Duplicate titles from hreflang variations
-
Hi,
I am working on a large global site which has around 9 different language variations.
We have setup the hreflang tags and referenced the corresponding content as follows:
(We have not implemented a version X-default reference, as we felt it was not necessary)
Using DeepCrawl and Search Console, we can see that these language variations are causing duplicate title issues. Many of them.
My assumption was that the hreflang would have alleviated this issue and informed Google what is going on, however i wanted to see if anyone has any experience with this kind of thing before.
It would be good to understand what the best practice approach is to deal with the problem.
Is it even an issue at all, or just the tools being over-sensitive?
Thank you in advance.
-
Aha I see! That makes some sense. If the products are 'branded' and therefore the name never changes in any language, you have two options
Let's imagine you are selling a branded air conditioning unit, with the made-up name of GreenAir (maybe it's more economical and uses less electricity, thus the name from the 'green movement')
You could just leave it duplicate:
- EN: GreenAir | GreenWave Solutions
- FR: GreenAir | GreenWave Solutions
Or you could add more contextual info, which would be better:
- EN: GreenAir Environmental Air Conditioning Unit | GreenWave
- FR: GreenAir Unité de Climatisation Environnementale | GreenWave
I know, I know - my French sucks (actually that's from Google Translate). But still, you can see that - you could add more in there. The hurdle for you will be, what is required in terms of costs to deploy to that level of complexity?
From a straight-up SEO POV, I stand by my preference. But once mass translation work is factored and targeted, dev-based implementation... you may feel otherwise!
-
Hi,
Thank you for taking the time to respond.
I would tend to agree with your point that the title tags should be written in the necessary language, however the the duplicate title tags are all branded products with heritage and reputation, which will not change no matter what the language is.
What are your thoughts on this?
Nick
-
I think it is an issue because, people browsing your site in other languages will have the wrong language title displayed in their browser tabs if they are multi-tab browsing! The title tag is still one of the important ones for SEO, nothing has really come along to replace it
A businesses' ambitions in terms of an international roll-out, are to break into new (foreign) international query-spaces and get extra traffic (especially from Google, or leading search engines in other nations like Yandex and Baidu). Google's ambitions (when adding your international pages to their index) are that their audience can break onto other areas of the web which (due to the language barrier) were previously closed to them. But they want your content to then be 'tailored' to their international audiences, traffic which Google has no obligation to send your way. Google wants good UX for their searchers, so that Google remains top-dog in the search world
The less tailored your international roll-out is, the more shallow it is (with more pieces missing), the less confident Google will be. They will be less confident that sending their users to you will result in positive search-sentiment
Every piece of the jigsaw which you are missing, counts against you. It makes your international roll-out look more like a quick Google-translate powered land-grab, and less like an authentic international roll-out
My question to you is, when you identify a bad signal - why carry on sending it to Google?
Search is a competitive environment. If there are thing you won't do, others will
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
-
SEO Title Length
Hi Everyone. I have a few pages being flagged with "Title Too Long". However, these are page 2, page 3, page 4, etc of category pages. They obviously have "| Page x of x" at the end of the title. Can these be ignored or is there a more SEO friendly way of handling this issue? Thanks. Michael
Technical SEO | | nomad_blogger0 -
Duplicate Content
I am trying to get a handle on how to fix and control a large amount of duplicate content I keep getting on my Moz Reports. The main area where this comes up is for duplicate page content and duplicate title tags ... thousands of them. I partially understand the source of the problem. My site mixes free content with content that requires a login. I think if I were to change my crawl settings to eliminate the login and index the paid content it would lower the quantity of duplicate pages and help me identify the true duplicate pages because a large number of duplicates occur at the site login. Unfortunately, it's not simple in my case because last year I encountered a problem when migrating my archives into a new CMS. The app in the CMS that migrated the data caused a large amount of data truncation Which means that I am piecing together my archives of approximately 5,000 articles. It also means that much of the piecing together process requires me to keep the former app that manages the articles to find where certain articles were truncated and to copy the text that followed the truncation and complete the articles. So far, I have restored about half of the archives which is time-consuming tedious work. My question is if anyone knows a more efficient way of identifying and editing duplicate pages and title tags?
Technical SEO | | Prop650 -
Duplicate Page Content Issue
Hello, I recently solved www / no www duplicate issue for my website, but now I am in trouble with duplicate content again. This time something that I cannot understand happens: In Crawl Issues Report, I received Duplicate Page Content for http://yourappliancerepairla.com (DA 19) http://yourappliancerepairla.com/index.html (DA 1) Could you please help me figure out what is happenning here? By default, index.html is being loaded, but this is the only index.html I have in the folder. And it looks like the crawler sees two different pages with different DA... What should I do to handle this issue?
Technical SEO | | kirupa0 -
Shopify Duplicate Content in products
Hello Moz Community, New to Moz and looking forward to beginning my journey towards SEO education and improving our clients' sites. Our client's website is a Shopify store. https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/ Our first Moz reports show 686 duplicate content issues. I will show the first 4 as examples. https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/haida-eagle-teardrop-earrings https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/haida-orca-silver-earrings https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/silver-oval-earrings https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/haida-eagle-spirit-silver-earrings As you can see, URL titles are unique. But I know that the content in each of those products have very similar product descriptions but not exactly. But since they have been flagged as a site issue by Moz, I am guessing that the content is 95% duplicate. So can a rel=canonical be the right solution for this type of duplicate content? Or should I be considering adding new content to each of 686 products to drop below the 95% threshold? Or another solution that I may not be aware of. Thanks in advance for your assistance and expertise! Sean
Technical SEO | | TheUpdateCompany1 -
Duplicate content on report
Hi, I just had my Moz Campaign scan 10K pages out of which 2K were duplicate content and URL's are http://www.Somesite.com/modal/register?destination=question%2F37201 http://www.Somesite.com/modal/register?destination=question%2F37490 And the title for all 2K is "Register" How can i deal with this as all my pages have the register link and login and when done it comes back to the same page where we left and that it actually not duplicate but we need to deal with it propely thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Prefix added to Titles in SERP
We are getting different titles in Search Engine Result Page, where PakWheels: is added to the actual title of page. Your expert opinion is highly appreciated. What can be the possible reason of "PakWheels:" appearing. This is a case for only home page of website. Search query 'cars in pakistan' shows 3rd result with title Pakwheels: Cars, Used Cars, New Cars, Latest Car Prices & News ... Whereas the actual title of page is without 'PakWheels:'
Technical SEO | | razasaeed0 -
Duplicate Content on Product Pages
Hello I'm currently working on two sites and I had some general question's about duplicate content. For the first one each page is a different location, but the wording is identical on each; ie it says Instant Remote Support for Critical Issues, Same Day Onsite Support with a 3-4 hour response time, etc. Would I get penalized for this? Another question i have is, we offer Antivirus support for providers ie Norton, AVG,Bit Defender etc. I was wondering if we will get penalized for having the same first paragraph with only changing the name of the virus provider on each page? My last question is we provide services for multiple city's and towns in various states. Will I get penalized for having the same content on each page, such as towns and producuts and services we provide? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ilyaelbert0 -
Duplicate Content
Hello All, my first web crawl has come back with a duplicate content warning for www.simodal.com and www.simodal.com/index.htm slightly mystified! thanks paul
Technical SEO | | simodal0