When it comes to SEO, WordPress is a great platform to work with. However, duplicate content can be a major issue if not handled properly. Duplicate content refers to any exact text or meta-tags that can be found on more than one page of your website. While a small amount of duplicate content may not harm your SEO efforts, larger amounts can lead to penalties from search engines like Google.
In WordPress, duplicate content can be found in various places, such as category and tag pages, which may use a clip from your posts (the_excerpt). Paginated pages (category page 1, category page 2…) may also contain the same meta keywords, descriptions, and title as the first page. To eliminate duplicate content on WordPress, here are five quick things you can do:
1. Use Robots.txt: By preventing WordPress from crawling certain pages on your site, you can prevent duplicate content from being indexed by search engines. The recommended Robots Optimization for your robots.txt file is:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /trackback
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: /comments
Disallow: /category/*/*
Disallow: */trackback
Disallow: */feed
Disallow: */comments
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /*?
Allow: /wp-content/uploads
# Google Image
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow:
Allow: /*
# Google AdSense
User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:
Allow: /*
# digg mirror
User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /
Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
2. Use NoIndex on Paginated Pages: You can add noindex to paginated pages so that they will not be indexed by search engines. To do so, add the following code within the
tags of your header.php template:
3. Use Page Templates for Categories: Use templates for category pages so you can add text to these pages along with the URL, keyword, and meta description you want. Use the basic code below to show posts from a specific category:
//Your Loop Here
4. Use Meta Descriptions as Excerpts: Rather than allowing WordPress to use the beginning of your posts as the excerpt, you can write up your own excerpt by using the excerpt field while creating posts. If you want to make your life easy, just cut and paste your unique meta description into this field.
5. Write Your Own Content: While this isn’t related to WordPress, it is related to SEO in general and does relate to duplicate content in regards to other websites. If you want to rank well, make sure that all the content on your site is unique and not simply copied from someone else’s posts. Not only is this the ethical thing to do, but it will also help you in terms of search engine optimization.
In summary, duplicate content can harm your SEO efforts if not handled properly. By following these five quick tips, you can eliminate duplicate content on WordPress and improve your search engine rankings.
