Tags & Categories issues with search engines

Wordpress TagsHave you ever faced the problem of duplicate content while using WordPress blog tags and categories? Have you seen the same content appearing on various different tag URLs like /blog/tags/online-marketing/? If your answer is yes, then you must take action to fix this problem because this can really hurt your SEO efforts. How to fix this issue? Pretty simple with the help of the ‘Yoast WordPress SEO’ tool. Of course, you may consult your SEO consultant before doing any major changes to your blog/website.

Step One

Download the tool from the link http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/ and upload it to your plugins folder through an FTP connection.

Step Two

Go to the plugin option from the backend of your WordPress blog and enable it.

Step Three

Once you enable the tool ‘Yoast WordPress SEO’, you will see a tab on the left panel of your WordPress backend with the name ‘SEO’. Just click on this tab and it will show you a few options. Among those options, you need to click the link ‘Titles & Metas’.This page has further 5 tabs (General, Home, Post Types, Taxonomies, and Other). Our target tab is Taxonomies, once you click this tab you will be able to see 3 titles (Categories, Tags, and Format). Just click on ‘noindex, follow’ option under both Tags & Categories.

That’s it! By doing this, you restrict search engines like Google to visit the pages which are generated automatically by the tagging and categorizing process and thereby avoid the content duplicity issue. So this is a ‘must-to-do’ step if you really want to play a fair game on search engines for your website.