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Is nesting a native function of wordpress?  Is it when you create a new category inside of another category in the post options.  I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

Yes, nesting of categories is native to WordPress. No plugins or anything required. I believe you control this in the Categories menu (sidebar)

Also, I think it's somewhat helpful letting people search by 'Jobs involving travel', 'Outdoor Jobs', etc.  Are those good examples of tags?  Or does that fall into something else?

Yep, tags can be anything that is not already a category, and more detailed than the categories. I would just try to keep them specific.

-Dan

-As far as categories.   With a site like mine would 15 ish categories be too many?  Especially given that we've got some pretty random career interviews on the site.

• I think 15 is pretty good.
• You might want to consider nesting categories (this is one difference that separates them from tags).
• NOTE: If you're eliminating categories from the website to trim down, make sure to 301 redirect them to relevant pages so you don't en up with 404s.

-Also, in regards to tags.  Should those be treated more like subcategories? But use tags.

• Generally not thought of as subcategories, because tags (unlike categories) have no hierarchy or relationship. I'd use the nesting suggestion from above if you want to make subcategories.
• Tags are like a label you just slap on a piece of content.
• Tags should NOT ever be the same as a category that already exists.

**The only way tags like that would provide value was if I have numerous interviews under the same tag right?(in some cases there are more than one interview of each career, different people with the same job etc). **

• Right, tags do have a bit more value if they are used on more than one article. But I wouldn't worry about that too much. As long as you're noindexing them for search engines, a typical tag cloud will usually highlight the most used tags to the reader, which is better for UX. Just label your articles with maybe 3-7 more detailed key words as your tags, noindex them, and you should be good!

That advice looks pretty sound Jeremy, thank you!

Only thing I'd add, is you may want to consider showing excerpts of each article on the category page. This will bring in some more content (which is perhaps why those pages aren't bringing you traffic).

Also, you can check out my recent post on WordPress SEO, in case you missed it - might help illustrate some things even more.

I do think your categories could be condensed, and I do in general noindex tag archives (as Jeremy suggests) as a default starting point.

-Dan

Not bad at all! Unless there is a very similar site in your industry of a competitor and risk being accused of "copying".

-Dan

Its not bad at all, I would just recommend using free themes available only within WordPress. Maybe someone else knows of a trusted source of free themes. And yes, you can use the free plugins just the same.

-Dan

Thanks for the responses John and 'walrus'

The only two sites I trust to buy themes from are;

• WooThemes
• Themeforest

You're right, pro perks discounts are here - and woothemes are included.

Then be sure you read my post on WordPress, and look under the "Themes" section for the best way to set up themes once installed. I've never seen a perfect one for SEO. They're all a little wonky.

Basically I say;

"DO use themes for design elements;

• Colors
• Fonts,
• Page layout
• Headers
• Footers
• Basic social media button stuff

Do NOT use themes for SEO stuff, such as

• Indexation
• Analytics codes
• Titles and descriptions
• RSS feeds
• Menu structure (ideally this is done with WordPress Custom Menus)

Let the Yost SEO plugin handle this stuff! Shut off / do not use these types of SEO functions within the themes."

Hope this helps!

-Dan

You can also confirm duplicate content (titles, descriptions and URLs) with either;

• Google webmaster tools - they will tell you most all errors you need to take action on
• screaming frog seo spider

You can also check out this post I just did about WordPress SEO to get some more in depth info on finding duplicate issues with WordPress blogs (I assume you're on WordPress).

Thanks!!

-Dan

Hi Nick!

WordPress now offers a site redirect. The only caveat being, your URL structures need to remain the same to go from .com to .org.  And I think this costs $12 a year.

This is the old way to redirect (its a little more of a hack).

And you can also do a guided transfer to the host of your choice through WordPress for $129 if you just want someone to take care of it.

Let me know if that does it

-Dan

Hi John

I've checked this out a few times today, and tossed it around with a few other Moz people.

When I crawled the site earlier today with Screaming Frog, I got all the 500 errors you describe on the "normal" pages.

Now when I crawl the site I only get the "weird" pages with the unusual URLs.

We don't think this has to do with either Yoast of W3 Total Cache causing any of it. As far as what caused 500's on the "normal" pages, its hard to tell now. They loaded fine in my browser when I checked earlier.

But I strongly suspect maybe something going wrong in .htaccess for those stranger URLs.

Not sure why those URLs exist like that in the first place - they should all be "clean" whenever possible with the question marks etc in them. That'd be the first place I'd get straightened out. Check permalink settings or maybe a theme setting? Or did someone do something custom to the .htaccess file?

Get your URLs operating correctly. Then if the 500s still exist, you know its a different matter but at least you've narrowed it down and correct the URLs.

Hope this helps!

-Dan