Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
All In One SEO PACK Configuration - Index or Noindex?
-
I'm finding conflicting information about the right way to configure the All in One SEO Pack wordpress plugin.
Do I index or noindex for the items below?
Use noindex for Categories - yes or no?
Use noindex for Archives - yes or no?
Use noindex for Tag Archives - yes or no?
-
Thanks Phil I guess my main concern is avoiding duplicate content situations. So it sounds like only allowing categories to be indexed is the best bet
-
Hi Nathan,
Despite using a different plugin, I think Dan's advice still applies.
In general I suggest INDEXing the categories. Make these your keyword rich overarching categories.
For archives, I'll general NOINDEX those. They're likely not providing a lot of value to searchers, and could possibly create duplicate content.
For tag archives, I also suggest NOINDEX.
As long as you INDEX your categories, then you can kind of just follow your heart with the rest of them. Luckily, there really isn't a worst case scenario. If you're nervous, then just don't NOINDEX anything and see what happens. If you're happy with the SERPs then keep it as is.
I know it's awfully stressful to make sure you get this all correct at the start, but I promise this won't make or break your SEO. Feel free to experiment to see what works best for you.
-
Thanks Phil. The blog post you reference only talks about Yoast seo pack.
Any thoughts on the All in One? I'm looking for a good resource that will explain the best way to set it up.........specifically the index or noindex
-
This is definitely one of those things where you can talk to 10 different people and get 5 different opinions.
The best detailed resource that I've seen on this was written by Dan Shure. I highly recommend you check out his entire post on the subject: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success
He details step-by-step how he handles each, and gives the reasoning behind his choice.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Lightboxes and SEO
Do lightboxes (AKA popup boxes when you click "learn more" type CTAs) have any negative effect on SEO? We are looking at revamping our sites to have more of a tiled approach, and a lightbox with summary content popping out with additional CTAs, directing to pages with more information or free trial pages. Is there any downside to this approach from an organic perspective? is there anything specific to keep in mind when creating these if not?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
Should I use noindex or robots to remove pages from the Google index?
I have a Magento site and just realized we have about 800 review pages indexed. The /review directory is disallowed in robots.txt but the pages are still indexed. From my understanding robots means it will not crawl the pages BUT if the pages are still indexed if they are linked from somewhere else. I can add the noindex tag to the review pages but they wont be crawled. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-do-not-use-noindex-in-robots-txt-20873.html Should I remove the robots.txt and add the noindex? Or just add the noindex to what I already have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tylerj0 -
SEO for multiple languages [Arabic]
Hello all, I am currently managing a Marketplace that comes in two different languages: English & Arabic. The English website is, fortunately, doing quite well in terms of SEO performances but, not the Arabic one. The website has two kinds of content: Static content: controlled by me. It includes menu items, navigation, static pages etc which is properly translated among the two languages User-uploaded content: It includes ads/news posted by the user which may not be translated to Arabic if they chose not to do it. Now if somebody goes to the Arabic website and check a news item that doesn't have an Arabic translation, it will show the English title. I am assuming, serving content in a different language that is specified in the hreflang is a straight no, right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozammilStorat0 -
SEO Considerations for merging two brand website into one
Hello fellow Mozzers, We have two websites for two similar brands at my place of employment, the two brands currently serve slighly different products but could be held quite happily under one branded site. As part of a potential group merger into one sole brand, we will have to create one joined up website which will then feature all our products. The newly merged site will also have more scope to allow us to expand our product range where as currently one brand is kind of specific to a particular market due to its name. So as part of the Merge, I have to consider the potential implications for our search traffic, as this is an integral part of our business. Brand A - older, more authorative, great content, good organic positions - top 10 for pretty much all terms we favour. Brand B - younger, but has more marketing scope due to name, still good site and lots of content. Unfortunately Brand B has more in terms of potential lifespan, but is currently the less authorative of the two sites we run. it has lower DA and PR according to my Moz Analytics, a lower number of quality links and less content. In order to give the Brand B website the boost that is needed and in effect replace Brand A in the serps which has great organic positions, I need to make sure all bases are ticked for an action plan. So far this is what I have. Transfer all exisiting Brand A web pages to Brand B website. Rel canonical all Brand A pages to now point to Brand B websites new pages. 301 redirect all pages on Brand A to Brand B during the transfer. Once 301 redirects are in place then request external sites to actually repoint to Brand B website for any links. Update xml Sitemaps Update any content that mentions Brand B to now be Brand A. resubmit sitemaps to Webmaster tools Update all social profiles Update all local search profiles and listings Update all review sites with new brand name / merge any with both brands On a supplementary note for customer information, looking to also keep the older Brand A Home page up for a short time to help people understand the transition rather than a complete redirect which to our demographic could confuse and alienate people. Will also look to send a mass email to roughly 400K people informing them of the move abd how it affects them. I have no doubt there will be some glaringly obvious additions, any further advice would be much appreciated. Hope you are all well. Tim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimHolmes1 -
Google Indexing Feedburner Links???
I just noticed that for lots of the articles on my website, there are two results in Google's index. For instance: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html and http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thewebhostinghero+(TheWebHostingHero.com) Now my Feedburner feed is set to "noindex" and it's always been that way. The canonical tag on the webpage is set to: rel='canonical' href='http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html' /> The robots tag is set to: name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp" /> I found out that there are scrapper sites that are linking to my content using the Feedburner link. So should the robots tag be set to "noindex" when the requested URL is different from the canonical URL? If so, is there an easy way to do this in Wordpress?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
Indexed Pages in Google, How do I find Out?
Is there a way to get a list of pages that google has indexed? Is there some software that can do this? I do not have access to webmaster tools, so hoping there is another way to do this. Would be great if I could also see if the indexed page is a 404 or other Thanks for your help, sorry if its basic question 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
Removing Dynamic "noindex" URL's from Index
6 months ago my clients site was overhauled and the user generated searches had an index tag on them. I switched that to noindex but didn't get it fast enough to avoid being 100's of pages indexed in Google. It's been months since switching to the noindex tag and the pages are still indexed. What would you recommend? Google crawls my site daily - but never the pages that I want removed from the index. I am trying to avoid submitting hundreds of these dynamic URL's to the removal tool in webmaster tools. Suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeTheBoss0 -
Does capitalization matter for SEO?
Two places capitalization comes into play: (1) on-page use (title, h1, body text, img alt text, etc) (2) external anchor text I didn't think it mattered from Google's point of view for on-page usage (is this correct?) but I notice that OpenSiteExplorer' s 'anchor text distribution' tab shows different counts for the same keyword if it's capitalized in different ways (eg seomoz.org is listed separate from SEOmoz.org). Is that just OSE or does Google treat the keyword/phrase different based on its capitalization, too? And if so, then should I be creating external links to my site with the 'regular' and 'Capitalized' versions of my key phrases?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | scanlin1