Duplicate page titles in SEOMoz
-
My on page reports are showing a good number of duplicate title tags, but they are all because of a url tracking parameter that tells us which link the visitor clicked on. For example, http://www.example.com/example-product.htm?ref=navside and http://www.example.com/example-product.htm are the same page, but are treated as to different urls in SEOMoz. This is creating "fake" number of duplicate page titles in my reports.
This has not been a problem with Google, but SEOMoz is treating it like this and it's confusing my data. Is there a way to specify this as a url parameter in the Moz software?
Or does anybody have another suggestion? Should I specify this in GWT and BWT?
-
The best way to handle this, for all crawlers including Google, Yahoo and Moz, is to make sure you have proper canonical tags on those URLs that point to the non-parameterized URL.
So http://www.example.com/example-product.htm?ref=navside will have a canonical that points to http://www.example.com/example-product.htm
-
My understanding is that the Moz crawlers should be checking the canonical, in which case it will ignore duplicate content and title tag issues. If you find this is not the case with your crawl, please let our help team know at help @ moz.com
-
No, Moz's tool won't check the canonical to see if that would ignore this.
-
Do you think that setting a canonical url tag might help fix this?
-
Hi Robert,
Yes, I'm sorry but you're overlooking something. Ignoring parameters is something you should do in regards to SEO. It won't stop Google Analytics tracking these parameters.
-
I'm not sure why I'd want to ask google to ignore those parameters... we're explicitly adding the ones that they suggested we use from here:
The issue that I'm having is that Moz analytics is showing duplicate pages as an issue to resolve when the only difference is that these params exist.
Am I overlooking something here?
-
Hi Robert,
I wouldn't handle this via robots.txt if you only want to do this for Rogerbot. The best way to tell Google to ignore your UTM parameters is via Google Webmaster Tools. Under Crawl > URL Parameters you've got the option to add parameters that don't change any of the content and are solely used for tracking purposes.
-
I'm having a similar issue. Is there an example of how to add this to the robots.txt file to ignore the utm stuff for RogerBot?
Our scenario is that we send out PDFs with links to pages on our site and those links have utm parameters included... and are showing up as duplicate content.
Thanks in advance,
Robby
-
I think this is the answer I was looking for... Yeah, GWT already has a bunch of our parameters added, and hasn't had a problem with this one. It's not showing these pages as duplicate like SEOMoz does.
Thanks guys!
-
Hi,
What you might want to do to get rid of this issues within SEOMoz is add the parameters to your robots.txt file and specifically target the user agent of SEOMoz: Rogerbot. This way SEOMoz won't crawl the links with this parameter and by doing that also won't warn you about these duplicate titles.
Hope this helps!
Btw. As James already mentioned I would also recommend to configure these parameters within Google Webmaster Tools.
-
You could set it up in GWT but it sounds like you are using utm tags on internal links so you can see which physical links on a page are driving clicks. If that's the case a cleaner solution is to upgrade your Google Analytics code for enhanced link attribution. I'm assuming you are using GA but if so this will allow you to see which links are driving which clicks and won't create tons of duplicate page titles in SEOmoz.
See link: http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2558867
Let me know if you have questions,
JS
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
-
Should I set blog category/tag pages as "noindex"? If so, how do I prevent "meta noindex" Moz crawl errors for those pages?
From what I can tell, SEO experts recommend setting blog category and tag pages (ie. "http://site.com/blog/tag/some-product") as "noindex, follow" in order to keep the page quality of indexable pages high. However, I just received a slew of critical crawl warnings from Moz for having these pages set to "noindex." Should the pages be indexed? If not, why am I receiving critical crawl warnings from Moz and how do I prevent this?
Moz Pro | | NichGunn0 -
Problem with On-page
I have an issue. I have added 5 keywords but when i go to the "on page" tab. They are not there... So i press on "Add keyword" and it takes me to another page where i can see all my keywords. So i go back to the "on page" and no keyword shows up. I wanna have a summary of the weekly crawl for the on page of these keywords and it's not showing up 😞 Anybody knows why?
Moz Pro | | theseolab0 -
"On-Page Report Card"- why is still showing " F grade" after introducing the keyword in page and title.
Hello, "On-Page Report Card"- why is still showing " F grade" after introducing the keyword in page and title. After changing the title and putting the keyword inside the title, in this section, "Exact Keyword Usage in Page Title", it shows the first title, without updating my changes. I have updated several times. In some cases worked, in this case doesn't. For example "online project management software" grades F, and "project management software" grades A, even if I've put the "online" word in title an so on. Now I have the same issue with "stock management software" which grades F. "stock management" grades A, even if i've put exactly "stock management software" thanks.
Moz Pro | | directspark0 -
Problems with duplicate contents...
Hi folks, how's going? I started using Seo Moz and from the first crawling appears that I have 11 pages with duplicate contents... but this is not true, are different pages with different url, contents, tags... any idea to solve he problem? Alessandro, MusicaNueva.es
Moz Pro | | musicanueva0 -
"Too many on-page links" warning on all of my Wordpress pages
Hey guys, I've got like 120 "Too many on-page links" warnings in my crawl diagnostics section. They're all the pages of my WordPress blog. Is this an acceptable and expected warning for Wordpress or does something need to be better optimized? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | SheffieldMarketing0 -
Are you going to update your On-Page too?
With the new over optimisation penalty coming in, I was wondering if you're going to update your online tool to take this into account?
Moz Pro | | photogaz0 -
I have signed up for an seomoz trial .......
i have signed up for an seomoz trial but tried to access my account from a different laptop yesterday and could not a login. Is the trial version only accessible via the laptop i set it up from?!
Moz Pro | | GreatGifts4Kids0 -
Only 1 page has been crawled. Why?
I set a new profile up a fortnight ago. Last week seomoz crawled the entire site (10k pages), and this week has only crawled 1 page. Nothing's changed on the site that I'm aware of, so what's happened?
Moz Pro | | tompollard0