WordPress Archive Widgets SEO Damaging Anchor Text

WordPress Archive Widgets SEO Damaging Anchor Text

WordPress Dated Archive internal links anchor text is awful – tend to use dates, months, years etc… which have no SEO value.

The Twenty Sixteen theme output for the calendar (daily archives) widget and the dated (monthly archives) widget, the calendar widget uses the day of the month (1, 2, 3…. 30, 31) and the monthly archives widget uses “Month Year” as link anchor text. They are SEO awful, those will be SEO damaging to the SEO content targeting of Posts etc… they would only benefit content covering months, years and the number 1-31.

Dated Archive SERPs targeting is awful – title tags and link anchor text tend to be dates, but the content is everything from the site (no targeting at all, no categorization).

From an SEO perspective they add nothing positive to a site (beyond a simple sitemap) and cause serious SEO damage to the content targeting of your WordPress Posts etc…

If you care about your WordPress sites SEO do NOT use the Archive Widgets (Calendar and Archives) or any theme/plugin custom Archive widgets. If you currently have Dated Archive widgets on a sidebar go to “Appearance” > “Widgets”, find the relevant archive widgets and remove them.

Continue Reading Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin Noindex Date Archives Tutorial