Duplicate Title tags even with rel=canonical
-
Hello,
We were having duplicate content in our blog (a replica of each post automatically was done by the CMS), until we recently implemented a rel=canonical tag to all the duplicate posts (some 5 weeks ago).
So far, no duplicate content were been found, but we are still getting duplicate title tags, though the rel=canonical is present.
Any idea why is this the case and what can we do to solve it?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Tej Luchmun
-
Has this ever been done? Would be very handy.
-
Hi Sean,
Thanks a lot for your reply.
Indeed having the rel=canonical pointing to the wrong page would be another issue. What David Lee suggested me is using the rel=canonical on both the original post and the duplicate post. This can be set programmatically instead of the ignore button.
But surely, the ignore button would be much more easier, in some situations. Please keep us update once this ignore feature has been implement.
Thanks again for your help.
Tej Luchmun
-
Hi Sheena,
Yes, Moz Crawl Diagnostics Report is showing duplicate title tag for the content that already have a rel=canonical tag.
I contacted them, and they suggested that i should include the canonical tag on the duplicate and original post, where both tags are pointing to the original post.
I have not yet tested it out, but hopefully, this should solve the issue.
Thanks again for your help.
Tej Luchmun
-
Thanks a lot Karl, indeed with the canonical tag, neither the title nor the content becomes a duplicate.
It's just the MOZ crawl issue that raised the alarm.
Thanks again.
Tej Luchmun
-
Hi Tej,
Thanks for writing us on this! So Sheena and Karl are both correct. Although, an REL Canonical may solve the issue with Google it is still technically a duplicate title tag. When designing the tool we found that having the crawler pick up the REL Canonicals can be problematic for a coding and SEO standpoint. It is often possible that an REL Canonical will be directed to an incorrect page and since our crawler is so literal it would have issues recognizing the canonical was bad.
Our product staff is aware of this and they hope to get to a place where we provide an ignore feature, so if you feel that the tag was implemented correctly you can select ignore and we will no longer report that issue for that page.
I know that this is not ideal for many customers, but hopefully our solution will be comprehensive enough to encapsulate many of the solutions SEO's have found for these issues.
Hopefully this helps and if you have any other questions or concerns let me know.
Have a great day!
-
Do you mean that your Moz Analytics Crawl Diagnostics Report is showing duplicate titles for pages that have rel=canonical? If so, this is something I noticed a few months ago & brought up to the Moz team. I believe it's something they're working to implement/somehow allow us to 'check off' pages in the report that we've already implemented a solution for. Also, if this is your situation, I think you should add your experience / request to Moz's feature request forum.
I hope this helps!
-
Technically it is still a duplicate title tag, you just won't be getting penalised for 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
-
Best Practice Approaches to Canonicals vs. Indexing in Google Sitemap vs. No Follow Tags
Hi There, I am working on the following website: https://wave.com.au/ I have become aware that there are different pages that are competing for the same keywords. For example, I just started to update a core, category page - Anaesthetics (https://wave.com.au/job-specialties/anaesthetics/) to focus mainly around the keywords ‘Anaesthetist Jobs’. But I have recognized that there are ongoing landing pages that contain pretty similar content: https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ https://wave.com.au/asa/ We want to direct organic traffic to our core pages e.g. (https://wave.com.au/job-specialties/anaesthetics/). This then leads me to have to deal with the duplicate pages with either a canonical link (content manageable) or maybe alternatively adding a no-follow tag or updating the robots.txt. Our resident developer also suggested that it might be good to use Google Index in the sitemap to tell Google that these are of less value? What is the best approach? Should I add a canonical link to the landing pages pointing it to the category page? Or alternatively, should I use the Google Index? Or even another approach? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International0 -
Why is my landing page title tag being applied to the entire site?
I have a unique title tag for every page on my site but depending on what page a user lands on, that title becomes the title tag for the entire site. For example, if you come in from SERPs via the "Zach King: My Magical Life" page, the title "Zach King: My Magical Life" title will be applied to every page on the site even though they have unique title tags. This is the site: https://www.shelfstuff.com/book-shelf. Any ideas on how to fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | craigkleila470 -
Putting rel=canonical tags on blogpost pointing to product pages
I came across an article mentioning this as a strategy for getting product pages (which are tough to get links for) some link equity. See #21: content flipping: https://www.matthewbarby.com/customer-acquisition-strategies Has anyone done this? Seems like this isn't what the tag is meant for, and Google may see this as deceptive? Any thoughts? Jim
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jim_shook0 -
Cross Domain Rel Canonical tags vs. Rel Canonical Tags for internal webpages
Today I noticed that one of my colleagues was pointing rel canonical tags to a third party domain on a few specific pages on a client's website. This was a standard rel canonical tag that was written Up to this point I haven't seen too many webmasters point a rel canonical to a third party domain. However after doing some reading in the Google Webmaster Tools blog I realized that cross domain rel canonicals are indeed a viable strategy to avoid duplicate content. My question is this; should rel canonical tags be written the same way when dealing with internal duplicate content vs. external duplicate content? Would a rel=author tag be more appropriate when addressing 3rd party website duplicate content issues? Any feedback would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VanguardCommunications0 -
High level rel=canonical conceptual question
Hi community. Your advice and perspective is greatly appreciated. We are doing a site replatform and I fear that serious SEO fundamentals were overlooked and I am not getting straight answers to a simple question: How are we communicating to search engines the single URL we want indexed? Backstory: Current site has major duplicate content issues. Rel-canonical is not used. There are currently 2 versions of every category and product detail page. Both are indexed in certain instances. A 60 page audit has recommends rel=canonical at least 10 times for the similar situations an ecommerce site has with dupe urls/content. New site: We are rolling out 2 URLS AGAIN!!! URL A is an internal URL generated by the systerm. We have developed this fancy dynamic sitemap generator which looks/maps to URL A and creates a SEO optimized URL that I call URL B. URL B is then inserted into the site map and the sitemap is communicated externally to google. URL B does an internal 301 redirect back to URL A...so in an essence, the URL a customer sees is not the same as what we want google to see. I still think there is potential for duplicate indexing. What do you think? Is rel=canonical the answer? In my research on this site, past projects and google I think the correct solution is this on each customer facing category and pdp: The head section (With the optimized Meta Title and Meta Description) needs to have the rel-canonical pointing to URL B
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mm916157
example of the meta area of URL A: What do you think? I am open to all ideas and I can provide more details if needed.0 -
Rel Canonical Link on the Canonical Page
Is there a problem with placing a rel=canonical link on the canonical page - in addition to the duplicate pages? For example, would that create create an endless loop where the canonical page keeps referring to itself? Two examples that are troubling me are: My home site is www.1099pro.com which is exactly the same as www.1099pro.com/index.asp (all updates to the home page are made by updating the index.asp page). I want www.1099pro.com/index.asp to have the rel=canonical link to point to my standard homepage www.1099pro.com but any update that I make on the index page is automatically incorporated into www.1099pro.com as well. I don't have access to my hosting web server and any updates I make have to be done to the specific landing pages/templates. I am also creating a new website that could possible have pages with duplicate content in the future. I would like to already include the rel=canonical link on the standard canonical page even though there is not duplicate content yet. Any help really would be appreciated. I've read a ton of articles on the subject but none really define whether or not it is ok to have the rel=canonical link on both the canonical page and the duplicate pages. The closest explanation was in a MOZ article that it was ok but the answer was fuzzy. -Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew2220 -
Ecommerce: remove duplicate product pages or use rel=canonical
Say we have a white-widget that is in our white widget collection and also in our wedding widget collection. Currently, we have 3 different URLs for that product (white-widgets/white-widget and wedding-widgets/white-widget and all-widgets/white-widget).We are automatically generating a rel=canonical tag for those individual collection product pages that canonical the original product page (/all-widgets/white-widget). This guide says that is the structure Zappos uses and says "There is an elegance to this approach. However, I would re-visit it today in light of changes in the SEO world."
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | birchlore
I noticed that Zappos, and many other shops now actually just link back to the parent product page (e.g. If I am in wedding widget section and click on the widget, I go to all-products/white-widget instead of wedding-widgets/white-widget).So my question is:Should we even have these individual product URLs or just get rid of them altogether? My original thought was that it would help SEO for search term "white wedding widget" to have a product URL wedding-widget/white-widget but we won't even be taking advantage of that by using rel=canonical anyway.0 -
Canonical URL Tag Usage
Hi there, I have a .co.uk website and a .ie website, which have the exact same content on both, should I put a canonical tag on both websites, on every page? Kind Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780