Wordpress Duplicate Content Due To Allocating Two Post Categories
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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
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
-
Please help - Duplicate Content
Hi, I am really struggling to understand why my site has a lot of duplicate content issues. It's flagging up as ridiculously high and I have no idea how to fix this, can anyone help me, please? Website is www.firstcapitol.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alix_SEO1 -
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 -
Trailing Slashes for Magento CMS pages - 2 URLS - Duplicate content
Hello, Can anyone help me find a solution to Fixing and Creating Magento CMS pages to only use one URL and not two URLS? www.domain.com/testpage www.domain.com/testpage/ I found a previous article that applies to my issue, which is using htaccess to redirect request for pages in magento 301 redirect to slash URL from the non-slash URL. I dont understand the syntax fully in htaccess , but I used this code below. This code below fixed the CMS page redirection but caused issues on other pages, like all my categories and products with this error: "This webpage has a redirect loop ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS" Assuming you're running at domain root. Change to working directory if needed. RewriteBase / # www check If you're running in a subdirectory, then you'll need to add that in to the redirected url (http://www.mydomain.com/subdirectory/$1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iamgreenminded
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] Trailing slash check Don't fix direct file links RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
RewriteRule ^(.)$ $1/ [L,R=301] Finally, forward everything to your front-controller (index.php) RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .* index.php [QSA,L]0 -
Galleries and duplicate content
Hi! I am now studing a website, and I have detected that they are maybe generating duplicate content because of image galleries. When they want to show details of some of their products, they link to a gallery url
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
something like this www.domain.com/en/gallery/slide/101 where you can find the logotype, a full image and a small description. There is a next and a prev button over the slider. The next goes to the next picture www.domain.com/en/gallery/slide/102 and so on. But the next picture is in a different URL!!!! The problem is that they are generating lots of urls with very thin content inside.
The pictures have very good resolution, and they are perfect for google images searchers, so we don't want to use the noindex tag. I thought that maybe it would be best to work with a single url with the whole gallery inside it (for example, the 6 pictures working with a slideshow in the same url ), but as the pictures are very big, the page weight would be greater than 7 Mb. If we keep the pictures working that way (different urls per picture), we will be generating duplicate content each time they want to create a gallery. What is your recommendation? Thank you!0 -
Does Google see this as duplicate content?
I'm working on a site that has too many pages in Google's index as shown in a simple count via a site search (example): site:http://www.mozquestionexample.com I ended up getting a full list of these pages and it shows pages that have been supposedly excluded from the index via GWT url parameters and/or canonicalization For instance, the list of indexed pages shows: 1. http://www.mozquestionexample.com/cool-stuff 2. http://www.mozquestionexample.com/cool-stuff?page=2 3. http://www.mozquestionexample.com?page=3 4. http://www.mozquestionexample.com?mq_source=q-and-a 5. http://www.mozquestionexample.com?type=productss&sort=1date Example #1 above is the one true page for search and the one that all the canonicals reference. Examples #2 and #3 shouldn't be in the index because the canonical points to url #1. Example #4 shouldn't be in the index, because it's just a source code that, again doesn't change the page and the canonical points to #1. Example #5 shouldn't be in the index because it's excluded in parameters as not affecting page content and the canonical is in place. Should I worry about these multiple urls for the same page and if so, what should I do about it? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Duplicate content on yearly product models.
TL;DR - Is creating a page that has 80% of duplicated content from the past year's product model where 20% is about the new model changes going to be detrimental to duplicate content issues. Is there a better way to update minor yearly model changes and not have duplicated content? Full Question - We create landing pages for yearly products. Some years the models change drastically and other years there are only a few minor changes. The years where the product features change significantly is not an issue, it's when there isn't much of a change to the product description & I want to still rank on the new year searches. Since I don't want duplicate content by just adding the last year's model content to a new page and just changing the year (2013 to 2014) because there isn't much change with the model, I thought perhaps we could write a small paragraph describing the changes & then including the last year's description of the product. Since 80% of the content on the page will be duplicated from the last year's model, how detrimental do you think this would be for a duplicate content issue? The reason I'm leaving the old model up is to maintain the authority that page has and to still rank on the old model which is still sold. Does anyone else have any other better idea other than re-writing the same information over again in a different way with the few minor changes to the product added in.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DCochrane0 -
Duplicate Page Content / Titles Help
Hi guys, My SEOmoz crawl diagnostics throw up thousands of Dup Page Content / Title errors which are mostly from the forum attached to my website. In-particular it's the forum user's profiles that are causing the issue, below is a sample of the URLs that are being penalised: http://www.mywebsite.com/subfolder/myforum/pop_profile.asp?mode=display&id=1308 I thought that by adding - http://www.mywebsite.com/subfolder/myforum/pop_profile.asp to my robots.txt file under 'Ignore' would cause the bots to overlook the thousands of profile pages but the latest SEOmoz crawl still picks them up. My question is, how can I get the bots to ignore these profile pages (they don't contain any useful content) and how much will this be affecting my rankings (bearing in mind I have thousands of errors for dup content and dup page titles). Thanks guys Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gaz33420 -
How to prevent duplicate content within this complex website?
I have a complex SEO issue I've been wrestling with and I'd appreciate your views on this very much. I have a sports website and most visitors are looking for the games that are played in the current week (I've studied this - it's true). We're creating a new website from scratch and I want to do this is as best as possible. We want to use the most elegant and best way to do this. We do not want to use work-arounds such as iframes, hiding text using AJAX etc. We need a solid solution for both users and search engines. Therefor I have written down three options: Using a canonical URL; Using 301-redirects; Using 302-redirects. Introduction The page 'website.com/competition/season/week-8' shows the soccer games that are played in game week 8 of the season. The next week users are interested in the games that are played in that week (game week 9). So the content a visitor is interested in, is constantly shifting because of the way competitions and tournaments are organized. After a season the same goes for the season of course. The website we're building has the following structure: Competition (e.g. 'premier league') Season (e.g. '2011-2012') Playweek (e.g. 'week 8') Game (e.g. 'Manchester United - Arsenal') This is the most logical structure one can think of. This is what users expect. Now we're facing the following challenge: when a user goes to http://website.com/premier-league he expects to see a) the games that are played in the current week and b) the current standings. When someone goes to http://website.com/premier-league/2011-2012/ he expects to see the same: the games that are played in the current week and the current standings. When someone goes to http://website.com/premier-league/2011-2012/week-8/ he expects to the same: the games that are played in the current week and the current standings. So essentially there's three places, within every active season within a competition, within the website where logically the same information has to be shown. To deal with this from a UX and SEO perspective, we have the following options: Option A - Use a canonical URL Using a canonical URL could solve this problem. You could use a canonical URL from the current week page and the Season page to the competition page: So: the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season/playweek-8' would have a canonical tag that points to 'website.com/$competition/' the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season/' would have a canonical tag that points to 'website.com/$competition/' The next week however, you want to have the canonical tag on 'website.com/$competition/$season/playweek-9' and the canonical tag from 'website.com/$competition/$season/playweek-8' should be removed. So then you have: the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season/playweek-9' would have a canonical tag that points to 'website.com/$competition/' the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season/' would still have a canonical tag that points to 'website.com/$competition/' In essence the canonical tag is constantly traveling through the pages. Advantages: UX: for a user this is a very neat solution. Wherever a user goes, he sees the information he expects. So that's all good. SEO: the search engines get very clear guidelines as to how the website functions and we prevent duplicate content. Disavantages: I have some concerns regarding the weekly changing canonical tag from a SEO perspective. Every week, within every competition the canonical tags are updated. How often do Search Engines update their index for canonical tags? I mean, say it takes a Search Engine a week to visit a page, crawl a page and process a canonical tag correctly, then the Search Engines will be a week behind on figuring out the actual structure of the hierarchy. On top of that: what do the changing canonical URLs to the 'quality' of the website? In theory this should be working all but I have some reservations on this. If there is a canonical tag from 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-8', what does this do to the indexation and ranking of it's subpages (the actual match pages) Option B - Using 301-redirects Using 301-redirects essentially the user and the Search Engine are treated the same. When the Season page or competition page are requested both are redirected to game week page. The same applies here as applies for the canonical URL: every week there are changes in the redirects. So in game week 8: the page on 'website.com/$competition/' would have a 301-redirect that points to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-8' the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season' would have a 301-redirect that points to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-8' A week goes by, so then you have: the page on 'website.com/$competition/' would have a 301-redirect that points to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-9' the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season' would have a 301-redirect that points to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-9' Advantages There is no loss of link authority. Disadvantages Before a playweek starts the playweek in question can be indexed. However, in the current playweek the playweek page 301-redirects to the competition page. After that week the page's 301-redirect is removed again and it's indexable. What do all the (changing) 301-redirects do to the overall quality of the website for Search Engines (and users)? Option C - Using 302-redirects Most SEO's will refrain from using 302-redirects. However, 302-redirect can be put to good use: for serving a temporary redirect. Within my website there's the content that's most important to the users (and therefor search engines) is constantly moving. In most cases after a week a different piece of the website is most interesting for a user. So let's take our example above. We're in playweek 8. If you want 'website.com/$competition/' to be redirecting to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-8/' you can use a 302-redirect. Because the redirect is temporary The next week the 302-redirect on 'website.com/$competition/' will be adjusted. It'll be pointing to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-9'. Advantages We're putting the 302-redirect to its actual use. The pages that 302-redirect (for instance 'website.com/$competition' and 'website.com/$competition/$season') will remain indexed. Disadvantages Not quite sure how Google will handle this, they're not very clear on how they exactly handle a 302-redirect and in which cases a 302-redirect might be useful. In most cases they advise webmasters not to use it. I'd very much like your opinion on this. Thanks in advance guys and galls!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StevenvanVessum0