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Question About Wordpress Categories

by CathyKelly
7 replies
I have a website called DietReviews101 (dot) com.

I was ranking on Google on page 1 and 2 for my main keywords.

On Saturday I added several new categories and added all my posts to additional categories so I could better categorize them for users.

Then today I noticed Google reindexed my site and it has dropped maybe 6 positions or so.

Now my permalink structure use is /%postname%/ so even though my posts are in several categories, it has not created duplicate content as can be the case if you use the /%category%/%postname%/ permalink structure.

So my question is, how could adding some categories and making posts into more than one category cause my rankings to drop?
#categories #question #wordpress
  • Profile picture of the author Brian Alaway
    The drop may not be related. Are you using tags? If so, make sure your tags don't duplicate your categories.
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    • Profile picture of the author CathyKelly
      Hi Brian:

      No, I am not using tags at all so I don't see how there could be any duplicate content since I use this permalink structure.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brian Alaway
    For categories and tags, less is more, at least imho.
    This is a bit long but well worth checking out:
    WordPress SEO Webinar with SEO Braintrust • Yoast
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    • Profile picture of the author CathyKelly
      Originally Posted by Brian Alaway View Post

      For categories and tags, less is more, at least imho.
      I have another site with multiple categories with no problems but I usually don't place posts in more than one category. I read before as long as you use the permalink structure /%postname%/ and not /%category%/%postname%/ that there should be no issue placing posts in more than one category because using /%postname%/ does not create duplicate content. Using /%category%/%postname%/ does create duplicate content. Maybe this is wrong???
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  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    Google will take a while to "re-adjust" their view on your site. And thats all.

    Lesson 1: don't panic.
    Lesson 2, 3 and so on: don't panic.
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    • Profile picture of the author CathyKelly
      Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso View Post

      Google will take a while to "re-adjust" their view on your site. And thats all.

      Lesson 1: don't panic.
      Lesson 2, 3 and so on: don't panic.
      Love this! Thank you.

      I guess I did start to panic because I just couldn't understand how this would effect anything but you never know with Google!
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  • Profile picture of the author Abledragon
    WordPress does not create duplicate content by virtue of its structure. It's providing different ways of accessing the same content on the same site via different routes (URLs).

    Duplicate content (in Google's world) is the same content on different sites.

    There is, though, some dilution of you site's SEO effectiveness by having articles accessible via lots of URLs, and the best way to control that is via the 'noindex' tag and the 'canonical' tag.

    There are more details in the article below, including a quote from Google expanding on what I wrote above:

    Duplicate Content on WordPress | WealthyDragon

    Cheers,

    Martin.
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