Duplicate Content Showing up on Moz Crawl | www. vs. no-www.
-
Hello Moz Community!
I am new to SEO, Moz and this is my first question.
My questions; I have a client that is getting flagged for Duplicate Content. He is getting flagged for having two domains that have the same content i.e. www.mysite.com & mysite.com.
I read into this and set up a 301 redirect through my hosting site. I evaluated which site had a stronger Page Authority and had the weaker site redirect to the stronger site. However, I am still getting hit for Duplicate pages caused by the www.mysite.com & mysite.com being duplicates. How should I go about resolving this? Is this an example of a Canonical tag needed in the head of the HTML?
Any direction is appreciated. Thank You.
B/R
Will H.
-
Hello Dirk,
Thanks again for all of your help. So, I ended up not having the redirect setup correctly (I'm a noob!). For whatever reason, I could not setup the redirect using the redirect icon through the panel. I ended up accessing the .htaccess file (which was tough to find because it was hidden!). and I added this code.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.YourDomain.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://YourDomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]All of my redirects are now redirecting from www. To non-www.
I'll have to wait for my next crawl to verify that the duplicate content has cleared, however, the redirect is indicating on httpstatus.io.
Thanks for your assistance Dirk!
B/R
Will
-
If the header checker indicates that the redirect isn't properly setup you will have to check the redirect rules. You could try to double check with web-sniffer.net. If the redirects are not ok waiting doesn't make sense - Moz will continue to find these errors (and Google as well).
Also indicate the preferred domain in Search Console (you will need to register both of them - the www & non-www version)
Dirk
-
Thanks Dirk!
I did set up the redirect about a week ago. I set it up on Monday or Tuesday. I checked the status using the tool recommend (Thanks for the link), and it indicates that no redirects are set up. I'll give it till Wednesday and retry it. I'm fairly confident the redirect was set up correctly.
-
If the redirection was done quite recently - it's possible that Moz hasn't recrawled your site (crawls are once/week)
If this isn't the case - check the http header of the pages which Moz indicates as duplicates, to be sure that they are properly redirected (with a tool like httpstatus.io).
Adding a canonical never hurts but it's better to solve the problem at the root.
Dirk
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
-
Duplicate content question
Hey Mozzers! I received a duplicate content notice from my Cycle7 Communications campaign today. I understand the concept of duplicate content, but none of the suggested fixes quite seems to fit. I have four pages with HubSpot forms embedded in them. (Only two of these pages have showed up so far in my campaign.) Each page contains a title (Content Marketing Consultation, Copywriting Consultation, etc), plus an embedded HubSpot form. The forms are all outwardly identical, but I use a separate form for each service that I offer. I’m not sure how to respond to this crawl issue: Using a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right, because each page/form combo is independent and serves a separate purpose. Using a rel=canonical link doesn’t seem right for the same reason that a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right. Using the Google Search Console URL Parameters tool is clearly contraindicated by Google’s documentation (I don’t have enough pages on my site). Is a meta robots noindex the best way to deal with duplicate content in this case? Thanks in advance for your help. AK
Technical SEO | | AndyKubrin0 -
To what extent is content considered unique or duplicate?
I work primarily on classifieds websites and an issue I consistently come across are two or more URLs which have the exact same ad count, due to site structure and the way everything is categorized. An example of such would be with these two pages: https://www.boatshop24.co.uk/motorboats/princess https://www.boatshop24.co.uk/boats-for-sale/princess/power These two have the exact same number of ads- would search engines mark these as duplicate content? Both have different meta descriptions, title tags etc. but essentially the MC is exactly the same. If they are, what would be the best course to remedy the problem? I'm skeptical about using canonical tags as I generally use them for exact duplicate pages.
Technical SEO | | Sayers0 -
Recurring events and duplicate content
Does anyone have tips on how to work in an event system to avoid duplicate content in regards to recurring events? How do I best utilize on-page optimization?
Technical SEO | | megan.helmer0 -
Duplicate Content with ADN, DNS and F5 URLs
In my duplicate content report, there are URLs showing as duplicate content. All of the pages work, they do not redirect, and they are used for either IT debugging or as part of a legacy system using a split DNS, QAing the site, etc... They aren't linked (or at least, shouldn't be) on any pages, and I am not seeing them in Search Results, but Moz is picking them up. Should I be worried about duplicate content here and how should I handle them? They are replicates of the current live site, but have different subdomains. We are doing clean up before migrating to a new CMS, so I'm not sure it's worth fixing at this point, or if it is even an issue at all. But should I make sure they are in robots or take any action to address these? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | QAD_ERP0 -
Joomla: content accesible through all kinds of other links >> duplicate content?!
When i did a site: search on Google i've noticed all kind of URL's on my site were indexed, while i didn't add them to the Joomla navigation (or they were not linked anywhere on the site). Some examples: www.domain.com/1-articlename >> that way ALL articles are publicly visible, even if they are not linked to a menu-item... If by accident such a link get's shared it will be indexed in google, you can have 2 links with same content... www.domain.com/2-uncategorised >> same with categories, automatically these overview pages are visible to people who know this URL. On it you see all the articles that belong to that category. www.domain.com/component/content >> this gives an overview of all the categories inside your Joomla CMS I think most will agree this is not good for your site's SEO? But how can this be solved? Is this some kind of setting within Joomla? Anyone who dealt with these problems already?
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
How can something be duplicate content of itself?
Just got the new crawl report, and I have a recurring issue that comes back around every month or so, which is that a bunch of pages are reported as duplicate content for themselves. Literally the same URL: http://awesomewidgetworld.com/promotions.shtml is reporting that http://awesomewidgetworld.com/promotions.shtml is both a duplicate title, and duplicate content. Well, I would hope so! It's the same URL! Is this a crawl error? Is it a site error? Has anyone seen this before? Do I need to give more information? P.S. awesomewidgetworld is not the actual site name.
Technical SEO | | BetAmerica0 -
seo moz crawl diagnosis
Hi seomozzers, We are creating a brand new website for a client and I would like to run an seo moz crawl to fix what has been done wrong. So my question is it ok to run an SEO moz crawl with a dev URL? Are final URLs and dev URLs will give me the same results or not? Basically, Should I wait for getting the final URL or is it ok to run a crawl under a dev URL such as www.dev2.example.com or http://183.2564.2864? Thank you 🙂
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Forget Duplicate Content, What to do With Very Similar Content?
All, I operate a Wordpress blog site that focuses on one specific area of the law. Our contributors are attorneys from across the country who write about our niche topic. I've done away with syndicated posts, but we still have numerous articles addressing many of the same issues/topics. In some cases 15 posts might address the same issue. The content isn't duplicate but it is very similar, outlining the same rules of law etc. I've had an SEO I trust tell me I should 301 some of the similar posts to one authoritative post on the subject. Is this a good idea? Would I be better served implementing canonical tags pointing to the "best of breed" on each subject? Or would I be better off being grateful that I receive original content on my niche topic and not doing anything? Would really appreciate some feedback. John
Technical SEO | | JSOC0