Wordpress Categories Create Duplicate Content?

[dingdong]

OK here's the situation. There is a Wordpress blog with many categories. One of the categories has only one post.

Questions:

1) Doesn't this create duplicate content internally? Meaning same content on the category page URL and on the blog post URL itself ?

2) If this is bad, is removing the category the solution?

Thanks!

 

[dima054]

Add some noindex, nofollow plugin. Categories, tags, search indexed, its all bad for your site IMHO. Or simply add some lines to robots.txt.

 

[gu3sswh0]

I wouldn't worry too much, considering wordpress is designed to work on this premise, and google understand that I think you are fine.

 

[roberteb]

I wouldn't worry too much, considering wordpress is designed to work on this premise, and google understand that I think you are fine.

I agree with @Arceon I leave all my tag / catagory pages follow and have never had a problem.

 

[dingdong]

hmm anyone else?

 

[phpbuilt]

Sometimes it makes sense to SEO categories (often times the category is the 1000+ exact search keyword you're trying to rank for). In that case, make sure your wordpress template inserts category description ... and type up a ton of unique content in the category description. You will also want to search for the wordpress plugin that allows you to add hyperlinks and images into the category description (they're usually stripped out by default).

If you're not doing that, then just nofollow / noindex your categories. Always nofollow / noindex your tags.

 

[dingdong]

If you're not doing that, then just nofollow / noindex your categories. Always nofollow / noindex your tags.

Sorry for ubern00b question, what's the easiest and safest way to achieve that technically? I've never done nofollow/noindex stuff before and I'm concerned about possibly fucking something up and then Google not indexing/following the shit that I do want it to follow/index.

 

[asa.kishii]

its true that categories (and archives) in wordpress create duplicate content. but there's a solution, called: "canonical" *hooray*

if you dont have a clue how to add noindex/nofollow or edit your robots.txt that these "pages" wont get indexed use a wordpress-plugin.

"all in one seo", is free and probably the best.

 

[Ikaros]

Hi,

I think we have two issues here

1. Duplicate content. This is something that can be solved by adding unique content on the category/tag pages. So, if each post, article is published into one, and only one category (it has only one URL) and the categories have extra unique content (text) on them, I think we avoid the duplicate content issue. The same is for tags - adding content reduces the risk of having duplicate content. Some tags may overlap some categories, but this is why adding unique text would solve the duplicate problem. Personally, I use 3-5 main categories (main classes of posts), and another 3-5 tags (some subclasses) to offer a better, narrower, in depth grouping.

2. How good is this page as a landing page? Well, I think sometimes it is better to let categories/tags be indexed. Let's say we have a category/tag page, with many products on it; in my opinion, this category/tag page would be a better landing page than a single product page, for instance, with a better conversion rate. I alway ask myself - would this page be a good landing page (be it a post or a category/tag page)? Do I really want it to be a landing page? If the answer is no, well noindex.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[hpasha]

Install SEO Yoast Plugin and no-index your sub pages. Use lesser post excerpts for your post to reduce duplicate content risk.

 

[m.rvs2141]

I had a site with same issue you have, there was some categories with only one post and they was used in site menu, as they was indexed already and I did not want to change site structure, that what I did

1) I remove category from URL, wordpress seo can make it (under permanent links), it is remove /category/ from url
2) Name category same as post name, both url category and post url become same

Myself I exclude tags, archives, feeds, but I normally keep categories

P.S. I am surprised how old bhw members suggest to keep tags and archives, what is use to rank for tag post in state of actual post, plus tag is mess and it can on the end redirect to wrong post.

Second if it is normal for you to keep tags, archives, feed and rss to be indexed, then you should create 10's pages, categories ans posts for same keywords as I do not see differences.

 

[420friendly]

Install SEO Yoast Plugin and no-index your sub pages. Use lesser post excerpts for your post to reduce duplicate content risk.

Yup... also I love the remove /category/ feature