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So I've been doing quite a bit of SEO work on my website for the past couple of weeks using Screaming Frog and SEMRush.
I've noticed that on albums theres a "noindex" tag set, so they're not searchable and won't appear on google. Is there any way to turn this on at all so albums appear on google search?
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The only albums on my site tagged noindex are the ones I've set as private. That's the only way I can think of to cause this.
Is your site https://www.adecentexposure.co.uk?
I couldn't find any albums tagged noindex.
Last edited by JimR (2020-03-09 01:27:10)
--Jim
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Hi Jim, thanks for clarifying. Yes that's the site.
I've only just migrated to Backlight so there are only two new albums on the site - one is private (password protected) and the other is public, but when I ran the Screamingfrog analytics both are coming up as non indexable (with a status code 200) which according to them indicates the pages won't be crawled:
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … -eaton-run 200 The 10k Eaton Mess Run 8th March 2020 - A Decent Exposure Media Non-Indexable noindex
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … prom-2020/ 200 2020 Grove School Prom - A Decent Exposure Media Non-Indexable noindex
I'll have to look at bit deeper into what Screamingfrog is reporting and why, but that's reassuring if you couldn't find anything tagged as noindex, thanks very much.
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I use Screaming From, SEMRush, and many other SEO tools dailly.
The easiest way to confirm if Google has indexed your content is using the Google Search Console. A really simple way to find what's indexed is to use a Google search.
Enter this search query at the main Google.com search page to show your indexed pages:
site:adecentexposure.co.uk
Enter this search query to find what pages on your site are linked with the term "game." It appears on every page because that term is one in your navigation menus, so every page appears in that search. This is an example of how choosing your taxonomy is important. Try using a unique term to find more specific pages.
site:adecentexposure.co.uk game
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … prom-2020/ is protected and tagged noindex. This makes sense. You don't want the entrance to a private page indexed.
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/ is public and robots meta tags are not defined. This is also the expected behavior. This page would be index, if found by Google.
But the reason that albums is not indexed, and not showing up in the searches above, is due to a redirect.
This URL has a 302 redirect:
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/
It takes you to this URL, which then also has a 302 redirect:
http://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries/ … eaton-run/
The final destination is back to this page:
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/
What you above here is a "redirect chain." You want to get rid of all these.
You can get a redirect report from Screaming Frog. You can also see that Screaming Frog is reporting your page as if it were noindexed because it's a redirect. It's telling you how Google sees it.
You also want to confirm that all the redirects are in fact what you need them to be.
Redirected URLs will not be indexed. Only the final destination page will be. In this case you're confusing Google by redirecting through a chain back to itself.
Also, you do NOT want to use 302 redirects. Those mean temporary, and would only be used when you take a page off line temporarily and want a substitute page in the meantime. Search engines will keep checking waiting to find the page return.
If you really want a redirects, you would use a 301 which is a permanent redirect. You use this when you are replacing a page.
But in your case, it doesn't appear that you want any redirects. You have a bug here that is causing a redirect chain (loop actually). You're going from https to http to https all for the same page. Several things could be causing this, and I couldn't really guess without understanding more about your backend.
Last edited by JimR (2020-03-09 09:14:48)
--Jim
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Another odd thing, this URL is not in your sitemap.
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/
Then I noticed something else odd. You have what appears to be two copies of a directory with the same (or very similar) content.
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries/
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries2/
I couldn't find the source for the second one. Looks to be an "orphan" set of albums. If you don't like to them on your pages, include them in the navigation, or in the sitemap, Google won't find them during it's crawl of your site.
One more thing, the use of a - (dash) is considered a delimitar. In this example slug photos-horse-race Google will interpret that as three words: photos, horse, and race.
If you use _ (underlines) it's considered as quoting the terms together. In other words, this slug photos_horse_race is one entire term and not three. Instead of matching for a search of photos about horse races, you're saying the term is "photos horse race" and should only match if someone did that exact search.
Only use the _ (underline) when you mean to join two or more terms, such as ford_fiesta where you are not trying to match with the general term fiesta but have a page that is about the Ford car.
Don't worry too much about the URLs. The page title and content are considered much more so than the URL. Just realize SEO is a complex topic, and details like using an _ in URLs actually does mean something.
--Jim
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Hi Jim, thanks for taking a look, that's really helpful. And thanks for the advice re underscores and dashes in slugs, I didn't realise how that affects the search.
No idea what's going on with all the redirect loops - I did notice this morning that I didn't have the SSL redirect switched on with the host so I've just made that change. I haven't applied any redirects myself (no idea how to and can't see anything in my cPanel to add or remove them) so I don't understand why the 301 and 302 redirects are happening. I've run a report from Screamingfrog and noticed that every album in my client response gallery has a 302 redirect?
I'm confused about why the 301 redirects. For example looking at the sitemap, https://adecentexposure.co.uk has a 301 redirect to https://WWW.adecentexposure.co.uk (and the same for all the top level pages in my site). Is this normal redirect activity for a host or do you think I need to raise a ticket with my hosting company to take a look at this?
Thanks for flagging up the orphaned page, I was confused by that when it was flagged up in SEMRush. I think that's my error, when I was getting my head around setting up Backlight I created a page /galleries2/ (shoud have realised when I couldn't create /galleries/) and then embedded the top level gallery rather than just pointing the menu to it. I've got customers visiting the site at the moment from a shoot yesterday so as soon as that actiity dies down I'll delete the /galleries2/ page.
Since upgrading I've been having some performance issues compared to my CE4 site, Ben kindly made some changes to the database config which helped speed things up but wondering whether the redirects are contributing to that, so thanks very much for taking the time to help me.
Steve
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About the redirects, did you enable the https redirect option in Backlight? It’s in Settings under Privacy.
I’m wondering if there’s a conflict between that setting and any redirects you’ve set up with the host.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
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Hi Rod, thanks, yes just checked it and that's already enabled.
I haven't setup any other redirects with the host apart from the SSL https redirect (which was just a case of turning it on).
I don't have enough experience to establish whether something has gone wrong/misconfigured here or whether the redirects are actually correct!
Steve
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Hi Rod, thanks, yes just checked it and that's already enabled.
I haven't setup any other redirects with the host apart from the SSL https redirect (which was just a case of turning it on).I don't have enough experience to establish whether something has gone wrong/misconfigured here or whether the redirects are actually correct!
Steve
Neither do I. I don’t know if setting up https redirects with the host and in Backlight will conflict with each other.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
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Ah I see, good point Rod. I’ll try turning it off in Backlight and see if anything changes.
Steve
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This is still a redirect chain. The first is one you originally mentioned. I think you found it using Screaming Frog, but I don't see it in your navigation. Not sure where this was coming from or if it's still a link. It's missing the ending slash. This type of problem typically happens when you manually enter the link and forget to leave off the ending slash.
The second link is using the wrong protocol. It should be https. Not sure where that is coming from. Could be your server or htaccess file.
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … -eaton-run
http://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries/ … eaton-run/
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/
This next one is odd.
https://adecentexposure.co.uk has a 301 redirects to
https://www.adecentexposure.co.uk
That is causing your home page to load more slowly. This might be something at your DNS level, or a setting at your server, or even possibly in WordPress.
I noted that the URLs in your main navigation are set to the www sub-domain, which is indicating that you're WordPress web site is set to that sub-domain and not the naked domain.
I prefer the naked domain, and not the www sub-domain. It's a matter of personal preference but I don't think you're using sub-domains.
I also noted that your domain and your home page have a different URL, which is wrong. The domain does take you to the home page, but in the menu home is set to this:
https://www.adecentexposure.co.uk/home/
So you end up having two different home pages. This can confuse Google and will mess up your analytics. This might be a setting in WordPress, where you're site's main page should be set to https://www.adecentexposure.co.uk. Also change your menus so you're not pointing home to /home/ and make sure that's not in your sitemap.
I still find a 302 redirect on for http pages to https. They should be 301, not 302.
http://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries/ … eaton-run/
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/
It's also odd that your galleries are not under the www sub-domain, telling me your Backlight configuration doesn't match your WordPress settings.
Again, I think you don't want to use the www sub-domain in WordPress. Then also check that your DNS and/or server settings are consistent with using the naked domain.
Decide on what you'll use: www sub-domain or the naked domain, and then make sure all links are using the same one.
Having both will confuse google. adecentexposure.co.uk and www.adecentexposure.co.uk are TWO DIFFERENT SITES!
By the way, you don't want your search page to be indexed. Mark this flag as noindex.
https://www.adecentexposure.co.uk/backlight/search/
Last edited by JimR (2020-03-17 03:34:58)
--Jim
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