Duplicate content
-
Hi everybody,
I am thrown into a SEO project of a website with a duplicate content problem because of a version with and a version without 'www' . The strange thing is that the version with www. has got more than 10 times more Backlings but is not in the organic index. Here are my questions:
1. Should I go on using the "without www" version as the primary resource?
2. Which kind of redirect is best for passing most of the link juice?
Thanks in advance, Sebastian
-
Thank you... There is no google webmaster account made yet , so i think nobody defined the "without www version" to be cannonical or so so far.
If I follow your advice - will google replace the without www page in the index with the www version immediately or will the site be off the index temporarily?
-
Sebastian, you should consider doing the following:
A. Verify your domain in Google Webmaster Console and set whatever your preferred display URL is.One with www or without.
B. Let's say you decide to use the www version, which is what most webmasters prefer, setup a .htaccess file as below. This will take care of the problem. It will help you avoid any duplicate content issues in Google. It will also avoid the possibility of split page rank and/or split link popularity (inbound links).It's nicer, and more consistent.
<code class="htaccess" title="in your .htaccess file">RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\. RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}/$1 [R=301,L]</code>
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
-
Some Content The Same
Hello. I am about to publish some landing pages that target different industries that we are trying to market to. X for Accountants
On-Page Optimization | | smithandco
X for Financial Advisors
X for Fitness Trainers
X for X While a good portion of the content is unique on each page "the benefits of using X for accountants" some of the content on the page is duplicate which explains more about how our software works (the features), this will be the same content on every page. Is this considered duplicate content? What should I be aware of in term of Google rankings and penalties? Thanks,
David0 -
How best to deal with internal duplicate content
hi having an issue with a client site and internal duplicate content. The client has a custom cms and when they post new content it can appear, in full, at two different urls on the site. Short of getting the client to move cms, which they won't do, I am trying to find an easy fix that they could do themselves. ideally they would add a canonical on one of the versions but the cms does allow them to view posts in html view, also would be a lot if messing about wth posting the page and then going back to the cms and adding the tag. the cms is unable to auto generate this either. The content editors are copywriters not programmers. Would there be a solution using wmt for this? They have the skill level to be able to add a url in wmt so im thinking that a stop gap solution could be to noindex one of the versions using the option in webmaster tools. Ongoing we will consult developers about modifying the cms but budgets are limited so looking for a cheap and quick solution to help until the new year. anyone know of a way other than wmt to block Google from seeing duplicate content. We can block Google from folders because only a small percentage of the content in the folder would be internally duplicate. would be very grateful for any suggestions anyone could offer. thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | daedriccarl0 -
Duplicate content
Are images considered duplicate content too? Example:
On-Page Optimization | | BridalHotspot
I've got a size chart on each my lingerie pages. All written content is unique but I'm using the same chart for all those pages.0 -
Duplicate Content from on Competitor's site?
I've recently discovered large blocks of content on a competitors site that has been copy and pasted from a client's site. From what I know, this will only hurt the competitor and not my client since my guy was the original. Is this true? Is there any risk to my client? Should we take action? Dino
On-Page Optimization | | Dino640 -
Duplicate Content from WordPress Category Base?
I recently changed my category base in WordPress and instead of redirecting or deleting the old base, WordPress kept the content up. So I now have duplicate content on two different urls - one on the old category base, one on the new category base. How should I handle this situation? The site is only a couple weeks old, if that makes any difference.
On-Page Optimization | | JABacchetta0 -
Checking for content duplication against content on your own site.
We are currently trying to rewrite our product descriptions and I'm afraid some of the salespeople that are writing the descriptions are plagiarizing one-another's writing. Is there a content duplication checker that will allow you to check a piece of writing against a specific site rather than all of the web?
On-Page Optimization | | MichealGooden0 -
Offer landing page, duplicate content and noindex
Hi there I'm setting up a landing page for an exclusive offer that is only available (via a link) to a particular audience. Although I've got some specific content (offer informaiton paragraph), i want to use some of the copy and content from one of my standard product pages to inform the visitors about what it is that i'm trying to sell them. Considering I'm going to include a noindex on this page, do i need to worry about it having some content copied directly from another page on my site? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | zeegirl0 -
User experience regarding dulpicate content and managing this content with google.
Hi long title i know! We are moving on to magento and have chosen to allocate a specific colour to each category using corresponding tabbed navigation for user experience.All products within each of the coloured tabs then inherit the repective colour, giving the products a category identiy within the store. This layout has had a positive feedback from our "testers" As a lot of our products are seasonal and can be represented in different categories there is a significant amount of duplicate content. ATM i see our options as being: Alter the site structure so that the category is not shown in the url, therefore eliminating our duplicate products. The downside of this is that the colour co-ordination of the categories would not work at product level as its the category path that assigns the colour. create canonical links for every duplicate, can this be damaging? keep the duplicates and do nothing let google decide the most important version of a product. any guidance would be appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | LadyApollo0