Duplicate Titles Shown in Moz Analytics
-
Hello,
My Moz analytics show over 50 duplicate titles. This because my website title is shown on each page (eg About us | Social Engagement, Contact us | Social Engagement, etc.)
Is this really an error to be fixed, that otherwise will impact rankings? Or can I leave it as it is? I don't mind having my website title on each page, but if its worth removing it due to duplicate issues impacting ranking, I will remove
In this case, does someone have any suggestion on how to do this? Which files should I modify? (Im using Wordpress CMS, and I dont see each page code)
Thanks in advance.
Regards,Eugenio | Social Engagement (http://socialengagement.it)
-
Hello Tuzel,
Thank you again for your help. Plugin could not be deactivated as it left translation and original all in one page.
I found out that I could also use this code in the header.php of the website
Hope it will work, seems less strong than canonical, maybe better try with this first
-
Depends how integral that plugin is to your site. I personally would go straight for the cannonicals but is you can afford to turn it off and experiment then why not. Experimentation is the only way we really find things out in this industry.
-
Hello Tuzzel,
Thanks again you clarified me many doubts I will keep you updated, I will amend those issues by today.
Do you think is more wise and better to try first deactivating the plugin, and after checking if there is any result, reactivate it and have canonicals for all /en pages? Or is better just to use canonical directly?
Thanks
-
No worries. A canonical is not the same as a 301 however. You should be able to keep the translated pages and allow users to view them, a canonical will signal to search engines only that these pages are the same. A 301 will redirect users to one version of the page too which removes the value of the translated content for your users.
Here's another Q&A thread i was involved in yesterday focusing on Cannonical tags that should make this clearer.
Please do keep me posted, always interested in the outcomes.
Thanks, Tom.
-
I have a plugin for wordpress for language translation. I will try to deactivate it, and see if ranking goes up at least a bit. If it does, it means the plugin and /en urls caused the duplicate issues, and maybe also a drop in rankings.. I will let you know the results, if you are interested
Thanks again to all for help!
-
Hello,
Thanks everyone for replies.
Dave, I already choose a preferred domain
Chris, thanks for the useful tip. I think I already got penalized for this (eg I have 3 blog posts all with the keywords "website ranking" in the url, all for different seo strategies, and only one page is ranked for those keywords). I think i only could 301 redirect, but at the moment, I will leave it as it is, and be more careful in the future.
Tuzzel, thanks, your reply really helped also. I have seen in the Google guide you posted that I should use top domains for translations. This is not possible at the moment. Then you suggested to use canonical tags. Does it mean I should 301 redirect all translated pages to the original ones?
-
Hi,
I think if you look into the duplicate titles problem you may find that it's nothing to do with your brand being in the title, it may be that your domain is being seen with and without the WWW as 2 separate pages.
You will need to make a descision wether to go with www or not.
A simple redirect on one to the other should fix this.
Regards
-
Social,
I think of title tags as sort of like a magnifying glass that Google looks through to see the rest of the words on your page. When the words in the title tag correspond closely with the rest of the words on the page,Ā it may create just enough focus (relevance) to permit the page rank well for a keyword used in the title.
However, if a second or third or fourth page on the site has the same title tag, then those pages would have to have the same page copy as the first if they were to rank as well as the first. Ā Since that would be duplicate content, however, they could never actually make it to the top of the search results.
Two things: 1.) Unique page titles help a page to rank for the unique keyword focus it was optimized for. 2.) Many identical page titles on a site may lower the overall quality and ranking ability on the site in general.
That's all to say you're better off with unique page titles for each page.
-
Hi Eugenio,
Without seeing the Moz reports not totally sure what you are seeing there but if they are as you described they pose no problem, i.e 'page | Brand'.
I took a quick look on Screaming frog however and think i may know what Moz is reporting as i can see a lot of Duplicate titles being caused by the fact you have two versions of each page on two different subdomains
- /en/tag/{Page}
- /en/{Page}
And another few where there is a /{page} and /en/{page}. I thought you may have solved it with Canonical tags as i can see them in the reports to but they just seem to be refering the same pages back to themselve (Not an issue in itself)
I would suggest then this may be the root cause of what you are seeing and should try to take a look at these, Heres a few resources on Dupe content, not sure how familiar or not you are with it, appologies if i am telling you stuff you allready know.
- Which page is canonical (Moz)
- Dupe Content (Webmaster help)
- Common SEO problems and how to fix (Moz, lot of focus on dupe content)
Thanks, Tom.
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
-
Moz Pro Tools
Hello I ran into a error while using Moz Pro Tools Crawl Site feature. Stating that my wordpress website could not be crawled. When contacting moz they sent me this screenshot stating the reason for this error is because of the odd ip address highlighted in yellow. Only time I've seen this particular ip-address is during local development. If anyone has any advice on how to fix this or what may have caused this issue. I feel this maybe effecting the site's overall search visibility. ednqnL7
Moz Pro | | willakawillow220 -
Recommended 3rd party Moz compatible dashboard
Hi, I'd like to use a 3rd party dashboard to monitor all marketing activities in one place (social / seo from moz/ remarketing / email / content / google analytics etc.) - any recommendations? Thanks Louisa
Moz Pro | | charliedavi0 -
Website Issues - Duplicate Content
Hello, I'm fairly new to using Moz and I logged on this morning to find Issues have been found in one of the websites - 22 High Priority and 44 Medium. I know it's due to duplicate content in the blog, but i can't figure out what is duplicated? I've only recently come on board this website so I don't know if the content has been plagiarised or what? The link to the site is here: delacyspa.co.uk Any help would be appreciated. Thanks zFxQmmd
Moz Pro | | Cowbang0 -
Since July 1, we've had a HUGE jump in errors on our weekly crawl. We don't think anything has changed on our website. Has MOZ changed something that would account for a large leap in duplicate content and duplicate title errors?
Our error report went from 1,900 to 18,000 in one swoop, starting right around the first of July. The errors are duplicate content and duplicate title, as if it does not see our 301 redirects. Any insights?
Moz Pro | | KristyFord0 -
MOZ toolbar not recognising me as signed in
Since SEOMoz became MOZ, my toolbar is no longer working. Is this a known issue? I'm definitely signed into the account (hence this email), but the toolbar still requests login. Apologies if I'm not the only one to report it. Robb
Moz Pro | | experiencedays0 -
Why cant I hook up facebook to SEO Moz Campaign Tool?
Greetings from the digital epicentre otherwise known as Wetherby Uk š I want to track sentiments ie mentions, slurs fliratations of a brand on Facebook. SoĀ to start out with I thought 'Id hook up SEO moz social tracking service as illustrated here: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/cant-add-facebook-url.jpg But whilst i could add my twitter account I caount not add my favebook page:http://www.facebook.com/david.honan.98I added david.honan.98 in the url box and a number of other versions but none successfully hooked up. Am enetering the wrong url or is SEO moz socail media facebook plugin jinxed? Thanks in advance, David
Moz Pro | | Nightwing0 -
Is there a way to specify what SEOmoz classes as duplicate content?
Hi all, Currently working through the laundry list of errors and warning on our company's 24 websites. Due to theĀ ridiculousĀ amount of on page links and the sheer volume of products on our sites, much of the descriptive text is similar, following a strict pattern to best mention our USPs and the like. Of course we use a CMS, which means that all the pages look the same and draw this information from the style sheet. Anyways, to the problem at hand. I have been tasked with reducing the "error" count on the SEOmoz admin panel, the problem being SEOmoz is reporting duplicate page content, when they are different, but similar products, for example, 35, 45 and 55 litreĀ refrigerationĀ units. Is there a way in which I can specify what classes as duplicate content, or make the duplicate content report more restrictive, so that everything HAS to be the same for this error to show. Any help is muchĀ appreciated, thanks in advance.
Moz Pro | | cmuknbb0 -
Title Element too Long - Counts ampersand as &
I was wondering if Google counts the ampersand written as '&' as 5 characters or a single one? It seems that Google counts it as a single character and SEOmoz PRO counts it as 5 characters.
Moz Pro | | DPSSeomonkey0