Redirecting duplicate pages
-
For whatever reason, X-cart creates duplicates of our categories and articles so that we have URLs like this
www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars
www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/or
http://www.k9electronics.com/articles/anti-bark-collar
http://www.k9electronics.com/articles/anti-bark-collar/now our SEO guy says that we dont have to redirect these because google is "smart enough" to know they are the same, and that we should "leave it as-is". However, everything I have read online says that google sees this as dupe content and that we should redirect to one or the other / or no /, depending on which most of our internal links already point to, which is with a slash. What should we do? Redirect or leave it as is? Thanks!
-
I agree 100% with Matt. I would also recommend checking your internal links to ensure that they are all following the same format with or without the /.
-
Hi there, URLs with a trailing slash or without a trailing slash..this has been very much discussed and debated in the SEO circles for quite a long time. The fact is you can go with either of these but be consistent with what you go with through out your website. Personally, I would prefer all the URLs ending with a folder name go with a trailing slash and all the URLs that end with file names should end with proper file extension. And for me if anything ends without a trailing slash, it would be a file and not a folder (don't you think I am biased towards static websites?). This issue is very common with dynamic websites and to conclude, as your SEO guy rightly mentioned, there is absolutely nothing to worry about and Google will take care of this issue (rather a common practice or should I call it a mistake?) pretty well. Good luck.
Regards,
Devanur.
-
Redirect the URLs to one version, for a start it will make your site more crawler friendly for search engines so they don't waste time crawling each version of the page fully and also as you mention it will eliminate duplicate content.
Why make Google do extra work? - your site architecture needs to be as clear as possible, so that Google can crawl it efficiently and not have to deal with duplicates..
This link says it all - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/to-slash-or-not-to-slash.html
Here is a recent Q&A from some of the others in the community backing up the fact that you should redirect one version of the URL to eliminate duplicate content
- http://www.seomoz.org/q/duplicate-content-issue-with-trailing
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
-
Trailing slash redirects not working in https - working in http: What might be the culprit?
Hi, Our WP website redirects without slash to with slash are not working. When we tried with http mode, they are working. So, not working on https mode. Correct code given at .htaccess file. What might be causing the issue? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Do search engines see copy/keywords when it appears only at the bottom of a page?
My client is looking to improve their SEO, and to date I've written meta data and made some initial recommendations. Thing is, on some of their pages, the body copy appears at the bottom of the page, past links and big, splashy images. My question is, will search engines even see that copy to crawl it for keywords? Thanks!
Web Design | | MarcieHill0 -
Https pages indexed but all web pages are http - please can you offer some help?
Dear Moz Community, Please could you see what you think and offer some definite steps or advice.. I contacted the host provider and his initial thought was that WordPress was causing the https problem ?: eg when an https version of a page is called, things like videos and media don't always show up. A SSL certificate that is attached to a website, can allow pages to load over https. The host said that there is no active configured SSL it's just waiting as part of the hosting package just in case, but I found that the SSL certificate is still showing up during a crawl.It's important to eliminate the https problem before external backlinks link to any of the unwanted https pages that are currently indexed. Luckily I haven't started any intense backlinking work yet, and any links I have posted in search land have all been http version.I checked a few more url's to see if it’s necessary to create a permanent redirect from https to http. For example, I tried requesting domain.co.uk using the https:// and the https:// page loaded instead of redirecting automatically to http prefix version. I know that if I am automatically redirected to the http:// version of the page, then that is the way it should be. Search engines and visitors will stay on the http version of the site and not get lost anywhere in https. This also helps to eliminate duplicate content and to preserve link juice. What are your thoughts regarding that?As I understand it, most server configurations should redirect by default when https isn’t configured, and from my experience I’ve seen cases where pages requested via https return the default server page, a 404 error, or duplicate content. So I'm confused as to where to take this.One suggestion would be to disable all https since there is no need to have any traces to SSL when the site is even crawled ?. I don't want to enable https in the htaccess only to then create a https to http rewrite rule; https shouldn't even be a crawlable function of the site at all.RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTPS} offor to disable the SSL completely for now until it becomes a necessity for the website.I would really welcome your thoughts as I'm really stuck as to what to do for the best, short term and long term.Kind Regards
Web Design | | SEOguy10 -
Why would a developer build all page content in php?
Picked up a new client. Site is built on Wordpress. Previous developer built nearly all page content in their custom theme's PHP files. In other words, the theme's "page.php" file contains virtually all the HTML for each of the site's pages. Each individual page's back-end page editor appears blank, except for some of the page text. No markup, no widgets, no custom fields. And no dedicated, page-specific php files either. Pages are differentiated within page.php using: elseif (is_page("27") Has anyone ever come across this approach before? Why might someone do this?
Web Design | | mphdavidson0 -
I am looking to build an informational site that consists of a few landing pages. What kind of platform would you recommend?
The site would consist of an initial homepage, about us page, products & services page, sub-category pages that consist of the products and services in greater detail, and a contact us page. What platform would you recommend building this site on? I currently use Miva Merchant for an ecommerce platform, however this new site will not require the customization that Miva provides, and will also not need to have ecommerce capabilities. This will strictly be an informational site for prospective and current clients.
Web Design | | djlittman0 -
What is the best information architecture for developing local seo pages?
I think I have a good handle on the external local seo factors such as citations but I'd like to determine the best IA layout for starting a new site or adding new content to a local site. I see lots of small sites with duplicate content pages for each town/area which I know is poor practice. I also see sites that have unique content for each of those pages but it seems like bad design practice, from a user perspective, to create so many pages just for the search engines. To the example... My remodeling company needs to have some top level pages on its site to help the customers learn about my product, call these "Kitchen Remodeling" and "Bathroom Remodeling" for our purposes. Should I build these pages to be helpful to the customer without worrying too much about the SEO for now and focus on subfolders for my immediate area which would target keywords like "Kitchen Remodeling Mytown"? Aside from my future site, which is not a priority, I would like to be equipped to advise on best practices for the website development in situations where I am involved at the beginning of the process rather than just making the local SEO fit after the fact. Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | EthanB0 -
Do you think it will be a good idea to delete old blog pages off the server
I paid somebody to build my website using Dreamweaver, and at one point I didn't know how to use the template which automatically updates every page in the menu section so I stupidly broke the template on every new page when I made the websites blog and put the pages into a subfolder. I realised this was a silly thing to do and now and I now know how to use the template correctly I've copied every single page over from the subfolder and put it into the main template. Now I can update the template menu and every page changes automatically. The only problem is I've now got two versions of every page of my blog on the website. For some reason when I do a sitemap it comes up with a links to the old blog pages I, don't know why when I've removed the links from the blog page? and also the new copies also. I have basically got a copys of all blog pages. Do you think it will be a good idea to delete old indexed blog pages off the server so that when Google spiders the site it will pick up only the new links to the copy pages?
Web Design | | whitbycottages0 -
My personal search page
www.myname.com I watched the "White Board Friday" video on creating your own website based on your name. Can anyone explain why this would be a good concept for me? I'm currently involved in 1. Marketing for the company I work for 2. Sales for the company I work for 3. Affiliate Marketing/ Site Creation as side projects 4. SEO as a free-lance part-time offering 5. PPC & Web-marketing as a free-lance part-time offering Would my personal page be to showcase all of this? why is it beneficial for SEO?
Web Design | | AndySolo0