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.
Duplicate Content with ?Page ID's in WordPress
-
Hi there,
I'm trying to figure out the best way to solve a duplicate content problem that I have due to Page ID's that WordPress automatically assigns to pages. I know that in order for me to resolve this I have to use canonical urls but the problem for me is I can't figure out the URL structure.
Moz is showing me thousands of duplicate content errors that are mostly related to Page IDs
For example, this is how a page's url should look like on my site
Moz is telling me there are 50 duplicate content errors for this page. The page ID for this page is 82 so the duplicate content errors appear as follows
and so on. For 47 more pages. The problem repeats itself with other pages as well.
My permalinks are set to "Post Name" so I know that's not an issue.
What can I do to resolve this? How can I use canonical URLs to solve this problem. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
-
this might do it as well
A flexible pattern URL mapping is a way of redirecting all URLs that match a particular pattern, to equivalent destination URLs, using a single mapping. It does this by allowing you to parse out and name portions of the requested URL to substitute into the destination URL. These types of URL mappings are useful when you are changing the structure or format of your URLs, but want to make sure you can redirect requests for pages under their old URL structure to their new URLs.
An example of a flexible pattern URL is the following:
/myblog/:post-year/:post-month/*rest-of-url?id=:post-id
Each portion of the URL above that starts with a colon (:) creates a named component that is matched until the next delimiter character (./=&?), and any portion that starts with an asterisk (*) creates a named component that is matched until the end of the URL (up to the query string).
The named components can then be used in the URL mapping's destination, with each name included inside of curly braces. For example, the named components defined in the flexible pattern URL above could be used to create the following destination:
/newblog/{post-year}/{post-month}/post-{post-id}/{rest-of-url}
To demonstrate how this flexible pattern URL mapping would work, let's consider the following example requested URL and where it would be redirected. The named components in the requested and destination URLs are highlighted.
Requested URL: http://www.mydomain.com/myblog/2013/12/marketing/inbound-marketing-rocks?id=98765
Redirected to: http://www.mydomain.com/newblog/2013/12/post-98765/marketing/inbound-marketing-rocks
With this pattern-based URL mapping we were able to retain all of the important, identifying parts of the original URL and insert them into the new URL structure. In addition, with this particular mapping, we were able to:
- capture the variable-length {rest-of-url} component (i.e. marketing/inbound-marketing-rocks) to be used in the destination url, by using an asterisk (*) at the beginning of that component's definition
- move the {post-id} component from the query string in the original URL into the middle of the URL in the destination
-
you may want to remove the flash file from the website. It is not compatible with iPhones and flash is really something I would stay away from on websites.
This is flash
http://www.spamedica.com/wp-content/themes/spamedia/flash/spamedica_flash.swf
See why that's not good
http://www.browserstack.com/screenshots/46bca267a16b8726a26c7438e76317ef51b877be
Try
http://www.browserstack.com/responsive
Here's an example of the exact same thing using the gif
http://cl.ly/image/2t2d470b3A2F/Screen Recording 2014-09-23 at 12.58 PM.gif
iPhone
The http://www.siteground.com/ your host is great for shared hosting
your IP
181.224.137.194 - 126 other sites hosted on this server
I honestly would give them a call and have them correct your htaccess file
However if you want something that's going to be faster and focused 100% on WordPress use manage WordPress hosting provider. Like GetFlywheel you get your own VPS only one site per an IP no shared resources and this type of stuff is never a problem for them to fix.
You can migrate 100% free in addition.
Overall I would say that your site needs some TLC
http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/exa05N/http://www.spamedica.com/
you have over 100 requests and your server does a good job of catching after it's been loaded but not that much prior to so the 1st visit will be slow.
Most important part is it needs to be responsive and work properly on mobile devices.
that includes using CSS 3 and HTML 5 to substitute for flash so render properly on all devices. In addition to allowing people to browse it on all devices.
http://www.spamedica.com/
Tested from New York City, New York, USA on September 23 at 14:00:29
<dl class="first">
<dt>Page size</dt>
<dd>1.9MB</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dt>Load time</dt>
<dd>2.31s</dd>
</dl>
<dl>
<dt>Requests</dt>
<dd>112</dd>
</dl>
<dl class="last">
<dt>Perf. grade</dt>
<dd>69/100</dd>
</dl>
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
You can check it with
https://yoast.com/wp-content/permalink-helper.php
https://yoast.com/change-wordpress-permalink-structure/
If you’re on Apache and you decide to do the redirect, having been on a
/yyyy/mm/dd/%postname%/
structure before, you might benefit from this simple redirect which you could throw into your .htaccess file:|
1
|RedirectMatch 301 /\d{4}/\d{2}/\d{2}/(.*) http://example.com/$1
| -
PS try to save your link structure to the way you want it and make sure you click the save button.
if it does not work there a problem that would require access to WordPress to fix
http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/39665/custom-htaccess-rewrite-rule-for-page
-
Rewrite the URLs your hosting company for a plug-in like
https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo-premium/
Yoast makes it better be best redirect plug-in for WordPress I know of.
You can use The redirection plug-in
https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/
Hosting
http://getflywheel.com/help/do-you-support-htaccess-files/
You will want to clean up what WordPress did not.
Via 301 redirects it is most likely an error in your HTaccess file
Your WordPress install is not up to date as well you may want to ensure that is updated to 4.0.
Have http://getflywheel.com/tour/ do it
This is something I would recommend a company like Getflywheel.com at $15 a month you get manage WordPress your own all SSD VPS and all the issues with WordPress to take care of by them. http://getflywheel.com is a bargain.
Hope that helps,
Thomas
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
-
Google ranking content for phrases that don't exist on-page
I am experiencing an issue with negative keywords, but the “negative” keyword in question isn’t truly negative and is required within the content – the problem is that Google is ranking pages for inaccurate phrases that don’t exist on the page. To explain, this product page (as one of many examples) - https://www.scamblermusic.com/albums/royalty-free-rock-music/ - is optimised for “Royalty free rock music” and it gets a Moz grade of 100. “Royalty free” is the most accurate description of the music (I optimised for “royalty free” instead of “royalty-free” (including a hyphen) because of improved search volume), and there is just one reference to the term “copyrighted” towards the foot of the page – this term is relevant because I need to make the point that the music is licensed, not sold, and the licensee pays for the right to use the music but does not own it (as it remains copyrighted). It turns out however that I appear to need to treat “copyrighted” almost as a negative term because Google isn’t accurately ranking the content. Despite excellent optimisation for “Royalty free rock music” and only one single reference of “copyrighted” within the copy, I am seeing this page (and other album genres) wrongly rank for the following search terms: “free rock music”
On-Page Optimization | | JCN-SBWD
“Copyright free rock music"
“Uncopyrighted rock music”
“Non copyrighted rock music” I understand that pages might rank for “free rock music” because it is part of the “Royalty free rock music” optimisation, what I can’t get my head around is why the page (and similar product pages) are ranking for “Copyright free”, “Uncopyrighted music” and “Non copyrighted music”. “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted” don’t exist anywhere within the copy or source code – why would Google consider it helpful to rank a page for a search term that doesn’t exist as a complete phrase within the content? By the same logic the page should also wrongly rank for “Skylark rock music” or “Pretzel rock music” as the words “Skylark” and “Pretzel” also feature just once within the content and therefore should generate completely inaccurate results too. To me this demonstrates just how poor Google is when it comes to understanding relevant content and optimization - it's taking part of an optimized term and combining it with just one other single-use word and then inappropriately ranking the page for that completely made up phrase. It’s one thing to misinterpret one reference of the term “copyrighted” and something else entirely to rank a page for completely made up terms such as “Uncopyrighted” and “Non copyrighted”. It almost makes me think that I’ve got a better chance of accurately ranking content if I buy a goat, shove a cigar up its backside, and sacrifice it in the name of the great god Google! Any advice (about wrongly attributed negative keywords, not goat sacrifice ) would be most welcome.0 -
Duplicating words in the page title OK?
Im finding a site with lots of duplicated words in the title tags, I have always avoided doing this in the past, Is there any penalty for having a word repeated twice in the title, indeed is there a benefit from having it twice, IM assuming not
On-Page Optimization | | Donsimong
For example: Marketing Services in Milton Keynes | Our Services | TFA
https://www.t-f-a.co.uk/services the word service is repeated twice, in my opinion this is of no benefit at all and is better rewritten to remove the duplication1 -
Duplicate 'meta title' issue (AMP & NON-AMP Pages)
how to fix duplicate meta title issue in amp and non-amp pages? example.com
On-Page Optimization | | 21centuryweb
example.com/amp We have set the 'meta title' in desktop version & we don't want to change the title for AMP page as we have more than 10K pages on the website. ----As per SEMRUSH Tool---- ABOUT THIS ISSUE It is a bad idea to duplicate your title tag content in your first-level header. If your page’s <title>and <h1> tags match, the latter may appear over-optimized to search engines. Also, using the same content in titles and headers means a lost opportunity to incorporate other relevant keywords for your page.</p> <p><strong>HOW TO FIX IT</strong></p> <p>Try to create different content for your <title> and <h1> tags.<br /><br />this is what they are recommending, for the above issue we have asked our team to create unique meta and post title for desktop version but what about AMP page?<br /><br />Please help!</p></title>0 -
How to Handle duplicate pages/titles in Wordpress
The wordpress blog causes problems with page titles. If you go to the second page of blog posts it there's a different URL but with the same page title. for example: page 1: site/blog page 2: site/blog/page/2 Each page gets flagged for duplicate page titles. Thanks in advance for your thoughts,
On-Page Optimization | | heymarshall1 -
Why do I have 2 different URL's for the same page - is this good practice?
Hi GuysMy father is currently using a programmer to build his new site. Knowing a little about SEO etc, I was a little suspicious of the work carried out. **Anyone with good programming and SEO knowledge, please offer your advice!**This page http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/gallery-range-wood-flooring/ which is soon to be http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/ you'll see has a number of different products. The products on this particular page have been built into colour categories like thishttp://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/lights-greys http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/beiges http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/darks-blacks This is fine. Eventually when we add to our selection of woods, we'll easily segment each product into "colour categories" for users to easily navigate to. My question is - Why do I have 2 different URL's for the same page - is this good practice? Please see below... Visible URL - http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns/cipressa/Below is the permalink seen in Word Press for this page also.Permalink: http://www.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns-engineered-wood/cipressa/and in the Word Press snippet shows the same permalink urlCipressa | Engineered Brown Wood | The Wood Gallerieswww.thewoodgalleries.co.uk/engineered-wood/browns-engineered-wood/cipressa/ Buy Cipressa Engineered Brown Wood, available at The Wood Galleries, London. Provides an Exceptional Foundation for Elegant Décor, Extravagant .. If this is completely ok and has no negative search impact - then I'm happy. If not what should I advise to my programmer to do? Your help would be very much appreciated. Regards Faye
On-Page Optimization | | Faye2340 -
Duplicate Content - Blog Rewriting
I have a client who has requested a rewrite of 250 blog articles for his IT company. The blogs are dispersed on a variety of platforms: his own website's blog, a business innovation website, and an IT website. He wants to have each article optimised with keyword phrases and then posted onto his new website thrice weekly. All of this is in an effort to attract some potential customers to his new site and also to establish his company as a leader in its field. To what extent would I need to rewrite each article so as to avoid duplicating the content? Would there even be an issue if I did not rewrite the articles and merely optimised them with keywords? Would the articles need to be completely taken by all current publishers? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | StoryScout0 -
Will "internal 301s" have any effect on page rank or the way in which an SE see's our site interlinking?
We've been forced (for scalability) to completely restructure our website in terms of setting out a hierarchy. For example - the old structure : country / city / city area Where we had about 3500 nicely interlinked pages for relevant things like taxis, hotels, apartments etc in that city : We needed to change the structure to be : country / region / area / city / cityarea So as patr of the change we put in place lots of 301s for the permanent movement of pages to the new structure and then we tried to actually change the physical on-page links too. Unfortunately we have left a good 600 or 700 links that point to the old pages, but are picked up by the 301 redirect on page, so we're slowly going through them to ensure the links go to the new location directly (not via the 301). So my question is (sorry for long waffle) : Whilst it must surely be "best practice" for all on-page links to go directly to the 'right' page, are we harming our own interlinking and even 'page rank' by being tardy in working through them manually? Thanks for any help anyone can give.
On-Page Optimization | | TinkyWinky0 -
WordPress and category/subcategory landing pages
Hey, Here's my situation. I'm building a WordPress blog for product reviews of a certain niche. Current category setup is 4 main categories with 4-8 subcategories each. Each subcategory has a unique description that will help it become a landing page for certain keywords, after which it lists the posts from that subcategory. The posts will always be assigned to a sub-category, never to a main category. My issue is what to do with the main categories. They're fairly general so they're not really targeting any keywords, and don't have any unique descriptions attached to them. I was thinking of choosing between three options on designing the main category pages: List the subcategories + normal posts loop that bring the latest posts from the subcategories (may create a lot of duplicate content since the subcategory pages are also listing their posts) List only the subcategories (+ maybe just the latest post from each subcategory) Don't link the main categories at all, instead only use them to create dropdowns for the subcategories So, what would you choose, and why?
On-Page Optimization | | mihaiaperghis0