DUPLICATE PAGE TITLE ISSUE
-
Hi
We have 25 pages with a download form on it. People arrive at the page through a ink with optimised anchor text which sits on the information pages.
As there is no information on these pages we do not need them to be optimised so the developer has given all the download pages exactly the same page title.
Although the pages in themselves are not significant would this effect the way Google viewed the whole site, and would it pay to make each one unique or doesn't it really matter.
Alternatively, is there a better way to handle this? and if so would that ligate the benefit of the anchor text.
Thanks
-
Hi Dan
Thank you - that is the final piece of information I needed to get so I could have an overall feel as to the way I should look at this. in a holistic way.
Best wishes
PH
-
Hi
First check to see if the pages are indexed in Google by doing site:www.mydomain.com as a search. If they are not, you have nothing to worry about (as long as you block them in robots.txt soon) Your developer should be able to edit your robots.txt file extremely easily. Its just a file that sits in the root directory of the website.
If the 25 pages are indexed though, it could have a negative impact to have 25 duplicate title tags. As to how much impact, that may depend on how large the site is, how deep into the site they are, etc.
-Dan
-
Hi EGOL
Thank you for your reply - very good suggestions, especially for some other products - however, this one is about a certain element of manufacturing - so sexy titles don't quite work in this market (and my client may have a fit).
Having said all that, we have had a better response than we expected and it does create great leads.
I will speak with the developer to see what can be done though.
Thanks again
-
Hi EGOL
Thank you for your reply - very good suggestions, especially for some other products - however, this one is about a certain element of manufacturing - so sexy titles don't quite work in this market (and my client may have a fit).
Having said all that, we have had a better response than we expected and it does create great leads.
I will speak with the developer to see what can be done though.
Thanks again
-
Hi Byrce
Thank you for your helpful reply - there are different products and this allows for tracking and ultimately collating the product against the applicants details whch are then forwarded to the sales guys.
-
HI Dan
Thank you for your reply - I may end up going down your route as the subject matter is manufacturing issues - so not rivetting facebook content, that's for sure.It is amazing how three different answers all contribute another perspective - all helpful as well.
My other challenge is battling with the developer!!
I would love an answer to the query tucked in the middle of my question - does having 25 identical page titles effect the way Google view the whole site?
Many thanks again
-
Do you mean to say that you do not want these pages indexed at all? You say "there is no information on these pages and they do not need to be optimized". If in fact, you don't want them indexed, you would add them to your robots.txt file as such:
Disallow: /filename.html
Disallow: /folder/filname.html
etc.
However, what EGOL and Bryce have suggested would be the most work, but make the most sense overall. If you can find a way to re-structure the 25 downloads / add content etc to capture the additional traffic that would seem to be the best choice.
-
Alternatively, is there a better way to handle this? and if so would that ligate the benefit of the anchor text.
Put some unique and interesting information on those pages, describe your download in detail, show screenshots or samples, write unique and sexy titles, optimize them, enjoy the traffic.
Download pages on my sites get LOTS of traffic. LOTS. One received 2475 visitors from search yesterday.
Lots of people link to download pages, tweet about them, like them on FB. This could be a huge opportunity.
-
Is there a reason you have 25 different pages? Could you consolidate everything into one page or does each page offer a separate download item?
If they are different tasks, they should have different titles. If they are the same, then there should probably only be one page.
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
-
Should I remove 'local' landing pages? Could these be the cause of traffic drop (duplicate content)?
I have a site that has most of it's traffic from reasonably competitive keywords each with their own landing page. In order to gain more traffic I also created landing pages for counties in the UK and then towns within each county. Each county has around 12 towns landing pages within the county. This has meant I've added around 200 extra pages to my site in order to try and generate more traffic from long tail keywords. I think this may have caused an issue in that it's impossible for me to create unique content for each town/country and therefore I took a 'shortcut' buy creating unique content for each county and used the same content for the towns within it meaning I have lots of pages with the same content just slightly different page titles with a variation on town name. I've duplicated this over about 15 counties meaning I have around 200 pages with only about 15 actual unique pages within them. I think this may actually be harming my site. These pages have been indexed for about a year an I noticed about 6 months ago a drop in traffic by about 50%. Having looked at my analytics this town and county pages actually only account for about 10% of traffic. My question is should I remove these pages and by doing so should I expect an increase in traffic again?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Category listing page coming above product pages
A new SEO client we have taken on seem to be hitting most of the points right on with their site and SEO. However one thing that is bugging me is that their category pages i.e. "Footwear" which title tag includes the brands they stock. Is almost always coming up above (if they are ever even found) the product individual pages. Anyone seen this sort of things happening? Very frustrating.
On-Page Optimization | | iboxsecurityltd0 -
Does the title tag on the home page affect sub-pages?
Hello. I am thinking of changing our home page title tag to include our two most valuable keywords from two of our sub-pages. Would this help the rankings of those two sub-pages? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
Duplicate content in the title
Good morning, I am developing an application that searches offers in the press. The problem I have is the follow one:
On-Page Optimization | | ofuente
When I find an offer that I have already post, I cant use the same URL because it generates duplicate content , as the URL is generated from the title. If I find two offers in different stores (for example Thomson TV) I am studying two options. The first would be to add a number at the end of the URL
http://www.offertazo.com/televisor-thomson
http://www.offertazo.com/televisor-thomson1
http://www.offertazo.com/televisor-thomson2 Another option I propose would be to add semantic data to provide value (such as the date). For example:
http://www.offertazo.com/01-12-12/televisor-thomson I appreciate your help.0 -
Duplicate page titles
We have search results pages on our site. They share the same page title, there is no real differentiator between the result pages, other than page 1, page 2 etc. How do we de-dup the titles? just add page 1/2/3 etc to the end of them?
On-Page Optimization | | lilibooz0 -
Is there a SEO penalty for multi links on same page going to same destination page?
Hi, Just a quick note. I hope you are able to assist. To cut a long story short, on the page below http://www.bookbluemountains.com.au/ -> Features Specials & Packages (middle column) we have 3 links per special going to the same page.
On-Page Optimization | | daveupton
1. Header is linked
2. Click on image link - currently with a no follow
3. 'More info' under the description paragraph is linked too - currently with a no follow Two arguments are as follows:
1. The reason we do not follow all 3 links is to reduce too many links which may appear spammy to Google. 2. Counter argument:
The point above has some validity, However, using no follow is basically telling the search engines that the webmaster “does not trust or doesn’t take responsibility” for what is behind the link, something you don’t want to do within your own website. There is no penalty as such for having too many links, the search engines will generally not worry after a certain number.. nothing that would concern this business though. I would suggest changing the no follow links a.s.a.p. Could you please advise thoughts. Many thanks Dave Upton [long signature removed by staff]0 -
Duplicate content on video pages
Hi guys, We have a video section on our site containing about 50 videos, grouped by category/difficulty. On each video page except for the embedded player, a sentence or two describing the video and a list of related video links, there's pretty much nothing else. All of those appear as duplicate content by category. What should we do here? How long a description should be for those pages to appear unique for crawlers? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | lgrozeva0 -
How to avoid duplicate content on ecommerce pages?
I am currently building the site architecture for a very large ecommerce site. I am wondering how I should build it out if I have products that I want to include in multiple categories within my site. For example: Lets say I sell fitness equipment and I have categories for things such as: Treadmill, Exercise Bike, Stair Stepper, Weight Benches etc. But then I also have specific brand category pages such a: Precor, Life Fitness, Hammer, Body Solid So my question is how do I structure this so I am building this correctly? If I sell a Precor Treadmill I will want to include that product under the "Treadmill" category page as well as under the "Precor Equipment" category page. Can I get some advice for the best way to structure this? It's obviously something I want to avoid at all costs of doing improperly and having to fix later. Thank you Jake
On-Page Optimization | | PEnterprises0