Fixing Duplicate Content Errors
-
SEOMOZ Pro is showing some duplicate content errors and wondered the best way to fix them other than re-writing the content.
Should I just remove the pages found or should I set up permanent re-directs through to the home page in case there is any link value or visitors on these duplicate pages?
Thanks.
-
Sorry, the thread was getting a bit nested, so I'm breaking out this response, even though it relates to a couple of replies. Although it is tough to tell without specifics, I suspect that you do need to canonicalize these somehow. Geo-pages that only differ by a keyword or two didn't fare well in the Panda updates, and Google is starting to see them as "thin" content. I do actually think the canonical tag is preferable to a 301 here (at least from my understanding of the problem). As Aran said, the 301 will remove the pages for visitors as well, and they may have some value.
While they're technically not 100% duplicates, Google is pretty liberal with their interpretation of the canonical tag in practice (in fact, I'd say they're actual interpretation is much more liberal than their stated interpretation). If the pages really have no search value, you could META NOINDEX them - it's unlikely that they're being linked to.
-
Not sure if this is the right usage of canonical. Seems a bit cheaty
-
Hi Paul,
I would have thought that a 301 is going to be a little confusing for your visitors, as they may be browsing the Lancashire part of your site and find themselves redirected to the bedfordshire side. I'd personally prefer to write some content for Lancashire/Bedford.
Understood you don't want to share the URL, but as I have said, difficult to answer the problem without seeing it in context.
Cheers
Aran
-
Good suggestion. Thanks for your help.
-
If the content is the same, you can use te canonical tag to tell search engines what is the original content.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
Bye
-
Hi Aran,
I don't really want to post the URL on this public post, but I can say that I have a site that has some auto-generated regional content, which I realise is not recommended.
What's happened is two pages are completely identical down to the fact that various regions have similar town names and the code is showing the same page. E.g.
England/Bedfordshire/Bedford
England/Lancashire/BedfordIt would be easier for me to put 301 redirects on the dupes so I can avoid having to get into the code and remove the auto-generated duplicate pages. Links to the duplicate pages will still show if I just do redirects.
I think I've answered my own question really as it would be best to remove any links going to duplicate pages to reduce out-bound links on the linking pages.
Paul
-
Hi,
Can you provide examples of pages what contain duplicate content?
It's difficult to know how to handle them without seeing your site.
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
-
Possible duplicate content issues on same page with urls to multiple tabs?
Hello everyone! I'm first time here, and glad to be part of Moz community! Jumping right into the question I have. For a type of pages we have on our website, there are multiple tabs on each page. To give an example, let's say a page is for the information about a place called "Ladakh". Now the various urls that the page is accessible from, can take the form of: mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/ mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/photos/ mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/places-to-visit/ and so on. To keep the UX smooth when the user switches from one tab to another, we load everything in advance with AJAX but it remains hidden till the user switches to the required tab. Now since the content is actually there in the html, does Google count it as duplicate content? I'm afraid this might be the case as when I Google for a text that's visible only on one of the tabs, I still see all tabs in Google results. I also see internal links on GSC to say a page mywanderlust.in/questions which is only supposed to be linked from one tab, but GSC telling internal links to this page (mywanderlust.in/questions) from all those 3 tabs. Also, Moz Pro crawl reports informed me about duplicate content issues, although surprisingly it says the issue exists only on a small fraction of our indexable pages. Is it hurting our SEO? Any suggestions on how we could handle the url structure better to make it optimal for indexing. FWIW, we're using a fully responsive design with the displayed content being exactly same for both desktop and mobile web. Thanks a ton in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atulgoyal0 -
Bigcommerce & Blog Tags causing Duplicate Content?
Curious why moz would pick up our blog tags as causing duplicate content, when each blog has a rel canonical tag pointing to either the blog post itself and on the tag pages points to the blog as a whole. Kinda want to get rid of the tags in general now, but also feel they can add some extra value to UX later on when we have many more blog posts. Curious if anyone knows a way around this or even a best solution practice when faced with such odd issues? I can see why the duplicate content would happen, but when grouping content into categories?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Geographic site clones and duplicate content penalties
We sell wedding garters, niche I know! We have a site (weddinggarterco.com) that ranks very well in the UK and sell a lot to the USA despite it's rudimentary currency functions (Shopify makes US customers checkout in £gbp; not helpful to conversions). To improve this I built a clone (theweddinggarterco.com) and have faked a kind of location selector top right. Needless to say a lot of content on this site is VERY similar to the UK version. My questions are... 1. Is this likely to stop me ranking the USA site? 2. Is this likely to harm my UK rankings? Any thoughts very welcome! Thanks. Mat
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mat20150 -
Duplicate content - Images & Attachments
I have been looking a GWT HTML improvements on our new site and I am scratching my head on how to stop some elements of the website showing up as duplicates for Meta Descriptions and Titles. For example the blog area: <a id="zip_0-anchor" class="zippedsection_title"></a>This blog is full of information and resources for you to implement; get more traffic, more leads an /blog//blog/page/2//blog/page/3//blog/page/4//blog/page/6//blog/page/9/The page has rel canonicals on them (using Yoast Wordpress SEO) and I can't see away of stopping the duplicate content. Can anyone suggest how to combat this? or is there nothing to worry about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Wordpress and duplicate content
Hi, I have recently installed wordpress and started a blog but now loads of duplicate pages are cropping up for tags and authors and dates etc. How do I do the canonical thing in wordpress? Thanks Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jwdl0 -
Duplicate Content/ Indexing Question
I have a real estate Wordpress site that uses an IDX provider to add real estate listings to my site. A new page is created as a new property comes to market and then the page is deleted when the property is sold. I like the functionality of the service but it creates a significant amount of 404's and I'm also concerned about duplicate content because anyone else using the same service here in Las Vegas will have 1000's of the exact same property pages that I do. Any thoughts on this and is there a way that I can have the search engines only index the core 20 pages of my site and ignore future property pages? Your advice is greatly appreciated. See link for example http://www.mylvcondosales.com/mandarin-las-vegas/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AnthonyLasVegas0 -
Duplicate content on ecommerce sites
I just want to confirm something about duplicate content. On an eCommerce site, if the meta-titles, meta-descriptions and product descriptions are all unique, yet a big chunk at the bottom (featuring "why buy with us" etc) is copied across all product pages, would each page be penalised, or not indexed, for duplicate content? Does the whole page need to be a duplicate to be worried about this, or would this large chunk of text, bigger than the product description, have an effect on the page. If this would be a problem, what are some ways around it? Because the content is quite powerful, and is relavent to all products... Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Creode0 -
How much (%) of the content of a page is considered too much duplication?
Google is not fond of duplication, I have been very kindly told. So how much would you suggest is too much?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonberenyi0