Dupe Content: Canonicalize the Wordpress Tag or NoIndex?

[Thriveworks-Counseling]

Mozzers,

Here we go. I've read multiple posts for years on taxonomy dupe content. In fact, I've read 10 articles tonight on taxonomies and categories.

A little background: I am using Wordpress SEO with the Yoast plugin.

**Here is the scenario: We have 560 tags - some make sense - some do not. **

What do I do?

• Do I not worry about it?

• Matt Cutts said twice that I should not stress about it, because in the worse non-spammy case, Google may just ignore the duplicate content. Matt said in the video, “I wouldn’t stress about this unless the content that you have duplicated is spammy or keyword stuffing.” (Found Via Search Engine Land - http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-duplicate-content-wont-hurt-you-unless-it-is-spammy-167459).

• Do I NoIndex,Follow the Tags?

• Yoast and a Moz post both say I should NoIndex and Follow the Tags. From the post: "Tag, author, and date archives will all look too similar to other content. So it does not make sense to have them indexed." BUT! **The tags have been indexed for YEARS! And both articles go onto say **"if your blog has already existed for some time, and you've been indexing tags all along for example, you shouldn't just go deindexing them" (http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success).

• So do I deindex tags that have been indexed for years? I checked the analytics, and in the past month, tags have brought in less than 1% of traffic, but they are bringing in traffic.

• Do I canonicalize the tags?

• Canonicalize the URL from "http://domain.com/blog/tag/addiction/" to "http://domain.com/blog/" ? And if I canonicalize, would you canonicalize to the /blog or to the base /tag?

Thanks for any and all help. I just want to clarify this issue. One of the reasons is because I received a Moz Report with a TON of dupe content warning from the tags and categories.

[Milian]

As you've pointed out, people argue until the cows coming home weather to noindex or not to noindex tags, categories, date and author archives; but using the canonical tag is definitely wrong in this case.  The canonical tag should be used on pages that have the same content, perhaps just differing in order, but this might not be the case if you canonical a tag page to  the blog start page, as there will be articles on that page that don't appear on the tag page.

So you are are left with just to noindex, or index these tag pages. Here is a great post on the subject:

No Indexing WordPress Taxonomies: Do or Don’t

To summarise, he found that if he noindexed the tag and category archives and installed a better pagination plugin, his traffic increased by 30% in two weeks.

[Thriveworks-Counseling]

Maximillian,

Thanks for the response. In fact, I just read that article. I enjoyed Harrison's analysis. I also made sure my pagination plugin was updated with rel=next and rel=prev are on the pages.

[Keith-Eneix]

Thanks for that link! Been looking for the same info. Does this apply to eCommerce site setup as well???

[Milian]

No I always leave categories free to be indexed on eCommerce sites. (unless perhaps there is some keyword cannibalisation going on with another page). The first page any way, paginated pages get noindexed and sort pages get canonicaled/blocked.

The reason for this is  that (usually) wordpress category/archive pages are just a list of articles with no other value. But with category pages on eCommerce sites I always add content on the page about the particular category and the products within it, making the page a useful page for visitors.

Also there is generally less duplication on eCommerce categories, as I only every use the product title and price, where as on a wordpress category there is going to be a snippet of a paragraph or two, or even the entire article that gets duplicated.

Categories pages can be very important on eCommerce sites, but i don't view wordpress categories as much so.

Again, people might argue about about whats right, and I don't think there is really a right or wrong answer; but i do know what works for me.

[SorinaDascalu]

When deciding to index/noindex a page I always ask myself: "does this page contains any unique content, content that can't be found anywhere else on the website?"
For tags pages the answer is always NO. On a WordPress site Tag pages contain either automatic excerpts and this content is also available on the actual posts pages or in category pages, either manual excerpts and this content is also available in the category pages. So I decide to noindex tags.

In your case, where the tags pages bring less then 1% search traffic I would noindex them without worrying.

[Thriveworks-Counseling]

Thanks Sorina,

I took your advice. Ill keep you posted on what happens. I ended up noindexing the tags, and should help the dupe content. I really love how you put it: "Does this page contain any unique content, content that can't be found anywhere else on the website."

Leaving the initial question just a bit, but staying within taxonomies, Sorina, what do you do about categories? Do you normally noindex them since they also do not contain unique content?

[SorinaDascalu]

I sometimes put noindex on category pages too, because I have the manual excerpts also present on the blog index pages (the pages that list all blog posts in chronological order).

But is really a decision I make based on the type of website. There are websites where category pages present much interest then the chronological post listing. On these I don't use noindex, but I also do something to prevent duplicate content - I add some static text to the category pages so that they don't contain only the post excerpts.