4 replies to this topic

[northamptoncomputers]

We are working on a wordpress website (actual website is Removed – please remove the underscores). The website consists of 35 standard pages and then it has a traditional blog page which has around 25 blog posts in it. When the site was developed it was originally run from 1 installation of wordpress however a number of problems were encountered with updating the site and the coders suggested having a primary installation of wordpress to run the main site and a second installation to purely run the blog. This was accepted this and all seemed fine. This appeared to sort the problem relating to updating the website and the blog, however the site appeared to take a hit in SERPS ratings. We initially just put this down to the changes that had been made.
After quite some time, with no SERPS improvement (the homepage had pretty much disappeared from SERPS totally). It was then noted that if we viewed the Google Cache version of the homepage that is was actually looking at our Google Plus page for some reason. This code
 
<link rel=”canonical” href=”link to our g+ page”>
 
was present  at the top of the homepage. This was deleted and after two weeks Google is now looking at our actual homepage and SERPS results for the homepage have rebounded. So all in all, that was good news. Looking deeper into the site, it now appears that pretty much all the interior pages seem to exhibit the same problem in that the Google Cached data reflects the Google Plus page and not the actual website page. After searching for additional code that might be causing this and not having found any, we are now beginning to wonder is it due to 2 installations of wordpress, so 2 websites on the same IP address? So that is our first question.
Our second question is, what are the pros and cons of using 2 installations of wordpress in the first instance? Was it a really bad idea? Or was it basically acceptable? In any case we feel that the coders, whilst very well meaning, may not have had a huge amount of experience in these matters.
Any comments and advice would be most appreciated.

Edited by chrishirst, 12 March 2013 - 12:13 PM.

[chrishirst]

It was then noted that if we viewed the Google Cache version of the homepage that is was actually looking at our Google Plus page for some reason. This code
 
<link rel=”canonical” href=”link to our g+ page”>

 

Well it does seem that the "canonical" link element functions as intended then.

 

 

we are now beginning to wonder is it due to 2 installations of wordpress

No.

 

 

2 websites on the same IP address?

No

 

 

Our second question is, what are the pros and cons of using 2 installations of wordpress in the first instance?

None of either really, though running WordPress in Multi-Site mode (like wordpress.com) is far simpler to maintain.

 

 Was it a really bad idea? Or was it basically acceptable?

No and yes, but it sounds like your developers were not that clued up on matter pertaining to WordPress

[Alan Perkins]

<link rel=”canonical” href=”link to our g+ page”>

 

 

This was the problem, which you've now fixed.

 

Incidentally, northamptoncomputers, I am based just down the road in Kettering ...

[qwerty]

There's still the matter of the cached copies of the internal pages. It might be just a matter of time if they're not being crawled very often, but if that's not the case, you need to figure it out. Do those pages use rel-canonical at all? If so, are they pointing to themselves or elsewhere? Have you tried running them through a tool like SEO-Browser or Web Sniffer?

[northamptoncomputers]

Thanks for your replies - they were very helpful.

 

In the first instance we think it may just be a matter of giving it a little more time for Google to re-crawl all the pages.