Best practices for wordpress sites

[mpw45233]

First off, I want to thank everybody for giving me advice on my duplicate content issue. I have also watched Vita's videos and they are excellent!!! Thanks Vita!

I decided to start a new thread because I think this will turn more into a Wordpress discussion.

If anyone has a Wordpress question, please feel free to post it here. I won't consider it thread crashing. Hopefully this will become a thread that everybody can learn from.

So here it goes.

I currently became aware of some duplicate content issues I might be having. I used a single post to create my homepage, so there were multiple url's with the exact same content--home page url, post url, category url, tag page url, and author post url.

It was recommended to me, and i did try out 2 plugins (evermore and All in One Seo).

Evermore turns your post that is listed on the homepage into an excerpt, with a "read more" link included to see the whole post. But I can't use this because it reduces my home page to an excerpt.

All in One Seo gives you the option to block category, tag, and archive pages from being indexed.

I found an option in my theme that allows category pages, archive pages, tag pages, search pages, and author pages to list the post as an excerpt. I opted for 50 words, and it seems to work well.

So here's my question:

Like I said earlier, I used a single post to create my home page. The home page url and the post url are the same content. As far as I can tell, there's no way I can alter the post url to avoid duplicate content. And I can't shorten the post as it appears on my home page because it would ruin my home page.

Some of my sites do great in serps, but some seem crippled. The only possible duplicate content issue I might have is between my home page, and the single post I used to create my homepage.

Did I screw up? I saw a setting in Wordpress under the settings>reading, that says that you can pick a static page for your "main" page.

I knew very little about Wordpress when I banged out these websites. Did I make a mistake? My sites are micro niche sites that will have between 5 an 20 pages.

I hope this explanation isn't too confusing.... You may have to read this question twice...

Thanks in Advance
Michael

[Nik]

How do you have your blog set up so that it only shows a single post on the home page? Do you have the option under settings-->reading so that it shows only one post instead of 10?

Do you have your home page post as the very last post, so that if you publish something else the homepage post will get pushed back?

If you're going to have the same post on the home page all the time you should do the following so that you don't have your post url and the home page url to be the same content.

Take the post you want as your home page and create a page with the post information. So now you have a page and a post with the same content. Delete the post. Now go into settings-->reading and as a static page select the page you just created and save.

Now you only have a single version of your home page since you no longer have the post.

Hope this helps
Nik

[tygrupe]

I found this plug in that addresses this exact issue called "duplicate content cure", have not used it to give feedback.

Also settings in platinum SEO pack allow you to choose which pages to have noindex attribute (categories, archives, tags). I use platinum SEO and not all in one SEO, not sure if one is really better than another but it works well for me.

[mpw45233]

tygrupe-thanks for the response, I'll keep those plugins in mind for future use.

Nik-I think the solution you posted is just what I need. For some reason I was under the impression that you should use a blogpost to create your homepage. My websites aren't really "blogs," but I'm going to be launching a real blog here in a few weeks. I'll make sure I know what I'm doing before I dive into that.

I've fiddled around with the static front page setting before, but I was under the impression that it would change the homepage permalink. But when you designate the page as the homepage, the page title is removed from the end of the url. Can't believe I missed that.

So I guess this should be a pretty smooth transition right? Same permalink, same content. Since I'll no longer have any blog posts I guess I'll no longer have to worry about archive and author pages either.

So is there any way I can speed up the process of getting the blog post url's deindexed from google? I noticed one blog post url starting to show up in serps. So if the post url is starting to show up in results, then that would explain why my homepage url (with identical content) is in the gutter.

Well...when I delete the posts G won't be able to crawl them anymore, but will they keep the deleted pages cached, if so for how long?

Is there anything I can do to get Google to re-evaluate my sites quicker? (besides submitting a new sitemap)

Even though it probably will take awhile for a few sites to recover, I feel like a weight has been lifted off my chest. This has been driving me crazy.

Many Thanks

Michael

[mpw45233]

One more quick question.

I use Google Webmaster Tools to auto generate and submit xml site maps for my websites.

One strange thing I noticed is that when I look at the sitemap, all of the urls in it are listed as http://www dot website dot com/........

But I haven't put www in any of my website urls. When I set up my domains through Wordpress, and my web host. I specifically set it up to be just http://website dot com

I've never selected any of my domains to have the www in front of them.

Is this normal?

[Nik]

I think having or not having the www. is an option you can set in your webmaster tools. It might be set to www. by default.

Another option you have is to install the google xml sitemaps (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/goog...nerator/), it's a plugin for you wordpress. Then you can just submit your sitemap url in webmaster tools.

Just curious, when you browse your website does the www. appear in the address bar?

Nik

[mpw45233]

Hi Nik, Thanks for the response.

I actually generated and submitted my sitemap in the Google Webmaster Tools PORTAL, which I believe is actually part of my web hosting interface. There's no option there to select www or not, it's just one click to create, submit, and verify sitemap.

One odd thing is that when I clicked on "view sitemap", the sitemap url that came up (in url bar) was http://website dot com/website dot com_sitemap.xml. This looks correct in the fact that it's the right domain, and there is no www, but why is the domain name listed twice?

When I installed Wordpress to my domains, I specifically chose not to include the www (there is an option to choose when installing through Simple Scripts) And when I browse through my websites, no www appears in the address bar. I'm certain that when I installed WP to these domains, I didn't add www. (did once by accident, but I reinstalled it) The only place I see www is in the list of urls in my sitemaps.

It must be a glitch with the sitemap generator that iPage provides because you just select your domain and hit go.

I was looking more closely in GWT, and it looks like you can only submit your sitemap there, not generate one.

I'm going to install the plugin you recommended. If I just start from scratch, will my new sitemap overwrite the old one?

Thanks again

Michael

[Nik]

Yeah as long as the permissions for the sitemap file are set correctly it will be overwritten by the plugin.

[mpw45233]

Thanks Nik. I don't know what "permissions for the sitemap files" means. But once I get into the plugin, I'll probably figure it out.

Must say I really feel like a dumbass. I'm technically challenged. But doing my best.

[Jack]

(03-11-2011 06:32 AM)mpw45233 Wrote:  Must say I really feel like a dumbass. I'm technically challenged. But doing my best.

LOL Don't worry, keep plugging away and you WILL figure it out.

Jack

[mpw45233]

(03-11-2011 07:08 AM)PartainSr Wrote:  

(03-11-2011 06:32 AM)mpw45233 Wrote:  Must say I really feel like a dumbass. I'm technically challenged. But doing my best.

LOL Don't worry, keep plugging away and you WILL figure it out.

Jack

That's exactly what I was thinking. Eventually I have to get it...right?

Funny stuff...I guess just part of growing pains. But for all of my screw ups, I think I'm doing ok. My sites make enough to keep me motivated, and I'm happy to have many more opportunities in front of me.

So cheers to everybody!

Michael