few on each post, but not too many more.
• You can use for navigation (like a tag cloud) if you think your readers will find them useful.
• Do not include them in your XML sitemap.

Hope that helps!

I also did this post on setting up WordPress for the Moz blog which you may find helpful.

-Dan

[evolvingSEO]

William

I wouldn't do that - make sure to just noindex tags, and also noindex subpages of archives. Categories can stay indexed, it's usually the subpages that cause issues (ie: /page/2/ etc).

-Dan