Solving duplicate content errors for what is effectively the same page.
-
Hello,
I am trying out your SEOMOZ and I quite like it. I've managed to remove most of the errors on my site however I'm not sure how to get round this last one.If you look at my errors you will see most of them revolve around things like this:
http://www.containerpadlocks.co.uk/categories/32/dead-locks
http://www.containerpadlocks.co.uk/categories/32/dead-locks?PageSize=9999These are essentially the same pages because the category for Dead Locks does not contain enough products to view over more than one resulting in the fact that when I say 'View all products' on my webpage, the results are the same. This functionality works with categories with more than the 20 per page limit.
My question is, should I be either:
Removing the link to 'show all products' (which adds the PageSize query string value) if no more products will be shown. Or putting a no-index meta tag on the page? Or some other action entirely?
Looking forward to your reply and you showing how effective Pro is.
Many Thanks,
James Carter -
Hi James,
Did Saibose answer your questions, or do you still have some questions remaining? I hope you're still enjoying your Pro membership, and let us know if we can help with anything!
-
James, I think that you can afford to do some apache level mod_rewrite so that you can mask your URLs with better looking keyword optimized URLs. mod_rewrite on apache is something your LAMP (linux, Apache MYsql,PHP) programmer would be aware of.
Programs and ecommerce cart programmers normally use easy to code names, but at the end it takes a lot of pain to rename all the categories and product names to something meaningful.
I had a similar problem and I got a mod rewrite done since htaccess modifications for 301 redirections and URL masking would put stress on the server and can slow your page load time.
-
Thanks for your reply.
I see - I shall remove the 'Show All Products' link for categories with less than the page size of products.
What could I change the URL too? At the moment I am using /category/id/ as I need to indicate whether the ID is for a Category (in which case show the category page) or a Product (show the product page). At the moment I am using /category/ and /products/ Is there a better format to use bearing in mind I have to have data in the URL describing if the URL is for a category or product.
-
James,
The easiest way is to get rid of the 9999 at the last of the URL. If you can, add a rel=canonical tag for all such pages. That should normally work.
If the problem is rampant, you may want to remove the "show all products" option from pages that do not have more products to showcase. I would also suggest using a mod rewrite on apache to write better URLs for the same. Category33 sounds a bit weird to me. It could be named more SEO friendly.
If you want to get more information on rel=canonical implementation here is a link to help.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394
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
-
How do I fix duplicate title issues?
I have a sub domain that isn't even on our own site but it's resulting in a lot of errors in Moz for duplicate content, as shown here: http://cl.ly/1R081v0K0e2N. Would this affect our ranking or is it simply just errors within Moz? What measures could I take to make sure that Moz or Google doesn't associate our site with these errors? Would I have to noindex in the htaccess file for the sub domain?
Moz Pro | | MMAffiliate0 -
How do I find out which pages are being indexed on my site and which are not?
Hi, I doing my first technical audit on my site. I am learning how to do an audit as i go and am a lost. I know some page won't be indexed but how do I: 1. Check the site for all pages, both indexed and not indexed 2. Run a report to show indexed pages only (i am presuming i can do this via screaming Frog or webmaster tool) 3. I can do a comparison between the two list and work out which pages are not being indexed. I'll then need to figure out way. I'll cross this bridge once i get to it Thanks Ben
Moz Pro | | benjmoz0 -
How to solve duplicate page title & content error
I got lot of errors in Duplicate page title - 5000 Here the result page is same and content is also same,but it differs only with page no in meta title Title missing error In seomoz report i got empty msg - title,meta desc,meta robots,meta refresh But if i check the link which i got error it shows all meta tags..we have added all meta tags in our site..But i dont no why i got title missing error . 404 error In this report,if i click the link which i got error, it goes to main page of our site. But the url differs. eg: The error link is :www.example.com/buy/requirement-2-0-inmumbai-property it automatically goes to www.example.com page Let me know how to solve these issues.
Moz Pro | | Rajesh.Chandran0 -
Duplicate Content Issue because of root domain and index.html
SEOMoz crawl diagnostics is suggesting that my root domain and the rootdomain/index.html are duplicate content. What can be done to ensure that both are considered as a single age only?
Moz Pro | | h1seo1 -
Page Rank Report says #6 in Google but I can't find the page anywhere
So SEOMoz says that I've consistently ranked #6 for a certain keyword. But when I search I'm no where to be found. I've done regular searches, incognito and some non-seomoz reports and all come up with nothing in Google. I noticed it a week or two ago, but didn't think it would continue. This is no bueno. I wouldn't be surprised if I got penalized (luckily my homepage relatively well for similar keywords), an old seo consultant used very spammy tactics. I recently removed them, but not before I started to notice that I fell off the map. Why would SEOMoz not recognize this, and continue to say I'm ranking well? The keyword is bpi building analyst the page is http://www.cleanedison.com/courses/bpi-building-analyst
Moz Pro | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
Crawl Diagnostics Error Spike
With the last crawl update to one of my sites there was a huge spike in errors reported. The errors jumped by 16,659 -- majority of which are under the duplicate title and duplicate content category. When I look at the specific issues it seems that the crawler is crawling a ton of blank pages on the sites blog through pagination. The odd thing is that the site has not been updated in a while and prior to this crawl on Jun 4th there were no reports of these blank pages. Is this something that can be an error on the crawler side of things? Any suggestions on next steps would be greatly appreciated. I'm adding an image of the error spike Xovep.jpg?1 Xovep.jpg?1
Moz Pro | | VanadiumInteractive1 -
How do I fix a duplicate content error with a top level domain?
Hi, I'm getting a duplicate content error from the SEOmoz crawler due to an issue with trailing slashes. It's showing www.milengo.com and www.milengo.com/ as having duplicate page titles. However I'm pretty sure this has been fixed in the .htaccess file since if you type in the domain with a trailing slash it automatically redirects to the domain without a trailing slash, so this shouldn't be an issue. I'm stuck here. Any ideas? Thanks. Rob
Moz Pro | | milengo0 -
SEOmoz crawler and duplicate content
Does anybody know if the SEOmoz crawler picks up canonical tags when its looking for duplicate content? I've got a ton of errors in one of my projects even though they all have canonical tags. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | neooptic0