URL for a date

Hi,

This URL looks like part of the date archives but you’ve set this page to ‘noindex’ so it won’t show up in Google’s search results.

You’ll need to make sure date archives are enabled and you want to have them show in the search results if you want these date archives to output in the search results. You can locate this option under your WP admin dashboard > SEO (sidebar) > Search Appearance > Archives > Date Archives.

Then what does “Date-based archives in some cases also be seen as duplicate content” mean?

And I have activated it too but why is it still not in the sitemap?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Mushlih Almubarak.

Date archives may cause duplicate content when you don’t optimize it. If you are going to use the date archives on your site, we highly recommend you to optimize them correctly. You can find more information about this here.

On the other hand, Yoast SEO doesn’t show the date archives in the sitemap index even if you want to use them on your site.

So, are dated archives bad and bad for SEO?
And why didn’t yoast put it on the sitemap?

Hi @mushlih,

It’s usually a good idea to not use date-based archives as this usually doesn’t help your visitors to find specific posts they’re looking for.

The plugin allows you to either add noindex, follow the archives or to disable them completely. Using the noindex, follow option will allow search engines to follow the links in the archive, but won’t make the date-based archive pages themselves show up in search results.

Also, for this reason, Yoast does not output it on the sitemap.

Then, are good tags and categories displayed in search results? Will there not be a duplication like the date archive?

And for the date archive what good is the setup like this: https://prnt.sc/uma3ek ?
The first is activated and the second is disabled?

Hi @mushlih,

Thanks for the question. If you use categories and tags carefully to structure your site, having the duplicate content problem isn’t likely. We have recommendations for using categories and tags for SEO to avoid this problem: Taxonomy SEO: How to optimize your categories and tags for Google.

As for the date archives, we recommend clicking the “Nonaktif” button to disable them. This removes and sets the other options for you.

Ok, thank you very much

Hi
If my “date archive” option is disabled, why can’t visitors see posts on that particular date? and also can I enable date archives and author archives without displaying in search results? Is that bad for SEO?

Hi @mushlih,

When your date archive setting is set to ‘disabled’, we redirect date archive pages such as /2020/09/ so they don’t work anymore.

Yes you can enable date/author archives but still make them not to appear in Google search results. Then you need to use Enable on the author/date archive and set the ‘Show author archives in search results?’ option to No.

As explained earlier, if your posts are already using categories/tags, there is not much benefit to have extra pages such as date or author archives that also list the same posts. It depends on your content and what is best for your readers. If you have a good structure with categories/tags, that is just fine.

If you want to know more about SEO and site structure in general, we recommend looking at our SEO courses to learn more.

Sorry, to be sure, will enabling date archives without displaying them on search results pages worsen the SEO of my site?
Thank you

Hi,

It really depends if your date archives are well-optimized or there’s a valid use-case for it for your users and visitors. If it’s duplicate content that can be similar to your other categories or tags or it’s generally low quality content, then we would usually recommend disabling it as it doesn’t add much value for your users.

Otherwise, if you feel like you need to have it on your website and there is a valid use-case, enabling the date archives but setting it to ‘noindex’ is also an okay option and shouldn’t cause any SEO issues.

Ok, thank you