301s vs. rel=canonical for duplicate content across domains
-
Howdy mozzers,
I just took on a telecommunications client who has spent the last few years acquiring smaller communications companies. When they took over these companies, they simply duplicated their site at all the old domains, resulting in a bunch of sites across the web with the exact same content. Obviously I'd like them all 301'd to their main site, but I'm getting push back.
Am I OK to simply plug in rel=canonical tags across the duplicate sites? All the content is literally exactly the same.
Thanks as always
-
Awesome - thanks Matthew.
-
Thanks Ade. This is really helpful. Much appreciated!
-
Hey,
You can do cross domain canonicals. Google does support that (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI6L2N4A0hA) and the one time I had to use that, it did seem to help. That being said, I'm not sure if Bing supports that or not.
Hope that helps.
-
Hi James,
Using a rel=canonical will work but I am guessing that at some point your client will want to updated the content of their website. If you do go for rel=canonical then this would mean that you would have to also update that same content to all of the other domains.
Depending on your domain/website hosting set-up you may be able to get around this by adding all of the duplicate domains as Parked Domains on the website hosting server but this can get very messy.
Unless there is a really good reason not to then I would use 301's.
If any of the domains has been hit with the Penguin update then I wouldn't use a 301 for those domains.
Cheers.
Ade.
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
-
Shopify Duplicate Content in products
Hello Moz Community, New to Moz and looking forward to beginning my journey towards SEO education and improving our clients' sites. Our client's website is a Shopify store. https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/ Our first Moz reports show 686 duplicate content issues. I will show the first 4 as examples. https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/haida-eagle-teardrop-earrings https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/haida-orca-silver-earrings https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/silver-oval-earrings https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/haida-eagle-spirit-silver-earrings As you can see, URL titles are unique. But I know that the content in each of those products have very similar product descriptions but not exactly. But since they have been flagged as a site issue by Moz, I am guessing that the content is 95% duplicate. So can a rel=canonical be the right solution for this type of duplicate content? Or should I be considering adding new content to each of 686 products to drop below the 95% threshold? Or another solution that I may not be aware of. Thanks in advance for your assistance and expertise! Sean
Technical SEO | | TheUpdateCompany1 -
Duplicate content or an update ???
Buying Guide and Product Category page competing for the same keyword ? Got a “nuts and bold website” selling basic stuff. Imagine selling simple nuts, bolts and washers (the little ring that goes in between) in different metals. Imagine a website with a very wide and deep line of these simple products. For long tail keywords we rank well (Example: 0.25 inch bolts). For the keyword: “Nuts bolts” our main category page use to rank well low 1<sup>st</sup> page to second page up against the big guys (Amazon, Walmart, Target, Costco, some drug store who may have a mix pack of nuts and bolts, but still Google don’t see the difference and list 2 pages each for these guys). But then in mid-February there were an update and suddenly our “Buying guide for nuts and bolts” rank higher and started to compete with our own product category page. That was never our intention. These two pages now compete for the ranking on page 4<sup>th</sup>. Clearly there were more words on the buying guide page but no changes had been made to it for well months or years. To make up for it some more words were added to the category page, but of cause there is only so many way you can fraise words about “nuts and bolts” without sounding a bit duplicate/re-writing. So what do I do now ?? Clearly the product category page is the one we like to rank highest with the guide a close 2nd. Most customer don’t need the buying guide but it is good to have and great support as we got lot of good comments from customer who read it. Made a link to the buying guide from the category page and wise verses. The category page got an embedded video. Moz list the page authority for the category page to 16 and 1 for the buying guide but clearly G see it differently. Already tried to change the Meta Tag Title and Description a little but it is hard to do if the word “Nuts Bolts” is to appear in the description or people don’t know what to expect. Could just insert a “do not index” for the buying guide but not a good long term solution. Unfortunately I am out of imagination at this point. Any good suggestions ?? Thanks, Kim Any good suggestions ???
Technical SEO | | KimX0 -
Rel=canonical on Godaddy Website builder
Hey crew! First off this is a last resort asking this question here. Godaddy has not been able to help so I need my Moz Fam on this one. So common problem My crawl report is showing I have duplicate home pages www.answer2cancer.org and www.answer2cancer.org/home.html I understand this is a common issue with apache webservers which is why the wonderful rel=canonical tag was created! I don't want to go through the hassle of a 301 redirect of course for such a simple issue. Now here's the issue. Godaddy website builder does not make any sense to me. In wordpress I could just go add the tag to the head in the back end. But no such thing exist in godaddy. You have to do this weird drag and drop html block and drag it somewhere on the site and plug in the code. I think putting before the code instead of just putting it in there. So I did that but when I publish and inspect in chrome I cannot see the tag in the head! This is confusing I know. the guy at godaddy didn't stand a chance lol. Anyway much love for any replies!
Technical SEO | | Answer2cancer0 -
Set Canonical for Paginated Content
Hi Guys, This is a follow up on this thread: http://moz.com/community/q/dynamic-url-parameters-woocommerce-create-404-errors# I would like to know how I can set a canonical link in Wordpress/Woocommerce which points to "View All" on category pages on our webshop.
Technical SEO | | jeeyer
The categories on my website can be viewed as 24/48 or All products but because the quanity constantly changes viewing 24 or 48 products isn't always possible. To point Google in the right direction I want to let them know that "View All" is the best way to go.
I've read that Google's crawler tries to do this automatically but not sure if this is the case on on my website. Here is some more info on the issue: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663744?hl=en
Thanks for the help! Joost0 -
Duplicate page content & titles on the same domain
Hey, My website: http://www.electromarket.co.uk is running Magento Enterprise. The issue I'm running into is that the URLs can be shortened and modified to display different things on the website itself. Here's a few examples. Product Page URL: http://www.electromarket.co.uk/speakers-audio-equipment/dj-pa-speakers/studio-bedroom-monitors/bba0051 OR I could remove everything in the URL and just have: http://www.electromarket.co.uk/bba0051 and the link will work just as well. Now my problem is, these two URL's load the same page title, same content, same everything, because essentially they are the very same web page. But how do I tell Google that? Do I need to tell Google that? And would I benefit by using a redirect for the shorter URLs? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tomhall900 -
Tags and Duplicate Content
Just wondering - for a lot of our sites we use tags as a way of re-grouping articles / news / blogs so all of the info on say 'government grants' can be found on one page. These /tag pages often come up with duplicate content errors, is it a big issue, how can we minimnise that?
Technical SEO | | salemtas0 -
301 or Rel=canonical
Should I use a 301 redirect for redirect mywebsite.com to www.mywebsite.com or use a rel=canonical?? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LeslieVS0 -
Magento and Duplicate content
I have been working with Magento over the last few weeks and I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the way it is setup. If you go to a product page and remove the sub folders one by one you can reach the same product pages causing duplicate content. All magento sites seem to have this weakness. So use this site as an example because I know it is built on magento, http://www.gio-goi.com/men/clothing/tees/throve-t-short.html?cid=756 As you remove the tees then the clothing and men sub folders you can still reach the product page. My first querstion is how big an issue is this and two does anyone have any ideas of how to solve it? Also I was wondering how does google treat question marks in urls? Should you try and avoid them unless you are filtering? Thanks
Technical SEO | | gregster10001