To Index or not to Index

[DLOE]

Would like to hear your input on this one..

I have a large Wordpress website and I have set my Category and Tag Archives of my blog to noindex and have not included them in my Sitemap.

Reason for this is that the Archives not really add anything from a user perspective and that there is a risk of duplicate content. They basically are just overviews of articles written on a specific subject.

While reading some SEO websites and doing some research on other websites I found that some sites actually include their Tag and Category archives in the search engines and that others simply include them in their Wordpress sitemap but have them set as NOINDEX.

What do you guys do?

 

[dazc]

An example of how I handle this on one site is this. I have maybe 20 categories and some of them have 5 or so posts, some have 100 or so.

I noindex the categories with 5 posts and index the ones with a lot. What happens over time is the category landing pages get traffic of their own (much more than individual posts would on their own account).

How well these visits convert is another matter entirely, but when you're getting traffic for nothing it's not a worry.

I don't sweat too much about the duplicate content thing but I do use post excerpts instead of snippets which does make the category pages unique, in a sense.

Not to say to what you should or shouldn't do, it really depends if it makes sense to do it for your site and only you know this.

 

[Adam H]

Depends on the site and what im trying to achieve, I wouldn't put a blanket ban on every site just because you've read somewhere its best practice, you can drastically change how those pages are perceived (if you put the time and work in ).

One thing to consider is to have a real plan how to utilise your categories and tags not to just have them because they are there, if you've got a category "widgets" then there is no need to have a tag "widgets"...like wise there is also no need to have the singular version "widget" or visa versa.

Categories in particular on wordpress can be used to create a more effective site structure but at the same time can also make things worse if not done correctly.

Something else I often do ( especially for e-commerce sites based on wordpress ) is to make them thin/bloat pages worth having, add content to them , make them a focal point for navigation.

If in doubt, leave it out. Its easier to mess something up than it is to get it right if your not 100% sure.

 

[DLOE]

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

Have done some more research and came up with the following Plan of Action:


1. The Category and Tag Archives will be included in the Yoast SEO Sitemap so that it is easier for the bots to crawl them and find new articles.

2. The Category and Tag Archives will remain set to Noindex in the Yoast SEO settings.

3. I will be going through all my Categories and Tags and set them to Index when:

- They have more then 3 posts in them
- The Tag or Category does not already have a page on the site with the same subject, examples:

Page: Car Insurance
Category: Cars
= Index as this could attract visitors looking for information about Cars and there is no page on my website targeting the keyword Cars yet.

Page: Compare Creditcards
Tag: Creditcard
=Allthough I already have a page optimised for the keyword Compare Creditcards this Tag could attract visitors looking for the keyword Creditcard.

Page: Compare Visa Cards
Tag: Visa Cards
=Index as this could attract visitors looking for information about Visa Cards.

4. For every Category and Tag Archive I will write a small description (100-200 words) so that visitors and the search engine know what the page is about.


Looking forward to reading your views on this..

 

[dazc]

Sounds good.

On the new article discovery though, you can submit any new posts directly to google search console and IF your site is well established they will index them within seconds.

 

[DLOE]

Sounds good.

On the new article discovery though, you can submit any new posts directly to google search console and IF your site is well established they will index them within seconds.

Thanks, yeah they normally get picked up in a matter of hours, I just figured that the easier it is for the bots to crawl the articles the better the chances of them ranking in the search engines.