Error msg 'Duplicate Page Content', how to fix?
-
Hey guys,
I'm new to SEO and have the following error msg 'Duplicate Page Content'. Of course I know what it means, but my question is how do you delete the old pages that has duplicate content?
I use to run my website through Joomla! but have since moved to Shopify. I see that the duplicated site content is still from the old Joomla! site and I would like to learn how to delete this content (or best practice in this situation).
Any advice would be very helpful!
Cheers,
Peter
-
I dont think the problem is the https vs http here.
Maybe you could share one of the erros with me?
Fredrik
-
Hi Fredrik,
Thanks for the follow up! I got the error msg from my SEOmoz dashboard. I just got it a couple days ago and the first crawl has been completed. I can also see in Google Webmaster a similar error msg. The old pages are on an older SSL secured site, but the domain is still the same.
For example, my old site was https://www.kellanapparel.com and now I don't use the SSL certificate and the website is hosted on a new platform (shopify) but with the same domain minus 's' (so now its http://www.kellanapparel.com). Maybe it's the case that the old SSL certificate is still valid and because the old content is associated on there it's still triggering? Would this make a difference?
Cheers,
Peter
-
Hi Peter
When you say you got the message 'Duplicate Page Content', is this from Google Webmaster Tools?
You mention an old page? Is that still active under different domain?
To avoid the duplicate content error you need to make sure that there is only ONE url for each piece of content. There are many ways of achieving this and here I only suggest a few:
Canonical tags
Try to use Canonical tags where ever you can. This can be implemented on both versions. The orgininal version should have tags pointing to itself. More info on excatly how to do this here:
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization
Remove old site from index
Make sure the old system is no longer indexed. Do this using either robots.txt or add a no index no follow metatag.
More on robots.txt here:
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/robotst.xt
301 redirects
Try to use 301 redirects pointing any old page to the new page. You can also use this to point non www pages to always use www or the other way around. If you have old pages on a different system make sure these are not online. If they are still active on different domain, make sure to make 301 redirects to the new page.
More on this here:
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/redirection
You can find more info on how to avoid this error on this post:
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content
Good luck and hope these tips can help you get started.
Fredrik
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
-
Old pages not mobile friendly - new pages in process but don't want to upset current traffic.
Working with a new client. They have what I would describe as two virtual websites. Same domain but different coding, navigation and structure. Old virtual website pages fail mobile friendly, they were not designed to be responsive ( there really is no way to fix them) but they are ranking and getting traffic. New virtual website pages pass mobile friendly but are not SEO optimized yet and are not ranking and not getting organic traffic. My understanding is NOT mobile friendly is a "site" designation and although the offending pages are listed it is not a "page" designation. Is this correct? If my understanding is true what would be the best way to hold onto the rankings and traffic generated by old virtual website pages and resolve the "NOT mobile friendly" problem until the new virtual website pages have surpassed the old pages in ranking and traffic? A proposal was made to redirect any mobile traffic on the old virtual website pages to mobile friendly pages. What will happen to SEO if this is done? The pages would pass mobile friendly because they would go to mobile friendly pages, I assume, but what about link equity? Would they see a drop in traffic ? Any thoughts? Thanks, Toni
Technical SEO | | Toni70 -
Pages with Duplicate Content
When I crawl my site through moz, it shows lots of Pages with Duplicate Content. The thing is all that pages are pagination pages. How should I solve this issue?
Technical SEO | | 100offdeal0 -
Are aggregate sites penalised for duplicate page content?
Hi all,We're running a used car search engine (http://autouncle.dk/en/) in Denmark, Sweden and soon Germany. The site works in a conventional search engine way with a search form and pages of search results (car adverts).The nature of car searching entails that the same advert exists on a large number of different urls (because of the many different search criteria and pagination). From my understanding this is problematic because Google will penalize the site for having duplicated content. Since the order of search results is mixed, I assume SEOmoz cannot always identify almost identical pages so the problem is perhaps bigger than what SEOmoz can tell us. In your opinion, what is the best strategy to solve this? We currently use a very simple canonical solution.For the record, besides collecting car adverts AutoUncle provide a lot of value to our large user base (including valuations on all cars) . We're not just another leech adword site. In fact, we don't have a single banner.Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | JonasNielsen0 -
How do I get rid of duplicate content
I have a site that is new but I managed to get it to page one. Now when I scan it on SEO Moz I see that I have duplicate content. Ex: www.mysite.com, www.mysite.com/index and www.mysite.com/ How do I fix this without jeopardizing my SERPS ranking? Any tips?
Technical SEO | | bronxpad0 -
150 Duplicate page error
I am told that I have 150 duplicate page content. It seems that it is the login link on each of my pages. Is this an error? Is it something I have to change? Thanks Login/Register at http://irishdancingdress.com/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Firishdancingdress.com%2Fdress
Technical SEO | | ukkpower0 -
How can I prevent duplicate content between www.page.com/ and www.page.com
SEOMoz's recent crawl showed me that I had an error for duplicate content and duplicate page titles. This is a problem because it found the same page twice because of a '/' on the end of one url. e.g. www.page.com/ vs. www.page.com My question is do I need to be concerned about this. And is there anything I should put in my htaccess file to prevent this happening. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | onlineexpression
Karl0 -
How can i see the pages that cause duplicate content?
SEOmoz PRO is giving me back duplicate content errors. However, i don't see how i can get a list of pages that are duplicate to the one shown. If i don't know which pages/urls cause the issue i can't really fix it. The only way would be placing canonical tags but that's not always the best solution. Is there a way to see the actual duplicate pages?
Technical SEO | | 5MMedia0 -
Duplicate Content
Hello All, my first web crawl has come back with a duplicate content warning for www.simodal.com and www.simodal.com/index.htm slightly mystified! thanks paul
Technical SEO | | simodal0