Does 301 Redirect solve many problems?
-
Hi,
there are many problems with my site. I have a lot of duplicate page titles and a lot of missing meta tags. However, I think most of them are BECAUSE i have a lot of duplicate pages.
So I have read some articles and I will 301 redirect all the duplicated pages. Will this solve the problem with duplicate titles and missing meta tags as well?
For example, my homepage has like 10 duplicated pages. Since they are duplicated, they have the same titles and they are all missing meta tags. I am planning to fill in meta tags JUST for the canonical page and redirect all duplicated pages to that page. Is this a good practice?
Also, just curious, do different title tags and different meta tag description make the pages "not duplicated?" I assume it will still appear as duplicated....
Sorry if this was confusing...
-
I think you should be fine, and Owen's comment below is excellent advice too. Following his suggestions may help prevent future problems too.
-
Kyu,
In my working with several different CMS editors, on occasion there is a system solution to cut down on this kind of duplication. I would investigate that with whatever knowledge base or support is available. Perhaps there is a way to prevent the duplicates from existing.
I would not worry too much about penalties as long as the 301 or canonical tag (whichever you choose) is properly set up.
-
Thanks for the warning!
Which leads me to another question. I have briefly read about people who do that, and I actually have no idea why (From an SEO perspective) they do and how they do it.
I am using Joomla and for some reason, pages have been created that I did not want and that is why I am going to redirect.
Sooo, is it possible to unintentionally manipulate google with this method? I just dont want to get in trouble...
Thanks!
-
Hi Kyu,
Yes and yes. However, one word of precaution, if it appears that you are trying to manipulate the page authority of your homepage by creating duplicates and then putting 301 redirects on them, Google may frown on this. I'm not suggesting that's the case here at all, but just in case other people read this thread and get any crazy ideas....just don't go there
Best of luck to you Kyu,
Dana
-
Hi Dana!
Thanks for the fast and great response!
I had one more followup question.
So lets say I have ten duplicated pages of a homepage. They all have same duplicate title and all are missing meta tags. If I redirect all the duplicated pages, can i just
1. leave all the duplicated titles as is. Will Google see the redirect and not bother reading the duplicated title tags?
2. Just fill the meta tag for the main page to which all duplicated pages point to. Is there a point to filling in missing meta tags for duplicated pages?
Thanks!
-
Hi Kyu, Yes, you are on the right track with your approach to 301 redirects. The question you ask about having different Title tags and meta descriptiong completely solving a duplicate content problem is a very good one. For example, say you had to very similar products on an e-commerce site. You decide to use exactly the same on-page copy for the on-page description, but you write unique meta description and title tags. Let's say you went one step further, and even put canonical tags on each of these pages. From the viewpoint of GWT or SEOMoz's crawler, no, duplicate content wouldn't be identified. Googlebot, however, could see this differently and determine that it is indeed duplicate content. Matt Cutts has even gone as far to say that content that is "substantially similar" can be flagged as duplicate content. That being said, even if your content isn't showing as duplicate with some of the tools you can use, if you know it's duplicate, fix it and make it as unique as possible.
Hope that helps!
Dana
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
-
Using a Reverse Proxy and 301 redirect to appear Sub Domain as Sub Directory - what are the SEO Risks?
We’re in process to move WordPress blog URLs from subdomains to sub-directory. We aren’t moving blog physically, but using reverse proxy and 301 redirection to do this. Blog subdomain URL is https://blog.example.com/ and destination sub-directory URL is https://www.example.com/blog/ Our main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL site. This is on Windows server. Due to technical reasons, we can’t physically move our WordPress blog to the main website. Following is our Technical Setup Setup a reverse proxy at https://www.example.com/blog/ pointing to https://blog.example.com/ Use a 301 redirection from https://blog.example.com/ to https://www.example.com/blog/ with an exception if a traffic is coming from main WWW domain then it won’t redirect. Thus, we can eliminate infinite loop. Change all absolute URLs to relative URLs on blog Change the sitemap URL from https://blog.example.com/sitemap.xml to https://www.example.com/blog/sitemap.xml and update all URLs mentioned within the sitemap. SEO Risk Evaluation We have individual GA Tracking ID and individual Google Search Console Properties for main website and blog. We will not merge them. Keep them separate as they are. Keeping this in mind, I am evaluating SEO Risks factors Right now when we receive traffic from main website to blog (or vice versa) then it is considered as referral traffic and new cookies are set for Google Analytics. What’s going to happen when its on the same domain? Which type of settings change should I do in Blog’s Google Search Console? (A). Do I need to request “Change of Address” in the Blog’s search console property? (B). Should I re-submit the sitemap? Do I need to re-submit the blog sitemap from the https://www.example.com/ Google Search Console Property? Main website is e-commerce marketplace which is YMYL website, and blog is all about content. So does that impact SEO? Will this dilute SEO link juice or impact on the main website ranking because following are the key SEO Metrices. (A). Main website’s Avg Session Duration is about 10 minutes and bounce rate is around 30% (B). Blog’s Avg Session Duration is 33 seconds and bounce rate is over 92%
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joshibhargav_200 -
301 Redirect - Rank Recovery Examples?
Hi All, I recently did a 301 redirect. Page to Page and the notified google via its console. Its been 6 days since. The home page and one other high traffic page swopped out with the new domain on google search index with 3-4 drops in ranking for each. The rest of the sites pages have been indexed but still reflect the old domain when searched. Recently today my home page dropped even further to the second page of google index for the specific keyword. Can you share similar experiences and how long it took you to recover rank fully? and how long for all pages to swop out on google search's index? Regards Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MikeBlue10 -
301 Redirects - 4 sites into 1
Hey all, I have an SEO conundrum that seems to have no right or wrong answer. If you have 2 minutes I’d love to hear your opinion. The Situation
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PamelaH88
Our client has 4 ecommerce sites (Sites A, B, C & D) all selling the same products.
He wishes to to merge all 4 sites into a single site (Site A) Options
In order to maintain maximum SEO authority do we: A - Choose a single site (B, C, or D) with the most SEO authority/juice/power and 301 re-direct it into Site A
Or
B – 301 re-direct all 3 sites (B, C & D) into Site A Our experience says that 301’ing from a single site works well, but from multiple sites feels spammy and risky. Really keen too hear your thoughts.1 -
How is my 301 redirected site stealing rankings from the main site?
Hello, I have a site, drhobelt.com, that 301 redirects to the main site, drhonow.com. Not only is drhobelt.com still indexed, but it recently stole rankings from drhonow.com for "decompression belt" related terms. What could be causing this? How do I reclaim the rankings for drhonow.com? Thanks for reading!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
For a mobile website, is it better to use a 301 vs. a 302 redirect?
We are vetting a vendor for our mobile website and they are recommending using a 302 redirect with rel=canonical vs. a 301 redirect due to 301 caching issues. All the research I've done shows that a 301 is by far the better way to go do to proper indexing, which in turn will enhance our page authority. Thoughts on why a 302 would be a better fit than a 301 on our mobile site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seohdsupply1 -
301 redirect changed googles cached title tags ??
Hi, This is a new one to me ?! I recently added some 301 redirects from pages that I've removed from my site. Most of them just redirect to my home page, whilst a few redirect to appropriate replacement pages. The odd thing is that when I now search my keywords googles serp shows my website with a title that was on some of the old (now removed and redirected) pages. Is this normal? If so, how should I prevent this from happening? What is going on? The only reasons I set up the redirects was to collect any link juice from the old pages and prevent 404s. Should I remove the 301s? I fetched as google and submitted - to see if that updates the tags. (not been indexed yet) Any help would be appreciated. Kind Regards Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thephoenix250 -
301 Redirect how to get those juices flowing
HI Guys Following on from my previous posts i have still not got my rankings back, http://www.seomoz.org/q/301-redirect-have-no-ranking i am beginning to think that i do have a underlying issue in the site which is restricting me My old site www.economyleasinguk.co.uk was moved to www.economy-car-leasing.co.uk, as mentioned the 301 seemed to go really well and all pages updated within 48 hours, however over 5 months on and the juice from the old site is still not pushed over and i hardly rank at all for anything. here are a list of things i have tried 1:Swapped the original 301 which was PHP for an Htaccess 2: added canonical tag to all pages 3: Turned on internal links as per this post by Everett Sizemore http://www.seomoz.org/blog/uncrawled-301s-a-quick-fix-for-when-relaunches-go-too-well number 3 was only done 5 days ago and initially bot traffic was immense, and may need a bit more time to see any results. I still think i have another underlying issue due to the below reasons 1: Page rank on home page is one but inner pages mixture of 1, 2 and 3 sporadically 2: If I copy text from home page no results 3: Open site explorer still has the old site at with a PA of 60 compared to 42 for the new site 4: Checked server logs and Google is visiting old site 5: Header responses are all correct for the canonicals and see no chaining of the 301’s 6: All pages are do follow and no robots restrictions 7: site:has only in the last few days removed the old site from the index naturally it could be that its just a matter of time however 5 months for a 301 is a very long time and 80% traffic loss is immense I would really appreciate it if someone can give the site a once over and see if i have missed anything obvious. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kellymandingo0 -
Should I 301 Redirect Old Pages to Newer Ones?
I know there is value having lots of unique content on our websites, but I'm wondering how long it should be kept for, and if there is any value in 301 redirecting it? So, for example we have a number of pages on our website that are dedicated to single products (blue widget x, blue widget y, red widget x, red widget y). Nice unique content, with some (but not many) links. These products are no longer available though and have been replaced. So I'm faced with three choices: 1. Leave it as it is, and hope it adds to the overall site authority (by value of being another page), and also perhaps mop up a few longer tail keywords. Add a link to the replacement product on these pages; 2. 301 redirect these pages to the replacement products to give these a bit of a boost, and lose the content; 3. 301 redirect these pages to the replacement products and move all the old content to a new 'blue widgets archive' and 'red widgets archive' page? Would appreciate everyones thoughts!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigMiniMan0