Wordpress SEO and Duplicate Content.

I have read through most online articles about tweaking Wordpress for SEO, and done most of the things they suggest such as disabling duplicate content, changing perma-links, adding meta tags, writing detailed and keyword rich titles and descriptions, but wanted to make sure this was all the best way to go. I am ranked number one on several of my keywords, but would like to try and rank for others as well. I have read a lot on this site, and I'm under the impression that the more pages you have indexed in google, the better. Should I have my duplicate content (author, date, category archives) enabled to make my site bigger, or will the duplicate content hurt more than help?

Duplicate content hurts a site. I know an instance where a site eliminated all date archive and tag listings which reduced number of indexed pages from over 1000 to about 100 but traffic increased 300%.

There is a way to get the most of all worlds but requires more work:

1. Setup site so that you only display 100-150word excerpts of the posts in the listings.
2. Eliminate date archives OR make all the links for that n0f0llow and add robots rule "n0index" to the actual listing pages. First option is preferred by me, but second option should be used if you have a reason to allow visitor to browse by date (for most sites it is not necessary).
3. Make sure the theme you are using is displaying the category description on the category listing page. You can display it below the posts listing, just display it somewhere. If it doesn't, modify it to do that (it's easy). Display the description ONLY on the first page of the listing. if the URL ends with 'page/2' or other page number you don't want it displayed.
4. Same as above but for tag pages.
5. If you have multiple authors blogging on the site, make sure the author archive page displays a big (300-500 words) author bio text.
6. Fix pagination titles - for all paged listings, add something like " - page 2" after the category/tag title. It is critical that you don't have the same title on more than one page. Also, eliminate the blog name from the title. If blog name is "iPhone Site" don't have titles like "Post title - iPhone Site" but simply "Post title".
7. Find a plugin that allows you to have meta keywords and description both for posts, pages, categories, tags, etc. Have a different one for each. You can use HeadSpace2 plugin (is better than All-in-One-SEO).
8. When you write the posts, make sure you so it in such way so that you don't write posts in same categories and tags one after the other. For example if you write 5 consecutive posts about "iPhone" you would always put them in the categories "iPhone", "Cell phones", "Gadgets" and because of that, the page listings of those categories will be 50% identical. Avoid that. The descriptions are there to help and increase the uniqueness of those pages, but you have to pay attention to this aspect too.
9. Install a caching plugin so the response time is low. This doesn't help a lot with Google but improves visitor experience on your site.

If you do this right, you get a lot more pages and they will be unique enough to get indexed and not be seen as duplicate by Google. Aside from the obvious improvement in traffic, because you have a lot of pages about a given topic your site's topicality score will increase (as long as you're targeting a specific group of keywords and you're not spreading too thin). Because topicality score increases, you start to be seen more of an authority for that topic (keyword family) and you will naturally rank higher for all related keywords even if you optimize for them or not.

1. I usually write exceprts when I write the post, same thing right? It's usually a short description of the post/page. Should it be a little more detailed?

2. Done

3. Done

4. Done

5. Done, one author (me) but I have a bio up.

6. I have Pagination and seo slugs installed, should be good?

7. Have this, but I didn't realize that I can't use all of the same tags on each post. How many of the same can I have?

8. Good call, something I never thought of. SO if I have a blog post, but different title, I need to make sure it doesn't seem like a duplicate right? This is done through tagging, descriptions, catagories? Should have that covered.

9. Done, running WP Super Cache

Thx for the help!

No. I dont mean post excerpts but category/tag descriptions. Many themes don't display those. So when you create a category you add a description to it and make sure is displayed in the category listing page. Same for tags, you go after you add a tag to a post and add a description for that tag.

Ok, I know what you mean now. Never thought about that but it makes sense. So let's say I have 30 posts, can I have all of them tagged Music, and how many tags can I use for all posts? Right now I have like 20 tags that are used on every post, most posts have additional tags as well. Thanks.

You can have as many tags as u want. But from a SEO perspective makes no sense to use tags that are not keywords.

madoctopus said:

You can have as many tags as u want. But from a SEO perspective makes no sense to use tags that are not keywords.

Click to expand...

Or keywords I can actually rank for. Yeah, I don't have any tags that I wouldn't consider keywords I want to rank for. After watching the MS videos though I think I need to rethink what I'm trying to rank for. I'm still not clear on weather it matters if I have all my posts tagged music, etc. Your help is appreciated.

Thanks for that, makes more sense than most methods I've seen!

The best way to do it is to create bew original content

Even content spinning does not work most of the time

I'm going to disagree with madoctopus on one thing. You should make all tag and category pages noindex and let the by date pages get indexed instead. The main reason for this is that date pages don't create duplicate content problems while tag pages can create massive duplicate content problems. Let's say you tag a post with "iphone", "apple", "phone" and "apps". Your summary will then appear on 4 different tag pages. If you use more tags, you'll have even more pages and it just goes on and on.

Just using the calendar to pass link juice is good because it produces the most even link juice flow while still being user friendly, and every summary will only appear on one page, meaning no duplicate content. Even if you're not writing summaries and using the full text, that's only one extra copy of each post and it's not a big deal.

Yeah I know, using tags is good for anchor text, but that's not worth getting if it also totally ruins your rankings.