Blogs vs SEO: Problems with Wordpress and other Blog Software

Google representative Matt Cutts gave a talk on SEO at WordCamp 2009 (a Wordpress user conference) where he stated that 'out the box', Wordpress was about 80-90% there for the mechanics of SEO. I beg to differ.

Wordpress can certainly be optimised and many very successful sites use it, but here's what I regularly see on site after site that uses this ubiquitous blogging platform...

Multiple urls per article

Most blogs use a date archive and a 'tag' (category) system. So they'll usually have

(a) all the latest articles displayed in full on the blog's home page,
(b) all the articles with a particular tag displayed in full on each tag page,
(d) all the articles from a particular month displayed in full on the monthly archive page,
(e) every article displayed in full on its own page.

So the content in one article with just two tags can be reached under five different urls when first posted, and will always be available on four different urls. This can weaken the site in two ways. First, Google has a finite indexing allocation for any site so you don't want to waste this on duplicate pages that will be filtered out of the main index. Second, these pages will be sent PageRank via the navigation, and sending PageRank to duplicate pages is also a waste.

Articles that 'move around'

When a blog article is brand new it will be displayed on the blog's home page. If someone wants to link to it they will just link to the blog home page.

But when that entry is replaced by others and moves off the home page, the link won't move with it. It's now a link to the wrong place. That's no good for humans, and less relevant as far as Google is concerned. It's a 'lose lose' situation.

Theming vs Tags

On any website, organising content into categories and allowing Google to see it organised that way creates theming and relevancy.

Main Category > Subcategory > Article

Each article 'belongs' to the pages above it in a hierarchy. You can make this hierarchy clear to users by using a 'breadcrumb' navigation menu on your site, and at the time of writing (January 2010) Google has recently started using breadcrumb navigation menus in their results, offering users more ways of clicking into your site.

The tagging feature used on blogs can destroy this hierarchy. Tags are basically categories that articles share. On most blogs this system is over-used. One article will be given multiple tags, meaning it will be displayed on multiple pages. For example, an article about 'Tony Blair' could be tagged 'Prime Ministers', 'Labour Politicians' and 'Election Candidates'.

Date Archive

This is a very common feature in blogging. In addition to a tag system, all content from a specific time period (usually a month) is grouped together, adding further to the theming problem. Effectively each time period is another tag or category.

How to Fix These Issues

There is a fix for each of these problems, and these are covered in the next part of this article.

next: SEO Principles to Bear in Mind when Setting up a Blog