Duplicate content? Not sure.

[ChristiMc]

Good news!  I have my first real SEO gig and now I have to be able to actually deliver. I'm up for it but I want to be sure I'm seeing what I think I am before suggesting any changes.  I'm working my way throught Danny Dover's excellent book SEO Secrets and learning tons!

To see if there is duplicate content on the site, I've taken a sentence from one of the pages on the site and searched for it:  i.e., site:storybooksforhealing.com "Some of the most quiet moments are often the most difficult after a loss. Mornings, late nights, time alone."

The SERPs show 7 pages that have this text on it.  It seems like this is duplicate content, right?

This is a Wordpress website so what's happening is the actual page is here: www.storybooksforhealing.com/publish-cup-of-joy/ but there are several archive pages that show excerpts of this text, too.

If this is duplicate content (first question) then how would I go about remedying it? Should I set the canonical reference to /publish-cup-of-joy page?

Thank you for being patient with my NOOB questions.

[ChristiMc]

Robert, thanks again for your patience and expertise.  I think I'm clearer now.  As long as these aren't considered duplicates, I'm happy.  Thanks for the tip on All In One SEO plugin to not index the archive pages.  I'll certainly get in there and do that.

Right now, I"m just trying to identify the issues my client needs to address and not make too many changes to things until we've had the opportunity to go over them together.

Your insight and instructions have been most helpful.

Thank you!!!!

[RobertFisher]

You are being perfectly clear and these, in my opinion, are not duplicate content and I will endeavor to show you how I drew that conclusion:

First, in looking at your code, you have a feed that is throwing up the blog from 8/19 that has the above quote in it. That is why it shows on your home page. 
On the next couple of pages they are:
story....com/tag/mugs    title tag is mugs archive

story....com/tag/publishing title tag is publishing archive

story...com/tag/photo  - photo archive

story...com/tag/memory - memory archive

then the post itself: http://www.storybooksforhealing.com/publish-cup-of-joy/

**then the blog pulled to the home page. **

So, your issue is really not one of duplicate content, per se. But, there is a way to fix it.

Since most of these are archives, go into all in one SEO (this is in your WordPress dashboard), Plugins (Yes it is there, I see it  

You will see All In One SEO (I have attached screenshots to assist you)

The first image is just the top of All in one SEO, the second is scrolling down and the third is the one where you will see Use noindex for Archives:, No noindex Tag Archives:

Check each box. 
Now, note that if you go do a Site: again it will still be there and you will need to give it time to fall away. You could likely resubmit the sitemap, etc. but don't need to. Just wait.

This way Google will not index these and you will not have duplicate content issues. (I don't think you would have had an issue with it, but this will keep it clean for you.)

All the best,

[" target="_blank">iframe>](<iframe class=)

[ChristiMc]

Robert, thank you for responding so thoroughly.  I'll definitely look into each of the items you wrote about.  I still have my lingering question that I started with, however.

Is what I'm seeing when I do this Google search:

site:storybooksforhealing.com "Some of the most quiet moments are often the most difficult after a loss. Mornings, late nights, time alone."

The resulting list has 7 entries.  Aren't these duplicates?  Shouldn't I get rid of them somehow?  Or are you saying the issues that the meta descriptions are the problem?  I don't understand why the meta descriptions you refer to in your post above would be causing the duplicates to appear in the SERP.

Some of the pages listed are category pages or tag pages that are just listing all posts related to a category or tag.  There is still only one unique post but it's getting replicated on the category or tag archive pages.  Should these be considered duplicate pages?

I'm sorry for the confusion.  I wish I could be clearer in how I'm presenting the problem to you.

[RobertFisher]

Christi,

I think you have your meta description set site wide in WP. You need to change that first. Then, I think you are also putting a meta description in on each page so, when you try to use mozbar for page elements, it has none as a default as it is reading two.

Go into your WP dashboard (this will depend a bit on what plugins you are using) and under settings, look for All in one SEO, or Yoast SEO for wordpress, etc. If something else, let us know. 
Here is a link for optimizing Yoast (this is one a lot of people use) meta description. 
For All in one SEO here is their main page. If you fix that, I think you will be on the way.

Also on the mozbar, when you click on the bookmark, the drop down has a highlighter for links. click on it. At the bottom of that will be a space where you can put in keywords and hit highlite and you will see the keywords. I put in "Some of the most quiet moments are" and nothing highlighted. I then picked a phrase I saw a couple of times "Start to Finish Guide." it showed up in the content and as anchor text. So, I am now 99% sure this is the issue.

If still having trouble, let us know.

[Francisco_Meza]

Rel canonical it. That's what it was made for. Watch the master Matt Cutts' slideshow: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonical-link-tag/

He writes the Google Algorithm.

[ChristiMc]

Thank you for taking the time to respond.  I think the problem is that Wordpress (in this case) is taking the excerpt from the main page /publish-cup-of-joy/ and presenting it on other pages along with many other excerpts from other pages on the site.  I think the content really only exists on that one page but is being presented in different ways and with different URLs depending on whether you select a category to show all related posts for a category or if you select a tag to show all posts with a certain tag, etc.

It may be that I just need to point all archive pages to one specific page on the website instead of letting the search engine index every archive page.

I'm just not confident about that approach so am looking for direction in that regard.

Thanks again for responding!

[ResslerMotors]

All of those occurrences are part of a marketing piece referencing a coffee cup.  Due to the structure of the content, you are probably going to have to rewrite that piece.  So, that will delete this exact phrase, but create a new one.

I would suggest not using a piece of the content from that article on every page of the website, and instead use a summary piece to describe the coffee cup.  Not only will improve your click thrus, but you won't make people read something so depressing so often