Index or not index Categories

[Rebeca1]

We are using Yoast Seo plugin. On the main menu we have only categories which has consist of posts and one page. We have category with villas, category with villa hotels etc.

Initially we set to index and include in the sitemap posts and excluded categories, but I guess it was not correct.

Would be a better way to index and include categories in the sitemap and exclude the posts in order to avoid the duplicate? It somehow does not make sense for me,  If the posts are excluded and the categories included, will not then be the categories empty for google? I guess I will get crazy of this.

Somebody has perhaps more experiences with this?

[PinpointDesigns]

I'm not sure if I fully understand your question, but I'll give it my best shot to answer it.

If I was in your position, I would set the Yoast plugin to index both the categories and the posts, but make sure that the posts only show a short summary / the first 'x' number of words than the post. The reason behind doing this is similar to how an ecommerce store works.

On eCommerce stores, you have your categories which are used as funnels to find inner product pages. Categories are generally set to be indexed as they combine lots of relevant data for a user which helps create a better user experience. In your case, your category may be 'Villas' and inside that, you may list 20 individual Villas. If you didn't have your category pages indexed, you'd be relying on the search engine to filter a user down to either your homepage or one specific villa which you hope is right for the users choice (which most likely will result in a higher bounce rate).

Again, I'm not sure if I've understood exactly what you're looking for, but that's what I would recommend if you're asking which sections of your site should be indexed. Hope this helps!

[Rebeca1]

You are amazing Lewis, thank you so much for your time. The posts in categories are displayed only with short summary, so I guess it should be alright then. Should they also be all included in the sitemap? I am very scared of duplicate content.

Also every category has approximately 3 pages and now the moz crawl shows me that I have duplicate pages like this below and that it does not know which one is canonical:

I am not sure how to sort this out.

I have there also some archive post which says under: "Note: instead of templates these are the actual titles and meta descriptions for these custom post type archive pages."

I set the archives on noindex as i do not want the archives with post shoved in search result, but the categories. I hope this is correct. There are also some options and media, oh my god it's killing me:-( I have no idea what it is.

The reason why I am so annoying with this is that I can't access yoast site, his support team is looking into it why, but did not get back to me yet:-( I guess they have blocked ips from Kenya although they said me they don't do this.

Thank you very much Lewis for all you have done for me already!

[PinpointDesigns]

Hi Iris,

Yes, you want the URLs to be included in the sitemap too as this is what the search engines will use to build a map of your website and list them in their search engines.

With regards to your duplicate page issue, this is to do with your pagination of the pages. There's a guide here which tells you the SEO best practices when it comes to handling pagination, so hopefully this will help - http://searchengineland.com/the-latest-greatest-on-seo-pagination-114284

Really, you don't want those additional pages to be picked up in the search engines, so a fix will need to be sorted for that. You'll probably need to find a developer / a plugin to allow you to not index the /2 /3 pages etc.

I don't do much work with Wordpress, so maybe someone else could advise you with regards to the archive section. If your categories and posts are indexed, then I would have thought that you've done the correct thing with the archives and set them to noindex. That being said, I have limited knowledge of carrying out SEO for wordpress so I would need to take a closer look into that to give you a better response..

Hope this helps at least a little!

On a separate note, you could try accessing the Yoast website through a proxy such as http://hidemyass.com/ - Might be worth a go?

[Rebeca1]

You are really amazing Lewis! I understand what you mean with no indexing the pages 2, 3 etc..Yoast has there such option that I can mark it and it will not be indexing them.

Thank you so much for the tool you gave me to visit yoast site!!! It worked! Now I can learn more about it and figure out what is the best. This is clear that they have blocked ips from Kenya, although they have claimed they do not do that, and we paid almost 100usd for the plugin

Thank you very much Lewis!

[PinpointDesigns]

No problem at all, glad I could help!

Good luck with the site!