Are ALL duplicate title tags bad??
-
We’ve had some success recently by reducing the number of duplicate title tags on our website. We have managed to fix all the simple cases but there are a number of stubborn examples that we don’t know how to fix.
A lot of the duplicate tags come from the website’s forums. Many questions have been asked multiple times over the years where the user has phrased the question in the same way. This has led to many cases where different forums posts have the same title tag. For example, there are six title tags with the words ‘’need help”! These are being highlighted as duplicates and currently we have several thousand of these. Would this be a problem? I’d be tempted to say that we should leave them as they don’t seem unnatural to me.
One solution other solution we are considering is to append the forum name to the question to any post after the original, falling back to appending the date if that doesn’t distinguish it.
Do people think that this is a good solution to implement or would it be better to leave these duplicate title tags as they are?
Any help would be appreciated
-
Thanks for those answers, that's really useful. It sounds like this is not something to worry about too much, but something that is not ideal for the site's appearance in the search results!
-
I'm pretty sure that Google can tell that it is a forum with user-generated content, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. However, the key to look out for is to see if people are using the user-generated content to spam for their own purposes.
That's what got MyBlogGuest in trouble, and it's likely why Yahoo! is shutting down Yahoo! Voices. It's not anything they did -- it's what others did via their websites.
-
Well, if someone is searching for "need help" you should rank really high. Excellent!
Just kidding. Since your site is a forum, isn't there a way as an admin to go in and manually change it to display what the topic is about?
Second, is it going to drive that much traffic to yoru site by changing these, that you should invest the labor in changing 1000's of page titles? You should know your audience and incoming traffic enough to decide if it makes a difference.
The content is different on each page, so I wouldn't really get stressed out about being penailized for duplicate content, BUT you arent doing the site any favors by having duplications of the first thing displayed in search results either.
-
That's not something bad really. You can have some duplicates titles, but, think the title it's one of the factors for getting your keywords. If you have duplicates titles, you have some pages searching the SEO for the same keyword. But it's isn't bad, i think.
Different is if you have a complete webpage, with the same title at all pages, and title doesn't have relation with content. That's really bad, i think.
Also, for google duplicated content it isn't the same title, it's the same content. If your page is a forum, i can understand you have the same title for similar posts, but they content aren't the same.
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
-
Yoast seo title question
I was referred to this plugin and have found it to be the most irritating and poorly designed plugin in the world. I want to be able to set my titles without it changing my page headers as well. For instance - If I set my title to be "This is my article name | site name" it will make my H1 tag read the same. I do not want or desire this nonsense. Why would they think this is something wise? Why would I want my site name on every single H1 tag on my site? How can I fix this? I only want my title to be my title. I want my H1 tag to remain the post/page name that I define in wordpress.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Does a UTM tag influence the linkvalue?
Will Google value a link with a UTM tag the same as a clean link without a UTM tag? I should say that a UTM tag link is not a natural link so the linkvalue is zero. Anyone any idea how to look at this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TT_Vakantiehuizen0 -
Pop Up Advertisement - Bad for SEO?
So i have been working with a company running their SEO for close to two years now. Since i started to engage with them they have always used a very simple pop up for the first time an end user visits their website (via javascript and cookies). The pop up simply ask them if they would like to download a solutions brochure from their website. So as far as pop ups go, it is at least relevant. The client loves this pop up, i do not. For a while we have always held spots #1-3 for a lot of our keywords but we have started to drop to lower on the first page. So i have been researching to see if some of the new algorithm changes are targeting sites with this type of functionality. If i have some data i could definitely get them to remove it. So the question is, do pop-ups hurt your organic ranking? Thanks for the input! Kyle
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler1 -
Which duplicate content should I remove?
I have duplicate content and am trying to figure out which URL to remove. What should I take into consideration? Authority? How close to the root the page is? How clear the path is? Would appreciate your help! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ocularis0 -
Duplicate content from development website
Hi all - I've been trawling for duplicate content and then I stumbled across a development URL, set up by a previous web developer, which nearly mirrors current site (few content and structure changes since then, but otherwise it's all virtually the same). The developer didn't take it down when the site was launched. I'm guessing the best thing to do is tell him to take down the development URL (which is specific to the pizza joint btw, immediately. Is there anything else I should ask him to do? Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Linking to bad sites
Hi, I just have a quick question. Is it very negative to link to "bad" sites, such as online pharmacies, dating, adult sites, that sort of stuff? How much does linking to a "bad" site negatively affect a "good" site? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | salvyy0 -
Are duplicate links on same page alright?
If I have a homepage with category links, is it alright for those category links to appear in the footer as well, or should you never have duplicate links on one page? Can you please give a reason why as well? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dkamen0 -
H1 tag proper uses
Ok I see this happening all of the time. I get my hands on a new website and there are one of four header tag issues: 1. There are no H1 tags at all 2. There are multiple H1 tags on the same page 3. Every page has an identical H1 tag 4. Header tags are used all out of order Do any of these have a negative impact on rankings? I've always tried to get one H1 tag on each page, have it be the first header tag, and make it unique to each page. Is this a waste of itme? Could improper header tag use hurt a website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanDeceuster1