Wordpress Duplicate Content Due To Allocating Two Post Categories

[SamCUK]

It looks like google has done a pretty deep crawl of my site and is now showing around 40 duplicate content issues for posts that I have tagged in two seperate categories for example:

http://www.musicliveuk.com/latest-news/live-music-boosts-australian-economy

http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-music/live-music-boosts-australian-economy

I use the all in one SEO pack and have checked the no index for categories, archive, and tag archive boxes so google shouldn't even crawl this content should it?

. I guess the obvious answer is to only put each post in one category but I shouldn't have to should I? Some posts are relevant in more than once category.

[SamCUK]

I have just gone to make sure that each post just has one category and add redirects and I've noticed that all the duplicate title issues google has notified me about appear to redirect anyway. For example:

http://www.musicliveuk.com/latest-news/who-are-the-most-expensive-wedding-bands

and

http://www.musicliveuk.com/music-news/who-are-the-most-expensive-wedding-bands

have duplicate titles apparantly but the 1st url redirects to the 2nd one. I use the redirection plug in but have no redirection set up for that url so I'm a bit confused. And if they're redirecting anyway then why is google flagging up duplicate titles?

[RyanKent]

Apparently there is a 301 redirect which forwards the /latest-news/ version of the link to the /live-music URL. As long as that redirect is in place there is no duplicate content issue.

If you do wish to maintain a listing in multiple categories, a canonical tag pointing from the duplicate page to the main URL would resolve the issue for search engines.

[CameronT]

Hi Samuel,

As I see it, you've got a couple of options: a) only post in one category and use tags to drive navigation around to other places where you want your content to be, or b) change your permalink structure to not include the category in the URL, which is probably not ideal. Either way, you're looking at a few 301 redirects to sort the problems you've currently got out - the redirection plugin for WordPress is probably your best bet here.

Noindexing the pages as you have will not mean that the pages within the sub categories don't appear in the SERPs - that is site.com/cat/sub-cat/article and site.com/cat/another-sub-cat/article will appear and be dupe content - only that the category pages themselves will not be indexed, which is probably not ideal either if you want to have a targeted page around live music for example.

So, to fixing. Make your choice of one of the two options above. Personally I would go for a), then I would look at removing the noindex on category and tag pages. I would also look to migrate from AiO SEO to Yoast's SEO for WordPress.

Hope this helps

James