Removing Media from Wordpress

[emasaa]

I've run the seomoz on page report and found an interesting issue.

I'm using wordpress and it seems that every picture I add to my articles seem to be added as separate pages to the site.

I'm having to go to each and every picture and creating a meta tag and description to it. I still get duplicate content issues with the same.

On my Disqus system, I get the same pictures added just as a page or article would look like.

What can I do to avoid this?

[BrettCollins]

I think when you are adding images to your site, you are setting them to Link to: Current Url rather than Media File or None. If you go back and edit your old images and make sure they are linking to the image or have no iink at all, I think you should be fine. Hope this helps!

[ThompsonPaul]

This situation is quite easy to resolve if you are using the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin.

Under the plugin's settings, go to the Permalink Settings page. The second section down offers the option to "Redirect attachment URLs to parent post URL." Put a checkmark in the box, click Save, and from now on, those individual image-only pages will automatically redirect back to the post on which they appear.

No idea if the same option is available in other SEO plugins - I've so long standardised on Yoast's plugin I'm not up to date on the others any more.

Brett's point about changing where images link will also work, but the plugin approach above means you don't have to go back an retroactively edit all your images.

Hope that helps?

Paul

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Alex

What both Brett and Paul said is correct. Let me break it down for you a little more.

When Adding Media

• when you add your image - DON'T select "attachment page" - screenshot

Here's what each option does;

• custom URL - you can link the image to anything you want - an external link, another internal post, or to the source of the image itself if you need to attribute credit.
• media file - this is for if you click on the image, it just opens the actual image file. this is totally harmless, and in some cases many people like it, as it allows you to see the image larger. this is the one I usually choose by default.
• attachment page - that's the one giving you problems. it creates a new page for every image. so I never use this choice.
• none - no link as used at all. you can't click on the picture or anything.

Noindex Media

With the Yoast SEO plugin, you can also noindex media pages. See this screenshot for how to do so.

The means, no matter if you still end up with some media/photo pages indexed and missing titles etc, it won't be an issue.

Recap

OK - here's your steps;

1. Moving forward, don't select "attachment page" when uploading media.
2. Use Yoast to noindex media pages.
3. Use Yoast to add a title and description template to media pages, in case they still get indexed.

Hope that helps!

-Dan

[emasaa]

I don't know what to say. Sometimes there are easy solutions to seemingly impossible problems.

I can't say how grateful I am for you guys and the seomoz community. You have saved me from having to deal with about 10000 pages that had totally stumped me.

Have a coffee latte on me and thank you.

Alex

[evolvingSEO]

You're welcome Alex! I am having a coffee right now

Thanks so much to Paul and Brett too!

[ThompsonPaul]

Great that you got what you were looking for, Alex. Looks like you got a bunch of useful info from the responses. Would be great if you could designate the replies you found were "good answers", both to reward the author and to help future readers of the question.

And I had a mug of tea in your honour - not going near that coffee stuff

Paul

[evolvingSEO]

Ha! I'm trying to quit. _Again. _

[ThompsonPaul]

I actually never learned to enjoy coffee, so it's no sacrifice at all. But you'll have to pry my Earl Grey from my cold dead hands