Very Confused - Do I NoIndex Tags Or Categories

[Matt Jo]

Hey all

I run the site We Got This Covered (wegotthiscovered.com) and I'm having trouble. I don't know if I should noindex categories or tags or any at all? I use categories to structure my site yet I do occasionally link to tag pages in my article. For example, if I write an article about Brad Pitt, I may link the word Brad Pitt to wegotthiscovered.com/tag/brad-pitt.

I'm not sure what to do?

[Oranges]

I always noindex tags and category pages with plugins because they create duplicate content issue in terms of SEO. So, yes truning them noindex should be a good step.

[Matt Jo]

really? you think I should noindex both?? did you check out my site, is it fine to noindex both?

[yukon]

Don't do a NOINDEX!

Use a unique canonical tag per every single page.

I rank my WP-Category + WP-Tag pages just the same as any other page on the site.

If you put a noindex on them what's the point in creating them in the first place (none)?

[Matt Jo]

Huh? Unique canonical tag per page? You lost me lol how do I do that?

And what about author archive? I should Noindex that right?

[Matt Jo]

for my site in particular though (We Got This Covered), what should I be doing

[gowdemon]

Whenever you ask this question about whether to no-index your category pages and tag archives. You will surely get 2 kinda reply, some will say to index and some will ask you to add no-index. Every single forum and every single thread about this issue, you will find contradicting replies.

I was extremely confused before now have come to my own conclusions and it works.

1.Honestly though, you want Google to crawl your tag archives, or it has no other purpose than improving site navigation. But you need to keep in mind that you need to have only excerpts in the tag archives. If you are having full post on the archives pages its gonna be bad(duplicate content). EXCERPTS are must for tags and category pages if you want Google to index em.

2. Don't add too much tags, it will surely piss Google. My general rule of thumb is 3 to 4. Reusing tags for multiple posts is also recommended. For instance, if this a wordpress post, i will be adding tags like 'no-index tags wordpress','no-index categories wordpress','configure all in one seo plugin'. Or stuff like that, don't add more by mixing the words around, take a few more seconds while writing a post and come up with tags that makes sense.(Experts forgive me, i'm writing this for noobs, so have to be detailed).

3. Categories: If you want to index Categories you need to keep an important thing in mind. See, how much categories you have and how much sub-categories you have.
Say if i have a category called Automobile and a sub category called bikes. If i post any thing is 'bikes'. It will also show in Automobile category page. So if you have lot of sub categories under every primary category, you don't want Google to crawl. So it all comes down to how much categories you have and how the category hierarchy is.

On a side note, i do add no-index to a pages like the general archives(Date based) and author pages, login page.

Hope this helps.

Peace.

[augustogomes]

Thanks Godemon
It has just solved one problem for me.
Your explanation was exactley what I was looking for, and I'm a newbie on this for sure. By the way, optimizing wordpress, basic rules I think I can do but I'm looking for something going deeper on all the points.
Didnt find any
Thanks
Augusto

[stufftheme]

i always noindex because i don't want any issue to start in

[gearmonkey]

I've tested both methods and I like to no-index them because I don't like 3,000 useless tag/category links indexed by Google.

I don't know what the best way is. I like Yukons method, but that's just too time consuming when you have 8,000 blog posts.