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Is This Why I've Experienced a Drop in Rankings?

by dreamtoreality
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Every post on my website is tagged so it fits into a specific category and price range, such as sound systems, portable sound systems, remote system, hi-fi system etc.

For example, say that I have written a review on a Sony sound system. It is tagged so it shows an excerpt on the "sound system" category page, "Sony sound systems" page, "$1000-2000 sound system" page. It will also appear in the sidebar under "price range" and "brands." I have 60 pages like this, with every post placed in the relevant page.

Hopefully, you guys know what I am on about. Perhaps if I show you the shortcode for a couple of the pages things become clearer:

[tpg_get_posts category_name= "sound systems" tag="sony" numberposts="10" shorten_content="w2500"]

[tpg_get_posts category_name= "sound systems" tag="1000-2000" numberposts="10" shorten_content="w2500"] etc....


All these are pages are DoFollow, which I think might be seen as duplicate content in Google's eyes.
#drop #experienced #rankings
  • Profile picture of the author dreamtoreality
    I entered some text in quotes in Google from my posts and found out that the same content has been indexed 4 times! That can't be good, so I just added no follow, no index to all the pages.

    How long until this takes effect? Soon, I hope.
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  • Profile picture of the author bluedevil
    tag pages can dilute your page and post authority. An easy fix is to make them no follow.
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    • Profile picture of the author jfalxr
      Originally Posted by bluedevil View Post

      tag pages can dilute your page and post authority. An easy fix is to make them no follow.
      Yepp..

      Or maybe the tag you used is a high competition keyword. Very difficult to beat them..
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  • Profile picture of the author Tuned
    this might be because of the high keyword density created by the tags as yo must be having the same keyword in the posts a few times and now that is increased by these tags, so you should try making the keyword density in your posts a little less or should remove some tags.
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  • Profile picture of the author andishm
    You shall use no index for tag pages to not to have dupe content issue, all in one seo plugin do have option in it for the same.
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  • Profile picture of the author Goath
    You can also use "canonical URLs". That way you are telling Google, hey, this page is the REAL page and this page is just a duplicate of it..

    Yoast's Wordpress SEO plugin does that automatically


    Guys, correct me if I'm wrong.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    As Goath said, you should be using canonical URLs to fix this. Using nofollow for internal links is a horrible, horrible idea.
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  • Profile picture of the author vCr8
    I agree canonical URLs is the way to go.. Though honestly with the current Google updates we can't say which technique affects big drops neither the raise since the last update (8-2-12) raised pr ranks.. it is too early to state definite do's and dont's at the moment since it is really hard to prove statements without stats to back up..
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by javajunkie View Post

      I agree canonical URLs is the way to go.. Though honestly with the current Google updates we can't say which technique affects big drops neither the raise since the last update (8-2-12) raised pr ranks.. it is too early to state definite do's and dont's at the moment since it is really hard to prove statements without stats to back up..

      The toolbar PR update did not impact rankings one bit.

      PR is changing everyday. You just cannot see it. The toolbar PR lags behind several months.
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      • Profile picture of the author vCr8
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        The toolbar PR update did not impact rankings one bit.

        PR is changing everyday. You just cannot see it. The toolbar PR lags behind several months.
        Could be... It's interesting to see people checking out their PR during the last update at the same time that's why they are saying that it had affected theirs... If that's the way you see it
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Originally Posted by javajunkie View Post

          Could be... It's interesting to see people checking out their PR during the last update at the same time that's why they are saying that it had affected theirs... If that's the way you see it
          It's not a "could be". It's true. When Google releases a toolbar PR update it is the PR ratings from months ago. PR changes constantly. Google just never lets us see the live PR. All that is being updated is a collection of outdated statistics that are shared with us. It in no way impacts your ranking today. If you experienced a ranking change on the same day as a toolbar PR update, that is just a coincidence. Nothing more.
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  • Profile picture of the author Goath
    I agree with Mike.

    PR is just a measurement, not a factor. I would only use PR as a factor when you are building links to your website.

    @ Mike Friedman

    Why is using nofollow on internal links is a bad idea? I mean, I consider to use those nofollows on tags. I read on Search Engline Land that even when you are using nofollow on (internal) links, Google will pass some juice.

    I tested it recently and I got a semi competitive keyword from page 6 to page 1 with only a nofollow footer link on 392 from an external website!

    From this I can conclude that nofollowing or following internal pages will not have a lot of effect. However, I would love to hear your thoughts on this!
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by Goath View Post

      I agree with Mike.

      PR is just a measurement, not a factor. I would only use PR as a factor when you are building links to your website.

      @ Mike Friedman

      Why is using nofollow on internal links is a bad idea? I mean, I consider to use those nofollows on tags. I read on Search Engline Land that even when you are using nofollow on (internal) links, Google will pass some juice.

      I tested it recently and I got a semi competitive keyword from page 6 to page 1 with only a nofollow footer link on 392 from an external website!

      From this I can conclude that nofollowing or following internal pages will not have a lot of effect. However, I would love to hear your thoughts on this!
      I just get rid of tags completely.

      The reason I would never use nofollow on internal links is because nofollow does not pass on PR or anchor text relevance (or if you believe it does, it is far diminished from normal links). Now if you have a page that has some ranking authority to pass on, we'll call that X, and it has 10 links on the page, then the ranking authority it passes on through each link is X/10. I know this is oversimplified because many people believe that the location of the link, whether or not it is in-context, and a host of other factors play into the ranking power of a link. We are just going to keep it simple for this discussion though.

      Now if 3 of those links are nofollow, it used to be that the ranking power passed on was divided up among the other 7 links, so it would be X/7. People were taking advantage of this though to sculpt PR. In response Google changed how it handles nofollow links. The linking power is divided up among the other 7, but each has a ranking power of X/10 that passes through it. For the 3 nofollow links, the PR basically just vanishes into a black hole (or is diminished greatly if you believe they still pass on PR).

      Why do that to yourself? What advantage is there to having the tags? If you have a good navigation menu and site organization, I would rather limit my onpage links and make each link stronger. On the other hand, if I am going to bother having tags, I'm not going to diminish their power by adding a nofollow to them, or any other internal link for that matter.

      I think that tags are just a waste. You are just adding 3-5, or in some cases I've seen as many as 15-20, extra links on the page to suck up link juice.

      If someone would like to make a case for tags or putting nofollow on internal links, please by all means do so. I would love to hear your reasoning.
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      • Profile picture of the author DeskCoder
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        I just get rid of tags completely.

        The reason I would never use nofollow on internal links is because nofollow does not pass on PR or anchor text relevance (or if you believe it does, it is far diminished from normal links). Now if you have a page that has some ranking authority to pass on, we'll call that X, and it has 10 links on the page, then the ranking authority it passes on through each link is X/10. I know this is oversimplified because many people believe that the location of the link, whether or not it is in-context, and a host of other factors play into the ranking power of a link. We are just going to keep it simple for this discussion though.

        Now if 3 of those links are nofollow, it used to be that the ranking power passed on was divided up among the other 7 links, so it would be X/7. People were taking advantage of this though to sculpt PR. In response Google changed how it handles nofollow links. The linking power is divided up among the other 7, but each has a ranking power of X/10 that passes through it. For the 3 nofollow links, the PR basically just vanishes into a black hole (or is diminished greatly if you believe they still pass on PR).

        Why do that to yourself? What advantage is there to having the tags? If you have a good navigation menu and site organization, I would rather limit my onpage links and make each link stronger. On the other hand, if I am going to bother having tags, I'm not going to diminish their power by adding a nofollow to them, or any other internal link for that matter.

        I think that tags are just a waste. You are just adding 3-5, or in some cases I've seen as many as 15-20, extra links on the page to suck up link juice.

        If someone would like to make a case for tags or putting nofollow on internal links, please by all means do so. I would love to hear your reasoning.
        Ah, gotcha ... so you're saying just use no links instead of nofollowing the links. But what do you do about site-wide Category links with Wordpress? Are they just diluting your internal structure?
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