Duplicate Titles Shown in Moz Analytics
-
Hello,
My Moz analytics show over 50 duplicate titles. This because my website title is shown on each page (eg About us | Social Engagement, Contact us | Social Engagement, etc.)
Is this really an error to be fixed, that otherwise will impact rankings? Or can I leave it as it is? I don't mind having my website title on each page, but if its worth removing it due to duplicate issues impacting ranking, I will remove
In this case, does someone have any suggestion on how to do this? Which files should I modify? (Im using Wordpress CMS, and I dont see each page code)
Thanks in advance.
Regards,Eugenio | Social Engagement (http://socialengagement.it)
-
Hello Tuzel,
Thank you again for your help. Plugin could not be deactivated as it left translation and original all in one page.
I found out that I could also use this code in the header.php of the website
Hope it will work, seems less strong than canonical, maybe better try with this first
-
Depends how integral that plugin is to your site. I personally would go straight for the cannonicals but is you can afford to turn it off and experiment then why not. Experimentation is the only way we really find things out in this industry.
-
Hello Tuzzel,
Thanks again you clarified me many doubts
I will keep you updated, I will amend those issues by today.
Do you think is more wise and better to try first deactivating the plugin, and after checking if there is any result, reactivate it and have canonicals for all /en pages? Or is better just to use canonical directly?
Thanks
-
No worries. A canonical is not the same as a 301 however. You should be able to keep the translated pages and allow users to view them, a canonical will signal to search engines only that these pages are the same. A 301 will redirect users to one version of the page too which removes the value of the translated content for your users.
Here's another Q&A thread i was involved in yesterday focusing on Cannonical tags that should make this clearer.
Please do keep me posted, always interested in the outcomes.
Thanks, Tom.
-
I have a plugin for wordpress for language translation. I will try to deactivate it, and see if ranking goes up at least a bit. If it does, it means the plugin and /en urls caused the duplicate issues, and maybe also a drop in rankings.. I will let you know the results, if you are interested
Thanks again to all for help!
-
Hello,
Thanks everyone for replies.
Dave, I already choose a preferred domain
Chris, thanks for the useful tip. I think I already got penalized for this (eg I have 3 blog posts all with the keywords "website ranking" in the url, all for different seo strategies, and only one page is ranked for those keywords). I think i only could 301 redirect, but at the moment, I will leave it as it is, and be more careful in the future.
Tuzzel, thanks, your reply really helped also. I have seen in the Google guide you posted that I should use top domains for translations. This is not possible at the moment. Then you suggested to use canonical tags. Does it mean I should 301 redirect all translated pages to the original ones?
-
Hi,
I think if you look into the duplicate titles problem you may find that it's nothing to do with your brand being in the title, it may be that your domain is being seen with and without the WWW as 2 separate pages.
You will need to make a descision wether to go with www or not.
A simple redirect on one to the other should fix this.
Regards
-
Social,
I think of title tags as sort of like a magnifying glass that Google looks through to see the rest of the words on your page. When the words in the title tag correspond closely with the rest of the words on the page, it may create just enough focus (relevance) to permit the page rank well for a keyword used in the title.
However, if a second or third or fourth page on the site has the same title tag, then those pages would have to have the same page copy as the first if they were to rank as well as the first. Since that would be duplicate content, however, they could never actually make it to the top of the search results.
Two things: 1.) Unique page titles help a page to rank for the unique keyword focus it was optimized for. 2.) Many identical page titles on a site may lower the overall quality and ranking ability on the site in general.
That's all to say you're better off with unique page titles for each page.
-
Hi Eugenio,
Without seeing the Moz reports not totally sure what you are seeing there but if they are as you described they pose no problem, i.e 'page | Brand'.
I took a quick look on Screaming frog however and think i may know what Moz is reporting as i can see a lot of Duplicate titles being caused by the fact you have two versions of each page on two different subdomains
- /en/tag/{Page}
- /en/{Page}
And another few where there is a /{page} and /en/{page}. I thought you may have solved it with Canonical tags as i can see them in the reports to but they just seem to be refering the same pages back to themselve (Not an issue in itself)
I would suggest then this may be the root cause of what you are seeing and should try to take a look at these, Heres a few resources on Dupe content, not sure how familiar or not you are with it, appologies if i am telling you stuff you allready know.
- Which page is canonical (Moz)
- Dupe Content (Webmaster help)
- Common SEO problems and how to fix (Moz, lot of focus on dupe content)
Thanks, Tom.
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
-
Does increase in DA increase Moz Trust score?
I have checked many website which in my office. Have a confusion Does increase in DA increase Moz Trust score? I have a website https://emocrest.com/ which is new one and Moz Trust score as of now is 1 only. Well, most of the projects I'm handling in our office having 2,3,4 in the range. How this MT value is calculated and does it got any relation with the change in Domain Authoiry or the page authority of a website?
Moz Pro | | nazfazy1 -
Why my moz domain authority dropped over night
Dear Moz team Please do let us know why my domain authority (loanonmind.com) suddenly dropped over night
Moz Pro | | experts90 -
How long do changes in title tags take to affect SEO?
This is kind of a loaded question. I'm completely new to SEO. I think my boss signed up for Moz Pro sometime in February and started adding data to our Ecommerce site to help with rankings. Sometime before this, I changed some of the title tags on the site (trying to help with organic search and CTR). I did not do a site wide change.... just changed maybe 10-20 (just a guess). I did it with keywords in mind but did not make note of when I did it. I didn't really know better at the time, and I did not have access to Google Analytics or Moz Pro. I was looking through the ranking data/graph for February and March. It won't let me look before February 29th (so that's why I think my boss started the Mos Pro subscription around at that time). On that day it said we ranked 12 keywords in the 1-3 spot, and then the following week (march 7) it went down to 6. I don't think or know if any major site changes were implemented, so I'm not sure why that happened and if it has anything to do with my title tag changes I did maybe a week or two before (again I am not sure when I did this unfortunately). Since then the keyword ranking numbers stayed about the same with organic traffic slowly going down (it could be because we are getting out of season for our industry though). The second week of March the site was upgraded and since then the menu has been completely changed around. Last week I did a site wide title tag change. So the minor changes I made in February are no longer in effect anyway. I added more keywords to Moz earlier this week and the number for 1-3 spot keywords went up from 6 to 20. It also says my ranking moved up 4 keywords and down 13 keywords. Anyway, I am wondering how seriously I should take these changes and if I'm damaging the site. I am new to Moz Pro also so all the data you can access is kind of confusing/overwhelming.
Moz Pro | | AliMac260 -
How often is the Moz Local report data updated?
Greetings, After engaging Moz Local I have made several manual edits to individual account listings, but I do not yet see them reflected in the reports. How often is the reporting updated? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | richpalpine0 -
My moz campaing not update completely
I have create new account and campaign last week, till now my moz campaign not update like: keywords ranking, competitor websites links etc. Why it is so please update me.
Moz Pro | | Surabhi_Dewra0 -
Duplicate Page Title - although there are differences
Hello, I get duplicate page titles errors on pages in which there are little differences. For example: C++ Online Test for Seniors C# Online Test for Seniors I assume that from some reason the ++ and the # are removed when SEOMoz crawler checks for duplicate page titles. As you may know C# and C++ means two different programming languages. Should I do something about it or is it a bug in the crawler?
Moz Pro | | ulukach0 -
Title Missing or Empty - has title tag's
In seomoz pro this page shows the error - "Title Missing or Empty", but has a tag. I'm trying to figure out if it's an issue on my end or a bug in the mozpro system. Thanks!! http://www.65broadwaydental.com/Contact.aspx
Moz Pro | | MusicNerd0 -
Duplicate Content and Titles in SEOMoz reports
I've had to rename some of the pages on my site and also move them to different locations. I placed a rel="canonical" on the old page pointing to the new one. The reports on my PRO Dashboard are telling me that I have Duplicate Content and Page Title errors. Do the SEOMoz automated reports take the rel="canonical" link into consideration or do I need to remove these pages and do a 301 redirect from the old to the new page?
Moz Pro | | TRICORSystems0