Duplicate content - working with CMS constraints
-
Hi,
We use an industry-specific CMS and I'm struggling to figure out how we can fix duplicate content issues.
Thankfully, the vendor has agreed to work on 301 vs 302 redirects.
However, they aren't currently able to give us the ability to add rel=canonical tags to page headers (we've put it in their "suggestion box" which tends to take a long time, if ever, to materialize).
My understanding is that the tag will not be recognized if it's in the body code, correct? (aka the part of the page we can edit from the CMS)
Is there anything else I can do?
-
You're very welcome, we're all in this google together.
I know that issue all too well, happens a lot with sitemap pages, sites that don't declare one type or url structure so they have site.com/ and site.com.
I'm kinda surprised the CMS doesn't redirect the url when you create the friendly url, but glad they agreed to work on it, I would utilize your best offense and get the other customers of the CMS to upvote and squeak their wheels. Since this also seems like a case of a CMS missing crucial features for site growth.
If they don't fix this promptly, consider if possible a switch to a more commonly used CMS like Drupal, Wordpress or even Joomla, all are established for years with these kinda issues already worked out and in some cases extra addons to help assist. But understand, often the choice of CMS isn't always up to us.
It does seem like for now, best you can do is try and reduce what you can on that page, but could be that the issue will keep presenting itself until the root cause is contained.
-
Thanks for your replies!!
There are a few instances of duplicate content where we can actually delete, but mostly it's many URLs going to the same page due to the structure of the site, ie:
http://www.sanjuan.edu/Domain/2396 (this is the URL for the "section" that houses many pages)
http://www.sanjuan.edu/Page/4808 (this is the URL for the page)
http://www.sanjuan.edu/family (this is the friendly URL that we've created that in an ideal world we'd have be the rel=canonical)
I will ask other districts using the CMS to upvote my suggestion in the vendor's suggestion box...I guess that may be the best I can do...
-
Ahh yes, this is a very niche product, they just haven't had enough users to bring up all the various features that are desired. Or just don't understand SEO and how to develop for it, which is something many CMS providers have dealt with or are dealing with.
From reading through the editor guide pdf, seems it really gives you the basic options of site editing, no backend or much frontend control in that aspect either.
Can I ask why the duplicate content can't be deleted? Is it that it's one content piece but being displayed on various pages? If it's not too much content being duplicated, you might be ok.
-
We're a K-12 and use a CMS called Schoolwires: http://www.schoolwires.com/
(I'm worried since it's so niche we might be out of luck...)
-
Yes you're right, needs to be in the header,
What CMS is this? The resulting answer would be what determines the possible alternatives. Drupal was one I worked with for a few years and still do, modules and some template editing was what solves some SEO issues I've had experience with. But again, not all CMS are created equal.
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
-
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 some pages now duplicate content?
It is probably a silly question, but all of a sudden, the following pages of one of my clients are reported as Duplicate content. I cannot understand why. They weren't before... http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/mediterranea-halal
Technical SEO | | MarketingEnergy
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/gyros-halal
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/döner-halal
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/vegetariana
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/seizoen-pizza-estate
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/contadina
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/4-stagioni
http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/shoarma Thanks for any help in the right direction 🙂 | |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| | <colgroup><col style="mso-width-source: userset; mso-width-alt: 17225; width: 353pt;" width="471"></colgroup>
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/mediterranea-halal |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/gyros-halal |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/döner-halal |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/vegetariana |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/seizoen-pizza-estate |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/contadina |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/4-stagioni |
| http://www.ciaoitalia.nl/product/pizza-originale/shoarma |0 -
Index.php duplicate content
Hi, new here. Im looking for some help with htaccess file. index.php is showing duplicate content errors with: mysite.com/index.php mysite.com/ mysite.com ive managed to use the following code to remove the www part of the url: IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Technical SEO | | klsdnflksdnvl
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://%1%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L] but how can i redirect the mysite.com/index.php and mysite.com/ to mysite.com. Please help0 -
Errors - 7300 - Duplicate Page Content..Help me..
Hi, I just received the crawl report with 7300 errors of duplicate page content. Site built using php. list of errors will be like this.. http://xxxxx.com/channels/ http://xxxxx.com/channels/?page=1 http://xxxxxx.com/channels/?page=2 I am not good in coding and using readymade script for this website. could anyone guide me to fix this issue? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | vilambara0 -
Squarespace Duplicate Content Issues
My site is built through squarespace and when I ran the campaign in SEOmoz...its come up with all these errors saying duplicate content and duplicate page title for my blog portion. I've heard that canonical tags help with this but with squarespace its hard to add code to page level...only site wide is possible. Was curious if there's someone experienced in squarespace and SEO out there that can give some suggestions on how to resolve this problem? thanks
Technical SEO | | cmjolley0 -
Duplicate content
I have just ran a report in seomoz on my domain and has noticed that there are duplicate content issues, the issues are: www.domainname/directory-name/ www.domainname/directory-name/index.php All my internal links and external links point to the first domain, as i prefer this style as it looks clear & concise, however doing this has created duplicate content as within the site itself i have an index.php page inside this /directory-name/ to show the page. Could anyone give me some advice on what i should do please? Kind Regards
Technical SEO | | Paul780 -
Duplicate content question with PDF
Hi, I manage a property listing website which was recently revamped, but which has some on-site optimization weaknesses and issues. For each property listing like http://www.selectcaribbean.com/property/147.html there is an equivalent PDF version spidered by google. The page looks like this http://www.selectcaribbean.com/pdf1.php?pid=147 my question is: Can this create a duplicate content penalty? If yes, should I ban these pages from being spidered by google in the robots.txt or should I make these link nofollow?
Technical SEO | | multilang0 -
Canonical Link for Duplicate Content
A client of ours uses some unique keyword tracking for their landing pages where they append certain metrics in a query string, and pulls that information out dynamically to learn more about their traffic (kind of like Google's UTM tracking). Non-the-less these query strings are now being indexed as separate pages in Google and Yahoo and are being flagged as duplicate content/title tags by the SEOmoz tools. For example: Base Page: www.domain.com/page.html
Technical SEO | | kchandler
Tracking: www.domain.com/page.html?keyword=keyword#source=source Now both of these are being indexed even though it is only one page. So i suggested placing an canonical link tag in the header point back to the base page to start discrediting the tracking URLs: But this means that the base pages will be pointing to themselves as well, would that be an issue? Is their a better way to solve this issue without removing the query tracking all togther? Thanks - Kyle Chandler0