WordPress Duplicate URLs?
-
On my site, there are two different category bases leading to the exact same page. My developer claims that this is a common — and natural — occurrence when using WordPress, and that there's not a duplicate content issue to worry about. Is this true?
Here's an example of the correct url. and...
Here's an example of the same exact content, but using a different url.
Notice that one is coming from /topics and the other is coming from /authors base. My understanding is that this is bad. Am I wrong?
-
My developer claims that this is a common — and natural — occurrence when using WordPress
WordPress does tend to create duplicate pages. However, they can be easily managed/prevented.
and that there's not a duplicate content issue to worry about. Is this true?
You definitely need to worry about duplicate content - especially when there are auto-generated pages, category pages, author pages, and tag pages.
In your site the /authors/fear URL has "http://www.quotery.com/topics/fear/" set as the canonical URL. So, the developer did add a correct canonical setting to try and prevent duplicate content issues. However, a canonical setting is only a suggestion for the search engines and they do not necessarily adhere to the settings. Therefore, since the pages seem identical, I suggest noindexing the /authors/fear page.
-
It can be, especially if there is a lot of content on the site doing it. I would also be worried in this case because of the content is short (could be seen as thin) and is common quotes so it is probably duplicated on other sites. I would lean toward cleaning it up.
Yoast has a great tool for fixing this. That or I would noindex one category.
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
-
URL structure with dash or slash
Hi, everyone Basically I am editing my website page's URL for SEO Optimisation and I am not sure which URL structure is best for SEO. The main different is the sign ( dash or slash ) before the product-code. HERE ARE TWO EXAMPLE www.example.com/long-tail-keyword-product-code www.example.com/long-tail-keyword/product-code To get more idea of my page, here is one of the product from my website : http://www.okeus.co.uk/pro_view-3.html My website is selling my own product, as a result the only keyword can be found was the name of the product and I separated different design by different code. Any experts who are willing help would be very much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chrisyu781 -
Possible duplicate content issues on same page with urls to multiple tabs?
Hello everyone! I'm first time here, and glad to be part of Moz community! Jumping right into the question I have. For a type of pages we have on our website, there are multiple tabs on each page. To give an example, let's say a page is for the information about a place called "Ladakh". Now the various urls that the page is accessible from, can take the form of: mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/ mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/photos/ mywanderlust.in/place/ladakh/places-to-visit/ and so on. To keep the UX smooth when the user switches from one tab to another, we load everything in advance with AJAX but it remains hidden till the user switches to the required tab. Now since the content is actually there in the html, does Google count it as duplicate content? I'm afraid this might be the case as when I Google for a text that's visible only on one of the tabs, I still see all tabs in Google results. I also see internal links on GSC to say a page mywanderlust.in/questions which is only supposed to be linked from one tab, but GSC telling internal links to this page (mywanderlust.in/questions) from all those 3 tabs. Also, Moz Pro crawl reports informed me about duplicate content issues, although surprisingly it says the issue exists only on a small fraction of our indexable pages. Is it hurting our SEO? Any suggestions on how we could handle the url structure better to make it optimal for indexing. FWIW, we're using a fully responsive design with the displayed content being exactly same for both desktop and mobile web. Thanks a ton in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atulgoyal0 -
Duplicate content in external domains
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
I have been asking about this case before, but now my question is different.
We have a new school that offers courses and programs . Its website is quite new (just a five months old) It is very common between these schools to publish the courses and programs in training portals to promote those courses and to increase the visibility of them. As the website is really new, I found when I was doing the technical audit, that when I googled a text snipped from the site, the new school website was being omitted, and instead, the course portals are being shown. Of course, I know that the best recommendation would be to create a different content for that purpose, but I would like to explore if there is more options. Most of those portals doesn't allow to place a link to the website in the content and not to mention canonical. Of course most of them are older than the new website and their authority is higher. so,... with this situation, I think the only solution is to create a different content for the website and for the portals.
I was thinking that maybe, If we create the content first in the new website, send it to the index, and wait for google to index it, and then send the content to the portals, maybe we would have more opportunites to not be ommited by Google in search results. What do you think? Thank you!0 -
Duplicate Content... Really?
Hi all, My site is www.actronics.eu Moz reports virtually every product page as duplicate content, flagged as HIGH PRIORITY!. I know why. Moz classes a page as duplicate if >95% content/code similar. There's very little I can do about this as although our products are different, the content is very similar, albeit a few part numbers and vehicle make/model. Here's an example:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowoody
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/audi-a4-8d-b5-1994-2000-abs-ecu-en/bosch-5-3
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/bmw-3-series-e36-1990-1998-abs-ecu-en/ate-34-51 Now, multiply this by ~2,000 products X 7 different languages and you'll see we have a big dupe content issue (according to Moz's Crawl Diagnostics report). I say "according to Moz..." as I do not know if this is actually an issue for Google? 90% of our products pages rank, albeit some much better than others? So what is the solution? We're not trying to deceive Google in any way so it would seem unfair to be hit with a dupe content penalty, this is a legit dilemma where our product differ by as little as a part number. One ugly solution would be to remove header / sidebar / footer on our product pages as I've demonstrated here - http://woodberry.me.uk/test-page2-minimal-v2.html since this removes A LOT of page bloat (code) and would bring the page difference down to 80% duplicate.
(This is the tool I'm using for checking http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php) Other "prettier" solutions would greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks,
Woody 🙂1 -
Recommended URL Structure
Hello, We are currently adding a new section of content on our site related to Marketing and more specifically 'Digital Marketing' (research reports, trend studies, etc). Over time (several months, or 1-3 years) we will add more 'general' marketing content. My question is which of the following URL structures makes more sense from an SEO perspective (and how best to quantify the benefit of one over another): www.mysite.com/marketing/digital/research/... www.mysite.com/digital-marketing/research/.. Thanks, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mike-gart0 -
Changing a url from .html to .com
Hello, I have a client that has a site with a .html plugin and I have read that its best to not have this. We currently have pages ranking with this .html plug in. However If we take the plug in out will we lose rankings? would we need a 301 or something?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Mobile Site - Same Content, Same subdomain, Different URL - Duplicate Content?
I'm trying to determine the best way to handle my mobile commerce site. I have a desktop version and a mobile version using a 3rd party product called CS-Cart. Let's say I have a product page. The URLs are... mobile:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grayloon
store.domain.com/index.php?dispatch=categories.catalog#products.view&product_id=857 desktop:
store.domain.com/two-toned-tee.html I've been trying to get information regarding how to handle mobile sites with different URLs in regards to duplicate content. However, most of these results have the assumption that the different URL means m.domain.com rather than the same subdomain with a different address. I am leaning towards using a canonical URL, if possible, on the mobile store pages. I see quite a few suggesting to not do this, but again, I believe it's because they assume we are just talking about m.domain.com vs www.domain.com. Any additional thoughts on this would be great!0 -
Should we deindex duplicate pages?
I work on an education website. We offer programs that are offered up to 6 times per year. At the moment, we have a webpage for each instance of the program, but that's causing duplicate content issues. We're reworking the pages so the majority of the content will be on one page, but we'll still have to keep the application details as separate pages. 90% of the time, application details are going to be nearly identical, so I'm worried that these pages will still be seen as duplicate content. My question is, should we deindex these pages? We don't particularly want people landing on our application page without seeing the other details of the program anyway. But, is there problem with deindexing such a large chunk of your site that I'm not thinking of? Thanks, everyone!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | UWPCE0