Self referencing canonicals AND duplicate URLs. Have I set them up correctly?
-
Hi team,
We've recently redesigned our website.
Originally we had separate product listings for every product. Even if there was one design in two colours, each colour had its own listing.
With the redesign we merged all of these identical products to help with duplicate content. Customers can now browse the different stone colours available in that design from a single product listing (bottom left of screen under 'select a stone' on a product page)
When the customer changes the stone colour, the product images change to the new colour and its product code is appended to the end of the existing URL. eg:
http://www.mountainjade.co.nz/necklaces/assorted-jades-open-koru-necklace-jc1725/ (original listing)
http://www.mountainjade.co.nz/necklaces/assorted-jades-open-koru-necklace-jc1725/?sku=JC1725BL (black selected)
We have the following self referencing canonicals on all product pages [current-page:url:absolute], yet MOZ is telling me I have alot of duplicate content on pages with the above example.
Have I implemented the canonicals correctly? Is this why Moz is flagging the listings as duplicate?
-
If you've got that path anywhere in your navigation or other internal linking, you'd want to remove that or update it to /shop/necklaces/. The next step would be to 301 redirect /shop/necklaces/necklace/ to /shop/necklaces/ just in case you've got any links pointing to it - this will get your users where they want to go and also let search engines know you've relocated the page.
-
One last question,
How exactly would I remove /shop/necklaces/necklace/?
Sorry if that's a stupid question. I just want to know a bit more before I take it to our dev.
Thanks.
-
Thanks for this Logan!
I really appreciate the help.
-
As Yossi said, configuring parameters in Search Console should help - _but, _that's only going to help you out in Google.
Adding a disallow for those parameters in the robots file will help solve the problem in other search engines.
The thin content is definitely contributing as well. Moz identifies dupes based on a source code match between any two pages of 90% or higher. When you consider all your template code is the same across every page, thin content isn't enough to differentiate the source code.
I also noticed on one of those screenshots that you got a one dupe of /shop/necklaces/ and /shop/necklaces/necklace/. If you can, I recommend removing that second one with doubled up 'necklace' folders, that's going to cause a lot of dupes as well.
-
Hi Logan,
Thanks for looking into the canonicals for me. I'm glad to hear they appear to be configured correctly.
There are alot of duplicate page issues, with 109 in total at the moment.
Some are similar to the above example, some are URLS that contain refined search parameters (price, design etc), but most are just products which are almost identical. I think this is because most product pages have thin generic content, so for those examples we're in the process of writing unique product descriptions and adding unique imagery.
I've attached a few screenshot if you'd like to take a look. Your thoughts would be much appreciated
-
Thanks so much for the reply Yossi.
Great tip about using GSC URL parameter tools. I'll definitely implement that.
Appreciate it.
Jake
-
Jacob, as Logan wrote it looks like the canonicals are good to go.. (i just did a small sampling though..)
Not sure how your URLs are set but if the "sku=XXX" parameters are used only for color variations of a specific product, then you can use the URL paramater setting in Google Search Console.This will make your life easier, and it will ensure that no duplicate content is crawled by Google. But URL parameters must be used with caution
good luck
Yossi -
Hi Jacob,
I took a look at your site, and the canonicals appear to be configured correctly. When you look at your duplicates in the Site Crawl report in Moz, and you click the + next to where it says "1 duplicate", what are you seeing? Is it a URL set like the example you've used above, or something else?
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
-
Can I set a canonical tag to an anchor link?
I have a client who is moving to a one page website design. So, content from the inner pages is being condensed in to sections on the 'home' page. There will be a navigation that anchor links to each relevant section. I am wondering if I should leave the old pages and use rel=canonical to point them to their relevant sections on the new 'home' page rather than 301 them. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Vizergy0 -
URL structure
Hello Guys, Quick Question regarding URL strucutre One of our client is an hotel chain, thye have a group site www.example.com and each property is located in a subfolder: www.example.com/example-boston.html , www.example.com/example-ny.html etc. My quesion is : where is better to place the language extension at a subfolder level?
Technical SEO | | travelclickseo
Should i go for www.example.com/en/example-ny.html or it is preferable to specify the language after the property name www.example.com/example-ny/en/accommodation.html? Thanks and Regards, Alessio0 -
Duplicate pages on wordpress
I am doing SEO on a site which is running on WP. And it has all pages and categories duplicates on domain.com/site/ However, as it got crawled I saw that all domain.com/ pages have rel=canonical with main page tag (does it mean something?). Thing is I will fix permalinks structure and I think WP automatically redirects if it is changed from /?page_id= to /%category%/%postname%/ or /%postname%/ Isn't there something I miss? Second problems is a forum. After a crawl it found over 5k errors and over 5k warnings. Those are: Duplicate page content; Duplicate page title; Overly-Dynamic URLs; Missing Meta descr; Title Element too long. All those come from domain.com/forum/ (fortunately, there are no domain.com/site/forum duplicates). What could be an easy solution to this?
Technical SEO | | OVJ0 -
Content Duplication and Canonical Tag settings
Hi all, I have a question regarding content duplication.My site has posted one fresh content in the article section and set canonical in the same page for avoiding content duplication._But another webmaster has taken my post and posted the same in his site with canonical as his site url. They have not given to original source as well._May I know how Google will consider these two pages. Which site will be affected with content duplication by Google and how can I solve this issue?If two sites put canonical tags in there own pages for the same content how the search engine will find the original site which posted fresh content. How can we avoid content duplication in this case?
Technical SEO | | zco_seo0 -
Duplicate content with same URL?
SEOmoz is saying that I have duplicate content on: http://www.XXXX.com/content.asp?ID=ID http://www.XXXX.com/CONTENT.ASP?ID=ID The only difference I see in the URL is that the "content.asp" is capitalized in the second URL. Should I be worried about this or is this an issue with the SEOmoz crawl? Thanks for any help. Mike
Technical SEO | | Mike.Goracke0 -
Is there actual risk to having multiple URLs that frame in main url? Or is it just bad form and waste of money?
Client has many urls that just frame in the main site. It seems like a total waste of money, but if they are frames, is there an actual risk?
Technical SEO | | gravityseo0 -
Duplicate Pages Issue
I noticed a problem and I was wondering if anyone knows how to fix it. I was a sitemap for 1oxygen.com, a site that has around 50 pages. The sitemap generator come back with over a 2000 pages. Here is two of the results: http://www.1oxygen.com/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/services/rentals.htm
Technical SEO | | chuck-layton
http://www.1oxygen.com/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/1oxygen/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/oxusportableconcentrator.htm These are actaully pages somehow. In my FTP there in the first /portableconentrators/ folder there is about 12 html documents and no other folders. It looks like it is creating a page for every possible folder combination. I have no idea why you those pages above actually work, help please???0 -
Using Canonical URLs option in Platinum SEO for Wordpress
SEOMOZ says that my site has 150 <a title="Click for Help!">Canonical URLs and lists that as a potential problem. It's a check box in the settings for Platinum SEO and here is the description it provides:</a> <a title="Click for Help!">Choose this option to set up canonical URLs for your Home page, Single Post, Category and Tag Pages.</a> I have the option engaged. So I was trying to figure out the best thing to do. I have already instructed it to automatically make 301 redirects for any permalink changes and have instructed it to "noindex" tag archives,rss comment feeds, and rss feeds. I've only been doing this for about a year and am really confused right now. After reading most of your posts about the subject I have a much better understanding, but still very confused. Help..Please...
Technical SEO | | pressingtheissue0