Best way to fix duplicate content issues

[Laura-EMC]

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?

[Joe_Stoffel]

I have to agree with James Wolff, canonical tags look like the best course of action given the examples above. It does not seem like the 301 redirects are going to be necessary.

[Dalessi]

Hello,

Yes the content should be "canonicalized" and also 301 redirects can help. This is a common problem with sites like you are talking about. It is important to fix the issues of duplicate content as soon as possible so that it does not become a issues in thge search engines.

There is a good article here on MOZ on the subject so I suggest you take a look at it. I hope it helps you with your problem.

Article on "Duplicate Content".

Best Regards

[Moreleads]

Hi Laura-EMC,

I cant make up from your example what kind of duplicate content this is.  You say it is from product pages but the first url looks like the homepage for your blog.

Anyway as a basis you should redirect duplicate content to the right page when the page doens´t need to be available for your users. e.g. you had a page for a product but now you have a better one and you redirect the users to this one.

A canonical should be used when the page needs to be available for your users but you don´t want them in the index.  e.g. you have a shoe page for shoe size 41 but you also have a page for shoe size m.  As the only difference on the page will be the size the content on them will be almost completely igual.  you still want the users to be able to visite the page but not have it in the index.

Hope this helps