Deindexing Archive Subpages?

[2bloggers]

I am using Yoast Wordpress SEO and I have clicked on the option to deindex archive subpages. However, I have over 200 duplicate title tag errors in Google Webmasters and most are due to subpages. I am using the URL removal tool but I am going to create several pages every day which is just going to cause more duplicate title tag errors. I don't understand why the Wordpress SEO settings are not working. How can I get google to stop indexing archive subpages? My site tanked BIG TIME about a week ago. Every day it is worse. From 320 clicks a day to 30. Any help would be appreciated.

[DennisSeymour]

if you go to your subpages, can you check the source if it's noindex? If it's not, then there's a conflict with the plugin, probably with the theme (and rarely, another plugin)

Let's start with that

[2bloggers]

My Moz crawl didn't show all this duplicate content so I am wondering if Google is just behind and hasn't seen the change yet? Unfortunately I don't know how to check the source of it's noindex. I am using Genesis and SEO Wordpress and supposedly they work really well together.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Okay, a few points:

1. In addition to using Yoast to noindex archive subpages, you may want to also consider seting it to noindex both tag and category pages.

These are found in Yoast under "Titles and Meta > Taxonomies"

2. While the Yoast plugin will put a "Noindex" tag on the page, this doesn't remove it from Google's index right away. Google first has to crawl the page. Using the index removal tool does help.

3. If your site dropped from 320 visits a day to 30, you may have different problems than duplicate title tags and/or content. Not sure what to tell you to look at, but backlinks, penalties or something else may be to blame.

If you're interrested, here's a great (free) webinar on Wordpress SEO http://moz.com/webinars/advanced-wordpress-seo