WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
A while ago you may have begun noting a variety of pages appearing in Google result pages that do not appear like they should be WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo. The results are an article on a blog, but what’s the “post” is in reality an image that has the alt text. It’s got all the sidebar and top trappings of a regular blog post however it’s not the actual blog post. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
The pages appear in searches due to an upgrade to the Yoast SEO plugin which may have accidentally enabled the pages to be indexed. If you’ve noticed these pages before they’re likely because of another plugin or lack of it, which made them visible. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
These pages are available on WordPress as a default, but they’re not designed to be seen by the public to the general public. The option is there in case you’re interested in making your pages more optimized, writing lengthy mini-posts for every image you make. This is something that nobody does, however.
These pages could affect the SEO of your site. I can attest to this personal experience; the Yoast update caused these pages to appear across my websites, which led to lots of pages that were indexed but had very little information on the pages. It took time to correct the issue and it took a while to wait for Google to update their index as well, and over time, my traffic decreased significantly. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
What’s the cause of this issue?
It’s clear that there is a problem . I’ll show you the statistics results to prove it. But what’s the reason? The answer lies all the way to 2011, and Google Panda. Google Panda update. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
Panda was a massive Google algorithm overhaul that emphasized good quality content, while devaluing low-quality content. It was an attempt to tackle content farms specifically as well as scrapers of content and websites with weak content. It also helped to remove private blogs from the circulation and sifted out many spam websites that had spun content, and damaged sites like eHow which relied on millions of low-value articles to stay alive. eHow and other websites like it have been able to adapt to the changing times however, many haven’t. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
The consequences from Panda are present to this day as content penalties continue to be imposed for pages that are thin and duplicate content. The issue is that image pages are now thin content.
Imagine if every photo you’ve ever published in the blog post, suddenly turned into an image that links to a different “post” that you have on your website that contained only the image and a paragraph or two of text. If you’ve posted three images on each blog article, it’s a massive number of pages that were made in just a few hours. Now 75percent of your site is just a few words. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
This alone is enough to make Google to hammer the content penalty. And, to be crystal clear, this isn’t a manual penalty. It’s simply what the Google algorithm ranks sites. If the ratio of negative content to good content gets excessively, your website will be deemed unworthy. In extreme situations it is possible to be removed from index completely. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
That deindexation did not occur to me was completely due to the content of my website prior the proliferation of content that was thin. Actually the majority of these thin pages are highly ranked for the keywords they were associated with, simply because of the quality of the other pages of my website. My issue was not due to the lower search rank and dilution of results from the search. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
Search results that are diluted are what you get when suddenly there is 300 percent additional content available on my website for the exact keywords. A lot of these “new” content pieces are ranked for similar keywords to the content they are derived from. It means that the content is competing against itself to get a higher ranking. Sometimes, the article is the winner, but at other times the image does and then it all flies around while Google decides what to do with it. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
Naturally, this means that the traffic to my website will be diluted among these links and most of the time images on their own pages are not able to receive the bounces. The user clicks to view an article, is shown an image and then leave instead of trying to locate the article. Before I was able to fix my issue, I experienced an enormous bounce rate due to precisely this reason. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
There is confidence that my website could have been wiped out of the results had I not been able to identify and address the problem. The fact that this occurred quickly and in a single day and that my site was operating in good order before it occurred, enabled Google to grant me the benefit doubt. In essence, Google said “hey, this is an issue however we’re not going to radically penalize you because it may be an accident. Make it right and you’ll return to normal. However, in the event that you don’t take care of it, you’ll end up tanking .” – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
Naturally, they didn’t clarify that for me. Google doesn’t send you messages with warnings to users. If you’re not monitoring your site, you may not be aware of this happening. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
There’s fortunately enough, many possible ways to solve the issue.
Method 1: Modifying the Image Settings
WordPress is the default WordPress that comes with different settings for how images are handled by the system. The process of creating an image post is one option however you can configure WordPress to display the image as the form of a lightbox upon clicking or take users straight to the photo. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
You can alter the settings on your pictures at any point to alter the location for the hyperlink. You could even link to an external website. If, for instance, I were sourcing images from another site I could make the image’s link direct to the page where the image is sourced from. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
The issue with this idea solution to the issue is that it’s impossible to accomplish it in a masse. If you’ve got a six-year-old blog that has hundreds of photos in your library of content and all of them have been set to connect to an image article page, you’ll be doomed. You can look through them and alter them, but you’ll need to perform each one at a time and manually. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
It’s not really a strategy to resolve the issue in the sense that it’s a way to raise recognition of the problem. As time passes, you can decide to alter that setting whenever you add new media to your library, and then insert it into a blog post. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
Method 2. Manual Code Editing
The issue is explained here in addition as a instructions on how to resolve the issue. There are two variants here.
One option is to modify the setting manually. You will want to access the WP admin settings and options page. Type in your domain.com/wpfolder name/ wp-admin/options .p h p to go directly to the options menu. One such option will be labeled image _default _link _type. You can modify the box in the middle to whatever option you prefer, but ideally “None” to eliminate the whole thing. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
If you’re using some SEO plugins or theme which sets SEO options for you This setting will probably not allow you to save. The setting will be overwritten by the control that is responsible for the change. The link I provided above provides a solution. I’m not just going to paste in here. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
The solution, at a minimum in the case when a theme has set the option for you, is to include code in the theme in order to alter the option. The code is put in the right place and you’ll need to include it in the functions.ph p file at the right location as per the directions. I’d like to be more specific, but the instructions may differ based of the specific theme you’re using and the the framework that you’re using. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
Method 3: Resolving the Settings
You might think that this is the first thing you’d attempt, but truthfully I’m not sure it’s an adequate solution any longer. – WordPress Attachment Hurt Seo
If you’re using Yoast and you’ve encountered the same issue I did, navigate to your Yoast setting, enable advanced settings in case you haven’t done so already and locate the attachment settings for media posts. Simply turn off the indexing of media posts and then turn it back on. This will deindex the pages in question and restore your site to its original state prior to the issue arising.
My issue with this method is that I already had these settings removed. Yoast issued an update which changed my settings, which harmed my website. I could disable indexation once more however what happens next time this issue happens? It’s not my intention to continue being a victim of the consequences of a plugin’s updates that harm my website every time.
It’s obvious that there’s no assurance that this will never occur again. This isn’t something I’d want to take as a result of a problem that I could fix in more durable and possibly more SEO-friendly methods.
Method 4 Method 4: Redirection
The approach I’ve chosen to resolve the issue and the one I have found most effective to recommend is the use of a redirection plugin.
Yoast has a setting that can activate this redirection feature, however, it’s been a while since I’ve lost faith in Yoast due to this. So, I’ve decided to choose a different plugin that does the same. It’s a straightforward, easy-to-add-and-forget plugin that won’t affect the time it takes to load my pages which is why I’m happy including it. It shouldn’t harm my SEO at all, since it’s a good thing.
How it does is very simple. It creates a redirection from the page that hosts attachments to the page hosting the attachment. There are a few repercussions in the event of an issue with the post, in addition.
The first scenario is that a user clicks on the post that hosts the attachment instead of the page that hosts the attachment however, the article is still there and is working fine. In this case the plugin will then implement an SEO-friendly 301 redirect , and direct users to the article where the image is. This is the intention in the end.
The other alternative can be the case that the reader will land on the attachment page instead of the original article however, the post is deleted within the WordPress Trash folder, but it isn’t permanently deleted. In certain versions of WordPress this could trigger the user to be in a redirect loop and keep users in an endless loading screen. To stop this from happening it detects the issue and then redirects you on your page on 404. If you’ve created a custom 404 page, then all of it works perfectly.
Another possibility could be that the visitor clicks on the attachment page instead of the original article however the article is no longer there. It’s been removed permanently. In this situation the plugin will implement an unintentional redirection of 302 seconds to your home page. It is possible to detect this by keeping track of your site’s analytics and looking at the sources of your website’s traffic. If you spot problems, then you have the option to either change the content to something else, or delete the attachment, so that the site disappears. I would suggest the latter because, when visitors are coming to the page, it must have something valuable about the information.
If you have deleted the content with a valid reason and you want it to be to be deleted permanently however, you aren’t sure if you want to erase the page that contains the media attachment You can modify the plugin so that it implements an 301 permanent redirect instead. The traffic will be directed straight to the homepage. I would not recommend this because the person might be searching for the image in itself and will not be able to find that image in your website. I’d rather delete the attachment page whenever I discover such an incident.
In any event, the plugin is free and simple for installation, and offers just one setting option. It’s the perfect solution to stop this issue from happening over and over again, as well as minimize the harm if it happens.
I’m dissatisfied that an issue in Yoast’s upgrade has caused all of these problems, and if it were a less effective plugin, I’d drop this without hesitation. The significance of all these different Yoast settings is so great that getting rid of it would be too much effort and I’ve had to compromise. I hope that you’ll find yourself in a better position.
