How do I eliminate duplicate page titles?
-
Almost...I repeat almost all of my duplicate page titles show up as such because the page is being seen twice in the crawl. How do I prevent this?
<colgroup><col width="336"> <col width="438"></colgroup>
| www.ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html | Contact ENSO Plastics |
| ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html |Contact ENSO Plastics
|
This is what is from the CSV...there are many more just like this. How do I cut out all of these duplicate urls?
-
thank you for the follow up, Dr. Pete!
-
I don't see anything wrong with your home-page canonical. We usually suggest pointing the home-page to the root:
...and not including the filename (just for the home-page), but that's not necessary. You link internally to "index.html", so what you have is fine, and keeps it consistent. I think the error is only happening because our crawler is trying to view the "/" version and sees the canonical to "index.html" (so, they look different).
-
So if I want the www. page to be the one that shows up in google...what do I put in the head of the ContactUs.html page exactly? As you can see when I put this in the head then I get the critical error from SEOMOZ. So this fix just isn't making sense to me right now. IF I take it back out then the critical error is gone but then I get the message that I should add the canonical to the page.
<dt>Canonical URL</dt>
<dd>"http://www.ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html"</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd>
-
So, just to be clear - these are the same physical page. Google sees the two URLs as being two different pages, but in terms of actual physical documents on your server, there's only one (ContactUs.html). So, you just need the one canonical tag per page.
If you have any dynamic (database/code-driven) pages, then be careful and make sure that the canonical tag is being create dynamically to match the correct page. You don't want to end up with canonical tags to the wrong pages.
-
I'd follow the advice to 301 or canonical, but it doesn't hurt to also declare a canonical version in Google Webmaster Tools - it's under "Site Configuration" > "Settings". You still need to canonicalize, but it's one additional signal to Google (and it's easy).
-
the index page canonical should point to index page,
the content page to the same content page (it is just for eliminating the duplicate issue)
don't put a canonical that points to a page that is not its duplicate
-
Once I add it in and crawl the page I end up with a critical error... so something is not right.
Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
Moderate fix
<dl>
<dt>Canonical URL</dt>
<dd>"http://www.ensoplastics.com/index.html"</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd>
</dl>
-
ok, good luck!
-
Ok I will put the canonical in the head of the html files and see what happens.
-
you have 1 page, that can be reached from two or even more paths. we talk about these paths, and these are creating the duplicate content.
It is like having your site duplicate on your non www. of your domain.
With the canonical, you tell search engines which path, which .html file you are optimizing for.
-
This actually does not solve the problem. I have only one index.html file. So how in the world do I access a page that does not exist in my hierarchy? For example if I have the following two pages there is really only on instance of that page I can edit the head with an html file, it is not like there is actually 2 html pages that exist for each one so in this case am I just stuck creating redirects for each instance where this occurs?
|
www.ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html
ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html
|
-
you just insert into each html file the canonical that points to www url. and it should work it out.
-
So then in the page without the www I should insert this into the head and do the same for all other pages?
-
Hi again
So basically canonicals are better.
And why you get this: when robots crawl your website they see the following pages as different:
And we could continue with variants. Canonicals tell search engines that these pages are the same, and they should handle it as same page.
so if you put a into index file, you will have the following results:
www.example.com (no matter which URL does the search engine visit, they will handle as the canonical link)
This is also good for links, because people might link to you as example.com or example.com/index, etc. etc. Then if you insert the canonical you focus all the links to one URL.
Hope it helped,
Istvan
-
Which is better, and also I am interested in knowing why this happens?
-
Hi,
These duplicate URLs can be resolved two ways easily.
1. 301 from non www. to www. or vice versa
2. canonical to one of the links.
This way you will focus all the link juice on only one page. More power
I hope it helped,
Istvan
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do I fix issue regarding near duplicate pages on website associated to city OR local pages?
I am working on one e-commerce website where we have added 300+ pages to target different local cities in USA. We have added quite different paragraphs on 100+ pages to remove internal duplicate issue and save our website from Panda penalty. You can visit following page to know more about it. And, We have added unique paragraphs on few pages. But, I have big concerns with other elements which are available on page like Banner Gallery, Front Banner, Tool and few other attributes which are commonly available on each pages exclude 4 to 5 sentence paragraph. I have compiled one XML sitemap with all local pages and submitted to Google webmaster tools since 1st June 2013. But, I can see only 1 indexed page by Google on Google webmaster tools. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/local http://www.bannerbuzz.com/local/US/Alabama/Vinyl-Banners http://www.bannerbuzz.com/local/MO/Kansas-City/Vinyl-Banners and so on... Can anyone suggest me best solution for it?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Duplicate title/content errors for blog archives
Hi All Would love some help, fairly new at SEO and using SEOMoz, I've looked through the forums and have just managed to confuse myself. I have a customer with a lot of duplicate page title/content errors in SEOMoz. It's an umbraco CMS and a lot of the errors appear to be blog archives and pagination. i.e. http://example.com/blog http://example.com/blog/ http://example.com/blog/?page=1 http://example.com/blog/?page=2 and then also http://example.com/blog/2011/08 http://example.com/blog/2011/08?page=1 http://example.com/blog/2011/08?page=2 http://example.com/blog/2011/08?page=3 (empty page) http://example.com/blog/2011/08?page=4 (empty page) This continues for different years and months and blog entries and creates hundreds of errors. What's the best way to handle this for the SEOMoz report and the search engines. Should I rel=canonical the /blog page? I think this would probably affect the SEO of all the blog entries? Use robots.txt? Sitemaps? URL parameters in the search engines? Appreciate any assistance/recommendations Thanks in advance Ian
Technical SEO | | iragless0 -
The word 'shop' in a page title
I'm reworking most of the page titles on our site and I'm considering the use of the word 'Shop' before a product category. ex. Shop 'keyword' | Brand Name As opposed to just using the keyword sans 'Shop.' Some of the keywords are very generic, especially for a top level category page. Question: Is the word 'Shop' damaging my SEO efforts in any way?
Technical SEO | | rhoadesjohn0 -
Search/Search Results Page & Duplicate Content
If you have a page whose only purpose is to allow searches and the search results can be generated by any keyword entered, should all those search result urls be no index or rel canonical? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | cakelady0 -
How do I deal with my pages being seen as duplicate content by SeoMoz?
My Dashboard is giving my lots of warnings for duplicate content but it all seems to have something to do with the www and the slash / For example: http://www.ebow.ie/ is seen as having the same duplicate content as http:/ebow.ie/ and http://www.ebow.ie Alos lots to do with how Wordpress categorizes pages and tags that is driving me bonkers! Any help appreciated! Dave. seomoz.png
Technical SEO | | ebowdublin0 -
How can I have pages with media that changes and avoid duplicate content when the text stays the same?
I want to have a page that describes a specific property and/or product. The top part of the page has media options such as video and photos while the bottom includes the description. I know I can set up the media in tabs and have it separated by javascript, but everything resides on one page so there are no duplicate content issues. Example: http://www.worldclassproperties.com/properties/Woodside BUT what if I need to the photos and the videos to have separate URLs so I can link to them individually? For example, for a real estate site blog, I may want to send visitors to the page of the home tour. I don't want to link them to the version of the page with the photos because I want them to arrive on the video portion. Example: http://www.worldclassproperties.com/properties/Woodside?video=1 Is there any way to get around the problem that would result from the duplicate content of the product/property description? I do not have the resources in the budget to make two unique descriptions for every page.
Technical SEO | | WebsightDesign0 -
Duplicate page content errors in SEOmoz
Hi everyone, we just launched this new site and I just ran it through SEOmoz and I got a bunch of duplicate page content errors. Here's one example -- it says these 3 are duplicate content: http://www.alicealan.com/collection/alexa-black-3inch http://www.alicealan.com/collection/alexa-camel-3inch http://www.alicealan.com/collection/alexa-gray-3inch You'll see from the pages that the titles, images and small pieces of the copy are all unique -- but there is some copy that is the same (after all, these are pretty much the same shoe, just a different color). So, why am I getting this error and is there any best way to address? Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | ketanmv
Ketan0 -
Why are my pages getting duplicate content errors?
Studying the Duplicate Page Content report reveals that all (or many) of my pages are getting flagged as having duplicate content because the crawler thinks there are two versions of the same page: http://www.mapsalive.com/Features/audio.aspx http://www.mapsalive.com/Features/Audio.aspx The only difference is the capitalization. We don't have two versions of the page so I don't understand what I'm missing or how to correct this. Anyone have any thoughts for what to look for?
Technical SEO | | jkenyon0