Tags on blog post

[Paul78]

I have just ran a report on SEOMOZ and it's came back saying I have over 1000 pages on my website with duplicate content, I thought wow that's not good, however when I looked at the report it was counting duplicate content because I have used more than one tag on a blog post, for example the blog post:

www.example.com/blog-post/

Has the tags

example 1

example 2

example 3

Meaning I have these URLs

www.example.com/blog/tag/example-1

www.example.com/blog/tag/example-2

www.example.com/blog/tag/example-3

All 3 URLs above have the same content as www.example.com/blog-post/ because of the tags, is this a problem?

Thanks

[RebekahMay]

Tags on blogs can lead to duplicate content, so can date archives if you have them.  I generally suggest indexing categories but blocking tags and date archives from being followed, and setting options to show a limited amount of posts per category.  Block these in robots.txt as well as putting "noindex" and "nofollow" on the pages.

I don't know what CMS you are using for your blog, but if it is Wordpress, Joost's plugin is an excellent plugin to use to help prevent dup content issues and help overall SEO efforts.

[SEODinosaur]

I would no index the tags.

I attached a little image for your review.

I pulled the image from this article on setting up wordpress for SEO: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success

However it's still the best practice for most blog's.

vvRV4.png

[matbennett]

Yes - this is a problem. Or at least it can be.

I'd guess you are using wordpress which seems to be the worst offending platform for this. There are a number of plugins that will resolve this issue for you. I am not a wordpress guy (I am sure one will be along). However I believe that the yoast seo plugin is a well respected solution to this issue.

[Paul78]

Hi Rebekah,

Thanks for the link. I have installed the plugin however I can't find the option to noindex tags?

[peterlaurent]

It's pretty easy to do in the all in one seo plugin. However the Yoast plugin is more comprehensive, if you cannot figure out how to do it you could install the all in one seo plugin then import your settings from than into the Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin.

[GeorgeAndrews]

Hi Gary! I would suggest reading more about configuring for robots here, here, and maybe here (note: this last link uses an older version of the plugin, but provides good information and a lot can be learned by reading the comments too).

Otherwise, if you are using the most recent version of the plugin, you can click on "Titles & Metas" and then on the "Taxonomies" tab. On this tab, if you check the box under the heading for "Tags" for "noindex, follow", it will set all of your Tag archives to noindex, follow.

This will get rid of duplicate content issues for tags, but realize that your "tag" archives will then not be indexed. Regardless of what you decided to do, I suggest reading more at the link above.

I hope this helps!

[Paul78]

Hi George,

That's fantastic!

I also noticed in the "Taxonomies" tab there is an option "Format" do you know what this is?

Thanks

[GeorgeAndrews]

Hi Gary, I don't. But you might be able to find out on the Yoast site.

Glad to be of help :).

[Paul78]

Thanks for all your responses, I never knew wordpress could cause so many issues.

Thanks again.