How bad is it to have duplicate content across http:// and https:// versions of the site?
-
A lot of pages on our website are currently indexed on both their http:// and https:// URLs. I realise that this is a duplicate content problem, but how major an issue is this in practice?
Also, am I right in saying that the best solution would be to use rel canonical tags to highlight the https pages as the canonical versions?
-
Thank you both - and sorry for not replying earlier. It sounds like we have some work to do
-
There isn't best solution in this case.
All you need is to prefer some http or https and to migrate everything to preferred protocol. This mean that you shoud:
- Make 301 redirects
- Fix all canonicals
- Do site move in SearchConsole. This is tricky because you need to verify both properties there and move one of them to other.
- Fix all internal links in pages to avoid 301 redirects
- Fix all images/scripts and other content to avoid 301 redirect
In theory this is. As you can see "fix canonical" is just one small step there.
-
The biggest problem with duplicate content (in most cases) is that you leave it up to Google (or search engines in general) to decide to which version they are going to send the traffic.
I assume that if you have a site in https you would want all visits to go to the https version. Rather than using a canonical url (which is merely a friendly request) I would 301 the http to the https version.
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
-
Do you still loose 15% of value of inbound links when you redirect your site from http to https (so all inbound links to http are being redirected to https version)?
I know when you redesign your on website, you loose about 15% internally due to the 301 redirects (see moz article: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand), but I'm wondering if that also applies to value of inbound links when you redirect your http://www.sitename.com to https://www.sitename.com. I appreciate your help!
Technical SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Duplicate Content Issues - Where to start???
Dear All I have recently joined a new company Just Go Holidays - www.justgoholidays.com I have used the SEO Moz tools (yesterday) to review the site and see that I have lots of duplicate content/pages and also lots of duplicate titles all of which I am looking to deal with. Lots of the duplicate pages appear to be surrounding, additional parameters that are used on our site to refine and or track various marketing campaigns. I have therefore been into Google Webmaster Tools and defined each of these parameters. I have also built a new XML sitemap and submitted that too. It looks as is we have two versions of the site, one being at www.justgoholidays.com and the other without the www It appears that there are no redirects from the latter to the former, do I need to use 301's here or is it ok to use canonicalisation instead? Any thoughts on an action plan to try to address these issues in the right order and the right way would be very gratefully received as I am feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. (we also use a CMS system that is not particularly friendly and I think I will have to go directly to the developers to make lots of the required changes which is sure to cost - therefore really don't want to get this wrong) All the best Matt
Technical SEO | | MattByrne0 -
HTTP & HTTPS
what is best recommended when some of the pages on site goes from HTTP to HTTPS: 301 redirection or 302 redirection?
Technical SEO | | JonsonSwartz
and why? thank you I was asked to elaborate so: on my website I have open account pages. users are asked to fill the details. those page are secured and are HTTPS. the problem is that the whole website turned to HTTPS so they redirected most of the pages from HTTPS to HTTP.
the secured pages are redirected from HTTP to HTTPS. I wanted to check if it's correct and what is the best redirection way (301 or 302)0 -
Duplicate content question...
I have a high duplicate content issue on my website. However, I'm not sure how to handle or fix this issue. I have 2 different URLs landing to the same page content. http://www.myfitstation.com/tag/vegan/ and http://www.myfitstation.com/tag/raw-food/ .In this situation, I cannot redirect one URL to the other since in the future I will probably be adding additional posts to either the "vegan" tag or the "raw food tag". What is the solution in this case? Thank you
Technical SEO | | myfitstation0 -
Are the duplicate content and 302 redirects errors negatively affecting ranking in my client's OS Commerce site?
I am working on an OS Commerce site and struggling to get it to rank even for the domain name. Moz is showing a huge number of 302 redirects and duplicate content issues but the web developer claims they can not fix those because ‘that is how the software in which your website is created works’. Have you any experience of OS Commerce? Is it the 302 redirects and duplicate content errors negatively affecting the ranking?
Technical SEO | | Web-Incite0 -
Expired Domain - http:// or www
I have an old domain - When i use the link explorer i get way more juice out of the www version of my domain. I will be using wordpress to set up a new domain with the same name . My question is - How do I make it proper for seo? Do i just change the http:// to www in wordpress and be done with it? Does it even matter (thinking it does)
Technical SEO | | imagatto20 -
Bad Duplicate content issue
Hi, for grappa.com I have about 2700 warnings of duplicate page content. My CMS generates long url like: http://www.grappa.com/deu/news.php/categoria=latest_news/idsottocat=5 and http://www.grappa.com/deu/news.php/categoria%3Dlatest_news/idsottocat%3D5 (this is a duplicated content). What's the best solution to fix this problem? Do I have to set up a 301 redirect for all the duplicated pages or insert the rel=canonical or rel=prev,next ? It's complicated becouse it's a multilingual site, and it's my first time dealing with this stuff. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | nico860 -
Similar Content vs Duplicate Content
We have articles written for how to setup pop3 and imap. The topics are technically different but the settings within those are very similar and thus the inital content was similar. SEOMoz reports these pages as duplicate content. It's not optimal for our users to have them merged into one page. What is the best way to handle similar content, while not getting tagged for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | Izoox0