Duplicate page title - blogs

[emmamoulden]

Hope someone can help me, I am a total SEO noivce so please be gentle.

My first report shows that I have duplicate page titles. I have been through and changed all of these so they are different and after my latest crawl they are still showing as duplicates.

I am wondering if this is because it;s a blog, here is one of the duplicates:

http://www.cottagesoapcompany.co.uk/blog/?row=1

Hope you can help!

[TommyTan]

Hi Emma,

I believe something might be wrong with the Tool.  Although you said you've done so but it doesn't seem to be working.  All the title tags for the blog are still the same.  Might you be able to switch to use a new tool or contact the webmaster or person that created the website?

[Chedr]

Cheers Emma, Oh dear, OK, well same same - keen to get this resolved pls do let me know how you go - all the best with it!

[emmamoulden]

Hi

No, I never got to the bottom of this one. I am waiting to see if my site provider can help because the issue is with my blog and duplication. Hope you get sorted out!

[Chedr]

Hey Emma,

I am having the exact same issue as you + I'm a newbee also. Did you have any luck on this?

I thought that it was because I had the title as the same as h1 text - but apparently this makes no difference.

So pulling my hair out on this one.

I popped over to Google's Webmaster + checked out HTML Improvements + got this: We didn't detect any content issues with your site. As we crawl your site, we check it to detect any potential issues with content on your pages, including duplicate, missing, or problematic title tags or meta descriptions.

But yet the SEOMOZ is telling me that I have a heap of these duplicate page titles... pls let me know if you're worked this one out - I'll be so very grateful!

[emmamoulden]

That's really helpful thank you.

The software alows me to change the 'title tag' which I have done so all blog posts are different but this does not seem to alter the 'title?!

One for the developers I think...

[TommyTan]

Hi Emma, I visited the link you provided and I think noticed the duplicate title tag. When I clicked on the link you provided, the title tag for that pge is "Handmade Soap Blog | Cottage Soap Company" and then I click on the page 5 (different article), it has the same title tag. Then I clicked on page 8 (different article), it also have the same title tag. So I believe those are the duplicate the reports are showing. Furthermore, to deeper research on this, you can visit your Webmaster Tools and check out the Optimization tab >>> HTML Improvements and it should show all your duplicate pages. You can click on the link and see which page it is. Hope this helps!

[littlesthobo]

Have you drilled down to see which ones they are claiming are duplicated? I'm guessing that it probably is blog articles that you've written.

As you've got a create.net site, it's pretty difficult to control (if not impossible) because you'll never get within an inch of any of the code to be able to effect any necessary changes.

I'm not exactly sure why, but I believe it's to do with the pagination and the page being crawled when its on a different page - maybe someone else can offer an explanation on that.

If you go onto the create.net forums one of their own tech's might be able to provide a better answer.

The problem you get is that the content also gets duplicated, not just the page titles.

My only advice is to see what Create can do about it and if you aren't getting anywhere, consider moving to a wordpress site and getting your own website.  It's probably cheaper in the long run as I know that create is about a tenner a month.  The more control you have over your site, the better it will be for your SEO.

Lots of create sites do rank very well though when well optimised, so it's not all bad.