Duplication on Category, Tag & Other Archive Pages
As mentioned at the beginning of this book, these pages are the root of many
SEO problems. Let me show you an example of this.
I’ve created a dummy post for a fictitious gift website. The post is called 'Gift
ideas for children', and it’s in a category called 'children'.
After posting the article, here is my homepage:
The title of the post is actually a hyperlink that will open a page which contains
an exact copy of the article. That means we now have two identical copies of
the same post, but that's only the tip of the iceberg.
Look at the screenshot above under the title where it says 'Posted on July 3,
2013'. That date is a hyperlink to the date archive. Clicking on it takes me to a
page that shows all posts that were published on that date. Here it is:
The same full post again.
Go back to the homepage screenshot. See at the bottom of the post where it says
'Posted in children'. 'Children' is the category, and the word 'children' is a
hyperlink. If I click that, it takes me to the children category page:
That page also contains the full post.
The duplication doesn’t stop there. WordPress has also created an author page.
If I go to the author page:
Once again, we have yet another duplicated copy of the same article.
But wait, there’s more! What if I added a few tags to the post? Here I’ve added
four tags to this demo article:
The tags are boys, girls, over 10 & under 12. These are supposed to help
classify the gift ideas. However, WordPress creates a page for each of these tags,
and guess what?
I’ll give you a clue by showing you one of the four tag pages:
Yes, that’s right. The full article is published on each of the four tag pages too.
So how many times does this one post appear on the site? Well assuming I
haven’t missed one or two copies (something which is quite possible), we have
the following:
Homepage, post page, category page, date archive, author page, and four tag
pages. That’s nine copies of the exact same article. And that happens with
every article you publish on your site.
Now do you see why WordPress desperately needs to be SEO’d? This type of
duplication can kill your rankings in Google.
If you are starting to have palpitations, thinking you have made the wrong
decision choosing WordPress, relax. I’ll walk you through it step by step. It
really isn’t so difficult to solve these problems once you know how.
10. Menus & Site Navigation
Visitors like a site with good navigation and Google likes a site that keeps its
visitors happy. Of course, there is more to it than that. Good navigation on a site
will help the search engines find, and even categorize your content.
On a website, there are various places where navigation can appear. These
typically include:
1. A menu above the site logo.
2. A menu below the site logo.
3. A search box in the same area as the site logo, often off to the right.
4. Breadcrumb navigation underneath the page header, but above the
webpage opening header.
5. Links to other pages within the body of the content, as in-context
links.
6. After the content of the page, maybe as a 'related articles' or 'You
may also be interested in these' types of link lists.
7. A menu in the left and/or right sidebar.
8. A menu in the page footer.
Where you put your navigation may be determined by your choice of WordPress
template. For example, some templates offer positions 1 or 2, but not both.
Others offer both positions. And some may offer two navigation menus in
position 2, but none in position 1.
As for the search box, this can appear in the logo area, or in the sidebar. I’ve
even seen them in page footers. Therefore this diagram is only a rough guide.
Before we look at how to create the various forms of navigation in WordPress,
let me mention one thing. Create your navigation for human visitors, not search
engines. That means using the most logical and aesthetically pleasing links in
the menu. Do not, under any circumstances, stuff keywords into your navigation
menus and links.
For example, if you had a website about prom dresses, and had sections on your
site to various brands of prom dress, you might be tempted to use something
like:
Notice the repetition of the words 'Prom Dresses'. Why do you think some
webmasters do this? Is it to help their visitors? Well, considering the whole site
is about prom dresses, I’d assume not. This is done purely for the search engines
for two reasons:
1. In this menu, the phrase 'prom dresses' appears five times in the
hope that the page would rank better for that term. In the good old
days of pre-2011 SEO, this would have worked. Today it’s more likely
to get you a Penguin penalty.
2. Each item in the menu will link to a page on the site. That link uses
anchor text (the text you as the visitor see for any given link). In this
type of menu, the keyword-stuffed anchor text is there as an attempt to
boost the rankings of the page the link points to for its anchor text
phrase. Say if this site had 100 pages, each using the same prom dress
menu. This means each of the five pages in the menu would have 100
links pointing to them. That's 100 of the exact same anchor texts.
Again, pre-2011, this worked. Today it does not, and this tactic will
come back to bite you (or do Penguins nip?).
TIP: Look at the 'SEO' on your site. If you cannot say with 100% that you have
done it in your visitor's best interests, then get rid of it. This goes for site
navigation, content, and internal linking between pages, etc.
OK, with that said, how do you implement navigation into WordPress?
Well, there are a number of different ways.
You can use plugins. You can also use the menu system built into WordPress.
In many cases you will know exactly which links you want in a navigation area.
These links are usually fixed and rarely change. In this instance, I recommend
you use the menu system built into WordPress.
On other occasions, you might want a list of the most recent posts, or posts
related specifically to the current one. These menus are constantly changing as
new content gets added to the site, and are therefore best handled with plugins.
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