Woocommerce Duplicate Page Content Issue
-
Hi,
I'm receiving a duplicate content error. It says that this url:
is a duplicate of this:
http://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum
I'm using wordpress, woocommerce, and not really sure how to even address this. I tried adding this to .htaccess but it didn't redirect the url:
301 Redirects
Redirect 301 https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=41 http://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/
Anyone have any ideas?
Thanks!
-
Andrew,
Your canonical needs to exist - so for the page you mentioned you need to update the url to the one with the trailing slash. In fact - for all pages on your site you should check if the canonical exist (Screaming Frog can do miracles here)
The issue with the https is a bit different - you should not have both versions (http/https in parallel) - so if your https certificate is ok you should put your site in https & redirect the http version to https
This can be done by adding these lines to your htaccess:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI}If you switch to https - you must make sure that all the resources you call on a page are also on HTTPS - if not, users could get a security warning. There is an article on how to migrate site to HTTPS on Yoast: https://yoast.com/move-website-https-ssl/
If your site is on https - your canonicals need to be in https as well. A tool like Screaming Frog can help you to check that both (https & canonicals are ok) - it's not free - but certainly worth the investment.
Hope this helps - don't hesitate to ask if it's not clear
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk,
Thank-you for your further clarification.
So, am I just needing to get the current canonical url on the homepage to have a forward slash at the end of the url then along with updating the "http" to "https"?
Currently, when I visit the homepage it says the canonical is this: http://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum (no https and no forward slash at the end).
Thanks for your help!
Andrew
-
Hi Andrew,
You use the Yoast e-commerce plugin - and I assume at some point you defined a canonical url for the page you mentioned.
In short - with a canonical url you ask Google not to index this page: https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=41 but the url that you have put as canonical url which is this page: https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculumIn order to respect this request - this url need to exist on your site. However - this url is redirected to https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/ with a 301 redirect (basically stating: hey, this url doesn't exist anymore on this location, but you can find it here).
So, if you update the canonical url from https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum to https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/ your problem is solved.
There is no need to redirect https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=41 to https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/ as the canonical is already taking care of the duplicate content.
More background info on canonical url's can be found here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
Hope this clarifies, if not, let me know,
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi Dirk,
Thank-you for taking the time to respond. I sure appreciate it. I am fairly new with SEO and what you are saying is a little challenging for me to understand. Can you please attempt to break this down a little more for me? I would really appreciate it.
Sincerely,
Andrew
-
Hi,
The url https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/?option=com_content&task=view&id=20&Itemid=41 has https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum - however this canonical url doesn't exist - it's redirected to https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/
If you update the canonical to https://kidsinministry.org/childrens-ministry-curriculum/ you should be fine, there is no need to redirect the url's.
rgds,
Dirk
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
-
Duplicate content issue
Hi, A client of ours has one URL for the moment (https://aalst.mobilepoint.be/) and wants to create a second one with exactly the same content (https://deinze.mobilepoint.be/). Will that mean Google punishes the second one because of duplicate content? What are the recommendations?
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
Best way to fix duplicate content issues
Another question for the Moz Community. One of my clients has 4.5k duplicate content issues. For example: http://www.example.co.uk/blog and http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?route=blog/blog/listblog&year=2017. Most of the issues are coming from product pages. My initial thoughts are to set up 301 redirects in the first instance and if the issue persists, add canonical tags. Is this the best way of tackling this issue?
Technical SEO | | Laura-EMC0 -
Why are my 301 redirects and duplicate pages (with canonicals) still showing up as duplicates in Webmaster Tools?
My guess is that in time Google will realize that my duplicate content is not actually duplicate content, but in the meantime I'd like to get your guys feedback. The reporting in Webmaster Tools looks something like this. Duplicates /url1.html /url2.html /url3.html /category/product/url.html /category2/product/url.html url3.html is the true canonical page in the list above._ url1.html,_ and url2.html are old URLs that 301 to url3.html. So, it seems my bases are covered there. _/category/product/url.html _and _/category2/product/url.html _ do not redirect. They are the same page as url3.html. Each of the category URLs has a canonical URL of url3.html in the header. So, it seems my bases are covered there as well. Can I expect Google to pick up on this? Why wouldn't it understand this already?
Technical SEO | | bearpaw0 -
Duplicate Content Reports
Hi Dupe content reports for a new client are sjhowing very high numbers (8000+) main of them seem to be for sign in, register, & login type pages, is this a scenario where best course of action to resolve is likely to be via the parameter handling tool in GWT ? Cheers Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Why are pages linked with URL parameters showing up as separate pages with duplicate content?
Only one page exists . . . Yet I link to the page with different URL parameters for tracking purposes and for some reason it is showing up as a separate page with duplicate content . . . Help? rpcIZ.png
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
How do I deal with my pages being seen as duplicate content by SeoMoz?
My Dashboard is giving my lots of warnings for duplicate content but it all seems to have something to do with the www and the slash / For example: http://www.ebow.ie/ is seen as having the same duplicate content as http:/ebow.ie/ and http://www.ebow.ie Alos lots to do with how Wordpress categorizes pages and tags that is driving me bonkers! Any help appreciated! Dave. seomoz.png
Technical SEO | | ebowdublin0 -
Once duplicate content found, worth changing page or forget it?
Hi, the SEOmoz crawler has found over 1000 duplicate pages on my site. The majority are based on location and unfortunately I didn't have time to add much location based info. My question is, if Google has already discovered these, determined they are duplicate, and chosen the main ones to show on the SERPS, is it worth me updating all of them with localalized information so Google accepts the changes and maybe considers them different pages? Or do you think they'll always be considered duplicates now?
Technical SEO | | SpecialCase0 -
Duplicate content issues caused by our CMS
Hello fellow mozzers, Our in-house CMS - which is usually good for SEO purposes as it allows all the control over directories, filenames, browser titles etc that prevent unwieldy / meaningless URLs and generic title tags - seems to have got itself into a bit of a tiz when it comes to one of our clients. We have tried solving the problem to no avail, so I thought I'd throw it open and see if anyone has a soultion, or whether it's just a fault in our CMS. Basically, the SEs are indexing two identical pages, one ending with a / and the other ending /index.php, for one of our sites (www.signature-care-homes.co.uk). We have gone through the site and made sure the links all point to just one of these, and have done the same for off-site links, but there is still the duplicate content issue of both versions getting indexed. We also set up an htaccess file to redirect to the chosen version, but to no avail, and we're not sure canonical will work for this issue as / pages should redirect to /index.php anyway - and that's we can't work out. We have set the access file to point to index.php, and that should be what should be happening anyway, but it isn't. Is there an alternative way of telling the SE's to only look at one of these two versions? Also, we are currently rewriting the content and changing the structure - will this change the situation we find ourselves in?
Technical SEO | | themegroup0