Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best practice for duplicate website content: same root domain name but different extension
-
Hi there
I have a new client who has two websites:
http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.co.nz
http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.org.nzThey are the same in every regard apart from the domain extension (.co.nz & .org.nz) which is likely to be causing them issues with Google ranking given the huge amount of duplicate content.
What is the best practice approach to fixing this? Normally, if I was starting from scratch, I would set one of the extensions as an alias which redirects to the main domain.
Thanks in advance.
Laurie
-
Two URLs containing the same content will be considered as duplicated content, do the domain level redirection so that every URL should redirect to the home page of the preferred domain.
-
Hi - thanks for the response.
Do I still need to set up 301 redirects for every page or can I do it server-side for the entire domain? And is this approach better than using the rel=”canonical” link element in the http header tags?
Thanks
L
-
301 Redirect one to the other. That's it that's all.
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
-
Same content, different languages. Duplicate content issue? | international SEO
Hi, If the "content" is the same, but is written in different languages, will Google see the articles as duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chalet
If google won't see it as duplicate content. What is the profit of implementing the alternate lang tag?Kind regards,Jeroen0 -
URL Rewriting Best Practices
Hey Moz! I’m getting ready to implement URL rewrites on my website to improve site structure/URL readability. More specifically I want to: Improve our website structure by removing redundant directories. Replace underscores with dashes and remove file extensions for our URLs. Please see my example below: Old structure: http://www.widgets.com/widgets/commercial-widgets/small_blue_widget.htm New structure: https://www.widgets.com/commercial-widgets/small-blue-widget I've read several URL rewriting guides online, all of which seem to provide similar but overall different methods to do this. I'm looking for what's considered best practices to implement these rewrites. From what I understand, the most common method is to implement rewrites in our .htaccess file using mod_rewrite (which will find the old URLs and rewrite them according to the rewrites I implement). One question I can't seem to find a definitive answer to is when I implement the rewrite to remove file extensions/replace underscores with dashes in our URLs, do the webpage file names need to be edited to the new format? From what I understand the webpage file names must remain the same for the rewrites in the .htaccess to work. However, our internal links (including canonical links) must be changed to the new URL format. Can anyone shed light on this? Also, I'm aware that implementing URL rewriting improperly could negatively affect our SERP rankings. If I redirect our old website directory structure to our new structure using this rewrite, are my bases covered in regards to having the proper 301 redirects in place to not affect our rankings negatively? Please offer any advice/reliable guides to handle this properly. Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheDude0 -
Woocommerce SEO & Duplicate content?
Hi Moz fellows, I'm new to Woocommerce and couldn't find help on Google about certain SEO-related things. All my past projects were simple 5 pages websites + a blog, so I would just no-index categories, tags and archives to eliminate duplicate content errors. But with Woocommerce Product categories and tags, I've noticed that many e-Commerce websites with a high domain authority actually rank for certain keywords just by having their category/tags indexed. For example keyword 'hippie clothes' = etsy.com/category/hippie-clothes (fictional example) The problem is that if I have 100 products and 10 categories & tags on my site it creates THOUSANDS of duplicate content errors, but If I 'non index' categories and tags they will never rank well once my domain authority rises... Anyone has experience/comments about this? I use SEO by Yoast plugin. Your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance. -Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcandre1 -
Duplicate Content www vs. non-www and best practices
I have a customer who had prior help on his website and I noticed a 301 redirect in his .htaccess Rule for duplicate content removal : www.domain.com vs domain.com RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com [NC]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EnvoyWeb
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com/$1 [R=301,L,NC] The result of this rule is that i type MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com in the browser and it redirects to www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com I wonder if this is causing issues in SERPS. If I have some inbound links pointing to www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com and some pointing to MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com, I would think that this rewrite isn't necessary as it would seem that Googlebot is smart enough to know that these aren't two sites. -----Can you comment on whether this is a best practice for all domains?
-----I've run a report for backlinks. If my thought is true that there are some pointing to www.www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com and some to the www.MY-CUSTOMER-SITE.com, is there any value in addressing this?0 -
Canonical link vs root domain
I have a wordpress website installed on http://domain.com/home/ instead of http://domain.com - Does it matter whether I leave it that way with a canonical link from the domain.com to the domain.com/home/ or should I move the wordpress files and database to the root domain?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JosephFrost0 -
How to deal with competition with a similar domain name as my client website?
How can I deal with other websites that have a keyword domain name similar to my client website? I get a few domains similar to my client domain name just to avoid the same issue, but there are a few others ranking for the same keywords and I don't want posible customers get confused with a similar domain name. I have social media (Facebook, Twitter, Linked in and etc), but they are not ranking on the first page. This is the situation: www.domain.com that would be my client's domain. And the competition: www.bestdomain.com www.thedomain.com www.domaincomapany.com And a few more. At this time my client is ranking #1 position, but all the others ar 1 or 2 positions bellow.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpgprinting0 -
Exact match domain names
Hello, Someone approached a client of mine to sell a exact match domain name for a very competitive and high converting keyword. Would this be of any use and what are the best tactics to employ if it is purchased? I was of the opinion that the 'power' of exact match domain names are dying fast but would be interested to hear what people with experience in this think and what they have done with them (i.e. set-up a website on that domain or re-directed it)? Thanks, Rikki
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RikkiD220 -
Capitals in url creates duplicate content?
Hey Guys, I had a quick look around however I couldn't find a specific answer to this. Currently, the SEOmoz tools come back and show a heap of duplicate content on my site. And there's a fair bit of it. However, a heap of those errors are relating to random capitals in the urls. for example. "www.website.com.au/Home/information/Stuff" is being treated as duplicate content of "www.website.com.au/home/information/stuff" (Note the difference in capitals). Anyone have any recommendations as to how to fix this server side(keeping in mind it's not practical or possible to fix all of these links) or to tell Google to ignore the capitalisation? Any help is greatly appreciated. LM.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarlS0