Duplicate URL Parameters for Blog Articles
-
Hi there,
I'm working on a site which is using parameter URLs for category pages that list blog articles.
The content on these pages constantly change as new posts are frequently added, the category maybe for 'Heath Articles' and list 10 blog posts (snippets from the blog). The URL could appear like so with filtering:
-
www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general
-
www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general&year=2016
-
www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general&year=2016&page=1
-
All pages currently have the same Meta title and descriptions due to limitations with the CMS, they are also not in our xml sitemap
I don't believe we should be focusing on ranking for these pages as the content on here are from blog posts (which we do want to rank for on the individual post) but there are 3000 duplicates and they need to be fixed.
Below are the options we have so far:
Canonical URLs
Have all parameter pages within the category canonicalize to www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general and generate dynamic page titles (I know its a good idea to use parameter pages in canonical URLs).
WMT Parameter tool
Tell Google all extra parameter tags belong to the main pages (e.g. www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general&year=2016&page=3 belongs to www.domain.com/blog/articles/?taxonomy=health-articles&taxon=general).
Noindex
Remove all the blog category pages, I don't know how Google would react if we were to remove 3000 pages from our index (we have roughly 1700 unique pages)
We are very limited with what we can do to these pages, if anyone has any feedback suggestions it would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
-
-
Hard to say these days if they do respect the scroll effect there unfortunately.
-
Thanks Martijn,
That sounds like a good idea, we were also considering a Javascript loading option where we remove the pagination and load content on scroll - I am still 50/50 whether or not hidden content like this is crawled or ignored.
-
Thanks Anthony,
We are using rel=prev/next on the pagination for these blog pages which does reduce duplication, but because of the parameter filters we still have thousands of duplicates.
That's a good point about the indexing of older blogs!
-
I would simply set up rel=next/prev on the paginated series and not so much worry about duplicate title tags or using canonical tags. You want to make sure Google continues to crawl deep into your blog pagination and can access older blog posts.
-
Hi,
What I would do is go with both the canonical URLs as the Google Search Console parameters, in order to make sure first that the pages won't be seen as duplicates with the canonical URLs and in addition to that you might want to make sure that Google isn't visiting these pages at all in order to save your crawl budget for the more important pages on your site.
Martijn.
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
-
Will URLS With Existing 301 Redirects Be as Powerful As New URLS In Serps?
Most products on our site have redirects to them from years of switching platform and merely trying to get a great and optimised URL for SEO purposes. My question is this: If a product URL has alot of redirects (301's), would it be more beneficial to me to create a duplicated version of the product and start fresh with a new URL? I am not on here trying to gain backlinks but my site is tn nursery dot net (proof:)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tammysons
I need some quality help figuring out what to do.
Tammy0 -
URL indexed but not submitted in sitemap, however the URL is in the sitemap
Dear Community, I have the following problem and would be super helpful if you guys would be able to help. Cheers Symptoms : On the search console, Google says that some of our old URLs are indexed but not submitted in sitemap However, those URLs are in the sitemap Also the sitemap as been successfully submitted. No error message Potential explanation : We have an automatic cache clearing process within the company once a day. In the sitemap, we use this as last modification date. Let's imagine url www.example.com/hello was modified last time in 2017. But because the cache is cleared daily, in the sitemap we will have last modified : yesterday, even if the content of the page did not changed since 2017. We have a Z after sitemap time, can it be that the bot does not understands the time format ? We have in the sitemap only http URL. And our HTTPS URLs are not in the sitemap What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZozoMe0 -
How much does URLs with CAPS and URLs with non-CAPS existing on an IIS site matter nowadays?
I work on a couple ecommerce sites that are on IIS. Both sites have return a 200 header status for the CAPS and non CAPS version of the URLs. While I suppose it would be ok if the canonicals pointed to the same version of the page, in some cases it doesn't (ie; /Home-Office canonicalizes to itself and /home-office canonicalizes to itself). I came across this article (http://www.searchdiscovery.com/blog/case-sensitive-urls-and-seo-case-matters/) that is a few years old and I'm wondering how much of an issue it is and how I would determine if it is/isn't?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OfficeFurn0 -
'?q=:new&sort=new' URL parameters help...
Hey guys, I have these types of URLs being crawled and picked up on by MOZ but they are not visible to my users. The URLs are all 'hidden' from users as they are basically category pages that have no stock, however MOZ is crawling them and I dont understand how they are getting picked up as 'duplicate content'. Anyone have any info on this? http://www.example.ch/de/example/marken/brand/make-up/c/Cat_Perso_Brand_3?q=:new&sort=new Even if I understood the technicality behind it then I could try and fix it if need be. Thanks Guys Kay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eLab_London0 -
Help with duplicate pages
Hi there, I have a client who's site I am currently reviewing prior to a SEO campaign. They still work with the development team who built the site (not my company). I have discovered 311 instances of duplicate content within the crawl report. The duplicate content appears to either be 1, 2, or 3 versions of the same pages but with differing URL's. Example: http://www.sitename.com http://sitename.com http://sitename.com/index.php And other pages follow a similar or same pattern. I suppose my question is mainly what could be causing this and how can I fix it? Or, is it something that will have to be fixed by the website developers? Thanks in advance Darren
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODarren0 -
Recommended URL Structure
Hello, We are currently adding a new section of content on our site related to Marketing and more specifically 'Digital Marketing' (research reports, trend studies, etc). Over time (several months, or 1-3 years) we will add more 'general' marketing content. My question is which of the following URL structures makes more sense from an SEO perspective (and how best to quantify the benefit of one over another): www.mysite.com/marketing/digital/research/... www.mysite.com/digital-marketing/research/.. Thanks, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mike-gart0 -
Infographics and articles on the same page
Hi i'm currently designing an infographic and the infographic is based on a article my writer had created. I was thinking of ways in which i can add the article and infographic so they complement each other. Obviously the infographic is more in-depth then the article as it contains much more information. The infographic is designed to go viral. I was thinking of putting the info graphic on the top of the page and the written content below it. This way the person looking at the infographic can scroll down to find the more in-depth written discussion/article on the topic. Also from a SEO perspective, the search engines can index the written content (as it won't be able to index the the infographic since it's a image. What do you guys think is the best approach for this situation? Regards, Matt
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mattcarter080 -
Countries - Duplication Issues
Hi there, We have a .co.uk website which has been up and running for the past 5 years now and we have now decided because we have a big market in Ireland .ie we want to have a .ie website, the question is, is it ok just to replicate the .co.uk for the .ie website? Are there duplication issues? Kind Regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul781