Duplicate pages uncovered for Wordpress tag pages

[mtgconsulting]

This post is deleted!

[MattAntonino]

I would say it is an issue.

A Wordpress site should have an SEO plugin to solve issues like this. Whether you prefer All In One SEO or Wordpress SEO by Yoast, either gives you canonical links and the ability to noindex and block certain things.

With Yoast Wordpress SEO I have my tag pages set to: noindex, follow

It seems to work well. My tags are not indexed.  You definitely want to noindex those. They could do it individually but that's the reason plugins like this exist - so you can easily control your duplicate content.

[mtgconsulting]

Thanks Matt, very helpful. I've set the tags/category pages to no longer be indexed, and submitted requests to GWT to remove the pages from search/cache.

After all, if the content can be accessed directly through search, there's very little point having the versions in tags/categories show up in search! :^)

C

[mtgconsulting]

Hey Matt,

I have an update on this. I've found a few reliable sources stating categories should indeed be indexed, which I thought I'd share.

I also had a look at the SEOMoz blog (fair to say a good example of best practice) and noted that their category pages do not contain no-index tags.

Good article on WordPress best practices

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success

Previous question on the forums

http://www.seomoz.org/q/index-or-noindex-wordpress-categories

If you or anyone else have any comments I'd love to hear them!

Cheers,

Carlo

[MattAntonino]

I would say you can no-index categories, archives or tags ... I would no-index 2 of the 3.  If Moz is using categories, they perhaps aren't using archives and tags.  I would choose categories to be open or archives but never tags.

[Deepfootprints]

Hi Matt

I have the same issue as described here by mtg consulting - please could you let me know where this setting can be found in the Yoast plugin?

Is it in the taxonomies?

Thanks

Joel

[MattAntonino]

To remove tags?

Yes, it's

Meta Robots: noindex, follow

Check that box and save options.  If you need to remove other types of duplicate content, such as author archives or date-based archives, also be sure to check "Post Types" and "Other" tabs.