Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
#hashtag Anchor text within content
-
Hi, i have a question about anchor text within my sites content.
It 'jumps' to content displayed further down the page via a side navigation at the top. These links don't take you away to any other page, instead take you further down the page to the relavent content.
My question is this: I've noticed in the URL that the anchor text - #jumpnavlink is placed at the end of the pages URL like so..
www.mywebsite.com/example-page.php#jumpnavlink
Is this creating a problem for duplicate content?
Is it creating a new URL for viewers to use?
Is it ok to have lots of these running throughout my sites content pages?Many thanks for any light that is shed on this one!
Cheers
Alex -
Hi Alex,
Matt is absolutely right - engines ignore everything to the right of the hash (properly called a "named anchor" or "URL fragment").
They ignore fragments for the reason you just described. Fragments have traditionally been used in web design to build "table of contents" navigation that drops a user down the page to a specific position on the page, whether a different section, or a specific user's comment, etc. If a page has 10 sections with 10 corresponding fragments, obviously the engine just wants to index the root URL, rather than waste time and money indexing all the fragments, which would be duplicates of the root URL.
Fragments can be very useful for visitors who want to link to a specific part of a long article, or directly to a comment they made.
There is no problem whatsoever with using lots of fragments for in-page navigation.
-
yup .. search engine will see it as single page -
www.mywebsite.com/example-page.php
_Now, if you numerous pages with hash tags that means, you are cramming loads of content in the same page that is www.mywebsite.com/example-page.php. This may be bad for the users but SEO's perspective this URLs bad, really bad.
To target different pages, you need to have URLs without the hash tag. _
-
As far as I am aware Google doesn't index urls with a hashtag as this is pointing to an internal part of the page - essentially it will only index the url without the hashtag, so it isn't creating a new URL. However to be certain of this I would stick a site: query with your url including the hashtag and see if it appears with the hashtag, if, as I expect it doesn't then you shouldn't have an issue with duplicate content under two urls. As far as them being ok in relation to your SEO efforts I don't see why there should be a negative impact as you are essentially making your site more user-friendly and pointing to a specific part of the page that is already indexed - your are not duplicating that part of the page by creating an internal anchor to that specific content.
Just for your confirmation I can tell you I have a page that uses an internal anchor (#) and when you do a site search in Google this page doesn't appear. When you search for it without the # it does...
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
-
Page Indexing without content
Hello. I have a problem of page indexing without content. I have website in 3 different languages and 2 of the pages are indexing just fine, but one language page (the most important one) is indexing without content. When searching using site: page comes up, but when searching unique keywords for which I should rank 100% nothing comes up. This page was indexing just fine and the problem arose couple of days ago after google update finished. Looking further, the problem is language related and every page in the given language that is newly indexed has this problem, while pages that were last crawled around one week ago are just fine. Has anyone ran into this type of problem?
Technical SEO | | AtuliSulava1 -
Collapsible sections - content
**Hi,****I am looking to improve the aesthetics of some pages on my website by adding written content into collapsible tabs. I was wondering whether the content that is ‘hidden’ by tabs is given less weight by Google from the perspective of SEO? **Some articles I have read suggest that tabbed content is weighted equally with the content which is already immediately visible to the user, but others suggest that this may not be the case. **Please, can I request opinions on the matter? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, many thanks.**Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
Duplicate content through product variants
Hi, Before you shout at me for not searching - I did and there are indeed lots of threads and articles on this problem. I therefore realise that this problem is not exactly new or unique. The situation: I am dealing with a website that has 1 to N (n being between 1 and 6 so far) variants of a product. There are no dropdown for variants. This is not technically possible short of a complete redesign which is not on the table right now. The product variants are also not linked to each other but share about 99% of content (obvious problem here). In the "search all" they show up individually. Each product-variant is a different page, unconnected in backend as well as frontend. The system is quite limited in what can be added and entered - I may have some opportunity to influence on smaller things such as enabling canonicals. In my opinion, the optimal choice would be to retain one page for each product, the base variant, and then add dropdowns to select extras/other variants. As that is not possible, I feel that the best solution is to canonicalise all versions to one version (either base variant or best-selling product?) and to offer customers a list at each product giving him a direct path to the other variants of the product. I'd be thankful for opinions, advice or showing completely new approaches I have not even thought of! Kind Regards, Nico
Technical SEO | | netzkern_AG0 -
Does anchor text penalty apply to internal links?
We already know that over optimsied anchor text for external will cause a penalty. But what about internal links? All of our blog posts include an advertisement linking sales pages. These links all use the exact same anchor text. Is linking to an internal page from so many other pages (blog posts) likely to trigger a penalty? Here is an example: http://www.designquotes.com.au/business-blog/four-ways-to-enhance-your-e-commerce-site-for-busy-shoppers/ This links to http://www.designquotes.com.au/web-design-quotes Many of the posts link to the same page using the anchor text "Compare Web Design Quotes from Local Designers."
Technical SEO | | designquotes0 -
Squarespace Duplicate Content Issues
My site is built through squarespace and when I ran the campaign in SEOmoz...its come up with all these errors saying duplicate content and duplicate page title for my blog portion. I've heard that canonical tags help with this but with squarespace its hard to add code to page level...only site wide is possible. Was curious if there's someone experienced in squarespace and SEO out there that can give some suggestions on how to resolve this problem? thanks
Technical SEO | | cmjolley0 -
How to resolve this Duplicate content?
Hi , There is page i get when i do proper menu navigation Caratlane.com>jewellery>rings>casualsrings> http://www.caratlane.com/jewellery/rings/casual-rings/leaves-dew-diamond-0-03-ct-peridot-1-ct-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html When i do a site search in my search box by my product code number "JR00219" The same page is appears with different url http://www.caratlane.com/leaves-dew-diamond-0-03-ct-peridot-1-ct-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html So there is a duplicate content. How can we resolve it. Regards, kathir caratlane.com
Technical SEO | | kathiravan0 -
Duplicate content and http and https
Within my Moz crawl report, I have a ton of duplicate content caused by identical pages due to identical pages of http and https URL's. For example: http://www.bigcompany.com/accomodations https://www.bigcompany.com/accomodations The strange thing is that 99% of these URL's are not sensitive in nature and do not require any security features. No credit card information, booking, or carts. The web developer cannot explain where these extra URL's came from or provide any further information. Advice or suggestions are welcome! How do I solve this issue? THANKS MOZZERS
Technical SEO | | hawkvt10 -
Replace Header Text With Image
I have a static website that I would like to retheme. I have the mockup, and its spliced. The website holds nice rankings right now, and I want to keep them in place. The one thing that will change with this new design is the header will no longer be text, but instead an image. Is there a way to ensure googlebot still sees the H1 tag header exactly how it is now but use an image for the header instead? I dont want any blackhat tricks that will get me banned. Just wondering if there is a simple way to have googlebot see the header as text (not ALT img txt) so the site does not appear to have changed at all. (It hasnt, I only am changing the graphics and colors of background, and header image for better branding.
Technical SEO | | getbigyadig0