Questions About My Report

[JMay]

Hi,

I have a website that aggregates NFL analysis (not news).  I write 3-5 line summaries about each article I link, so there is a pretty good amount of daily content.  Here's the site:

http://www.profootballhotreads.com/

After I received my initial report, there were several issues, and I just wanted to get some thoughts on them.  Some of these might be related to the aggregate nature, some might be not a concern, but I want to know which ones I should really worry about.

1. Too many links.  My main page is a continuously running scroll of links, so obviously this is going to be tough to accommodate.  I know this makes each link less "valuable," but does it actually affect my site in any way?  I don't really have links to my site on the page other than in the menu, which I assume would be scrolled first.

2. meta description on tag pages.  For site design reasons, I have several "pages" that are actually tag collection pages rather than unique pages.  For example, each team's page is simply a collection of anything tagged with that team.  So, I don't know if I can provide a meta description for those pages without making that the default meta description for any post with that tag.

3. I supposedly have tons of duplicate pages but when I go to those pages, I don't see it.  Webmasters said I only had one duplicate.  Not sure what's going on.  I'm thinking anytime I update a post, it is reading it as two different posts even though only one post exists at a time on the site.

4. I have tons of duplicate page titles.  Basically, I have tons of pages on my main page because after a certain amount of posts, it goes to a "new" page, even though it's just a continuation.  So, I have Main page 1, Main Page 2, etc with the same title and meta descriptions.  I don't think this is a concern, is it?

Thanks for anyone who might be able to help.  Let me know if there are more questions.

Jason

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Jason,

turnoff the indexing of tags you are getting 1 million duplicates because of links like this

http://www.profootballhotreads.com/tag/fantasy-football/

ideally the link should read

http://www.profootballhotreads.com/fantasy-football/

"1)  Too many links.  My main page is a continuously running scroll of links, so obviously this is going to be tough to accommodate.  I know this makes each link less "valuable," but does it actually affect my site in any way?  I don't really have links to my site on the page other than in the menu, which I assume would be scrolled first."

yes if a site has more than 100 interior links it affects your ranking significantly. You should break the site into easy to find and navigate pages.

For instance you might want to update the theme to have more navigation or have drop downs from the navigation such as seen in this demo

http://demo.woothemes.com/?name=canvas

2)  meta description on tag pages.  For site design reasons, I have several "pages" that are actually tag collection pages rather than unique pages.  For example, each team's page is simply a collection of anything tagged with that team.  So, I don't know if I can provide a meta description for those pages without making that the default meta description for any post with that tag."

yes your meda description will suffer because your pages are too long and you cannot summarize all of it in such a short space as 150 characters.

The best thing to do is post every new entry has a blog post in the blog category. Not as a page but as a post you'll get almost the same abilities and the post will be treated as a particular page such as in these examples

http://demo.studiopress.com/prose/

http://demo.studiopress.com/eleven40/

http://demo.studiopress.com/generate/

http://demo.studiopress.com/focus/

these are all available and more at http://studiopress.com

and the theme above can be purchased here

http://woothemes.com

3)  I supposedly have tons of duplicate pages but when I go to those pages, I don't see it.  Webmasters said I only had one duplicate.  Not sure what's going on.  I'm thinking anytime I update a post, it is reading it as two different posts even though only one post exists at a time on the site.

I believe if you tag any of the posts similarly it may be coming up as duplicate. You want to make sure that your site is through 301 redirected check out

http://builtwith.com it will have an SEO part and give you that answer.

4)  I have tons of duplicate page titles.  Basically, I have tons of pages on my main page because after a certain amount of posts, it goes to a "new" page, even though it's just a continuation.  So, I have Main page 1, Main Page 2, etc with the same title and meta descriptions.  I don't think this is a concern, is it?

** It is clear to me you have treated the webpage has multiple blogs instead of a secular blog and additional webpages that say static. Look at the examples I put above question number 3 in every single case they only have one blog and you do not want to post on more than one page ever that is simply the blog's job. **

I would honestly take the fantastic amount of content you've got and start over

this is my opinion I would get a quality theme look in

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/commercial/

free themes I strongly advise against in the link above you can find themes that vary in price from $15 up you can also find some very nice free themes inside that link that are quality themes

i in order to fix this properly  follow this advice when it asks you where to make the blog

How do I add a “Blog” page?

To add a “Blog” link to your navigation, you’ll need to add a new page and assign the “Blog” page template. See the theme documentation on how to assign a page template.

<a name="general-8"></a>

I also strongly suggest reading the link below Dan did a great job explaining what is needed to properly set up a WordPress site/blog

Dan's excellent WordPress tutorial. I I recommend reading the entire thing in fact it because it does impact your entire site.

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

good luck to you and let me know if I can be of any more help

Sincerely,

Thomas

[JMay]

Thanks Thomas for your detailed answers.  The problem is that many of the solutions defeat the purpose of the site and the user experience.  The whole intent is to for people to be able to come to the main page and be able to scroll down and quickly get the summaries of the articles for the day without clicking to other pages.  Responding to the above:

TAG:  the reason that I have "tag" pages is so I can create a post and have it go two places--one to the main page and also to the page, for example, of the team.  I wanted to do this without manually posting on two different pages (as I'm posting so many times a day) to save a great deal of work.  I want the user to be able to access the post on the mian page but also have a "page" for each team in the menu bar so fans of a particular team can see all their posts on one page.

2. Every post I make is in fact as a "post" and not a "page."  All posts go on the same page because that's the point of the website.

3. I'll look into the 301 redirect.

4. Like I said, the format of all the posts on the mainpage is the entire concept of the site.  I want people to be able to come to the site and scroll through (while they're in a grocery store line) without clicking around.  Almost like Twitter for descriptions of articles.

I'll check Dan's wordpress article.

But, the question remains, using the confines of the current usability of the site, is there a way to make smaller changes that will maximize the SEO?

Thanks again for your feedback.  I'm not trying to be obtuse and do truly appreciate the help, but I also want to stand true to my vision.

[BlueprintMarketing]

Jason,

thank you very much for the kind words.

The thing I think you want to do from looking at your website is be able to talk about the game live and post it live on your website correct?

if you want to do that and you don't want to use a regular comment system or a modified one like the options below which I think you should do. Because if you go to your homepage I can't click on a post I can click on somebody's twitter tag but that's not using posting. If you ever used buddy press ?

I believe I have the answer for you

Social networking in a box. Build a social network for your company, school, sports team or niche community.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress/screenshots/

It makes your own social network off of your existing WordPress site.

You can try some of these things below was well

http://www.livefyre.com/comments/

http://www.livefyre.com/

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disqus-comment-system/

I hope I have helped,

Thomas

[JMay]

No, I think you're missing the point of the site.  It has nothing to do about live blogging games.  It is about aggregating articles and putting them in one place.

Here is an inspiration in the tech world:

http://launch.co/

I obviously have modified my site to include a little more description because of the nature of the articles.

The post pages CAN be linked to (link button to right of post's time), but as the main page and readability should be the focus, I didn't included a big title link on the main page.

The point is to read everything on that main page and not have to click, unless you want to click to the actual article outside my site.

I am using Social Networks but don't want to use them in lieu of the site.  And, I'm not using comments at all, so I'm not sure why you're pointing to those links.

Anyway, seems like we're not seeing eye to eye, but I appreciate the effort.