Duplicate content question
-
Hey Mozzers!
I received a duplicate content notice from my Cycle7 Communications campaign today. I understand the concept of duplicate content, but none of the suggested fixes quite seems to fit.
I have four pages with HubSpot forms embedded in them. (Only two of these pages have showed up so far in my campaign.) Each page contains a title (Content Marketing Consultation, Copywriting Consultation, etc), plus an embedded HubSpot form. The forms are all outwardly identical, but I use a separate form for each service that I offer.
I’m not sure how to respond to this crawl issue:
-
Using a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right, because each page/form combo is independent and serves a separate purpose.
-
Using a rel=canonical link doesn’t seem right for the same reason that a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right.
-
Using the Google Search Console URL Parameters tool is clearly contraindicated by Google’s documentation (I don’t have enough pages on my site).
Is a meta robots noindex the best way to deal with duplicate content in this case?
Thanks in advance for your help.
AK
-
-
@seoelevated Thanks. I see your reasoning. It's also valid.
-
@andykubrin I would like to add that another valid approach is to ignore the "issue". Are all 4 of your form pages currently indexed? If so, then this Moz-reported issue is not necessarily an actual issue. There is no "penalty" for duplicate content like this. The situation we all wish to avoid is for the search engine to choose one of the pages to index, because it sees them all as duplicates, and not necessarily index the one we want or associate with all our desired keywords we've individually targeted per page. But, if all 4 of your pages are currently indexed, and if they rank for the terms that you want, then it would be OK to ignore the issue.
As well, you might think about whether you want these pages to be indexed/rank at all. If your desire is for traffic to go to the service description pages and then flow to the forms, and if the service description pages are the ones which actually are ranking, the issue may not even matter to you. And so again, you might decide to ignore. And that would be a valid choice.
-
Hi @nigel_carr ,
You've pointed the way to a solution.
I offer four services. I have a service description page for each one, with around 300 words on each page and a link to a separate HubSpot form. I use four separate HubSpot forms because that arrangement allows me to tailor the automated responses I send to each person who requests more information on a given service.
So I think the two best options for a solution are:
-
Keep the service descriptions and forms separate, but noindex each individual form
-
Incorporate the forms into the service description pages
The first option provides a neater appearance, but the second option would shorten the visitor's path to the form, so that's probably the better option.
Thank you for your advice.
Regards,
Andy
-
-
Hi Andy
The reason why they are coming up with a duplicate content warning is likely because there is very little content on the pages other than the forms.
You have a couple of options:
- Flesh out the content on the pages so that the subject is clearly defined in each case. This would involve writing 300+ words/adding an image+alt/H1/Meta etc on the subjects of:
Content Marketing Consultation
Copywriting Consultation- The other two
- If you can't write unique content for each form because the subjects are too close (Copyright vs Content) then it begs the question why you have the 4 forms in the first place.
If you want to keep the 4 forms then can canonicalize 3 of them to the main one, so only 1 is set to rank.
Note: If you do canonicalize it is not guaranteed that Google won't feature either one or all the other forms. You are simply telling Google that that is your preference.
- You could noindex three of the four forms which would be a perfectly acceptable solution even though most scanning software will warn you of the no indexes.
I hope that helps
Nigel
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 with Wordpress tags?
Would Google really discount duplicate content created by Wordpress tags? I find it hard to believe considering tags are on and indexed by default and the vast majority of users would not know to deindex them . . .
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
Duplicate content in product listing
We have "duplicate content" warning in our moz report which mostly revolve around our product listing (eCommerce site) where various filters return 0 results (and hence show the same content on the page). Do you think those need to be addressed, and if so how would you prevent product listing filters that appearing as duplicate content pages? should we use rel=canonical or actually change the content on the page?
Technical SEO | | erangalp0 -
Duplicate Content: Canonicalization vs. Redirects
Hi all, I have a client that I recently started working with whose site was built with the following structure: domain.com
Technical SEO | | marisolmarketing
domain.com/default.asp Essentially, there is a /default.asp version of every single page on the site. That said, I'm trying to figure out the easiest/most efficient way to fix all the /default.asp pages...whether that be 301 redirecting them to the .com version, adding a canonical tag to every .asp page, or simply NOINDEXing the .asp pages. I've seen a few other questions on here that are similar, but none that really say which would be the easiest way to accomplish this without going through every single page... Thanks in advance!0 -
Duplicate Content on SEO Pages
I'm trying to create a bunch of content pages, and I want to know if the shortcut I took is going to penalize me for duplicate content. Some background: we are an airport ground transportation search engine(www.mozio.com), and we constructed several airport transportation pages with the providers in a particular area listed. However, the problem is, sometimes in a certain region multiple of the same providers serve the same places. For instance, NYAS serves both JFK and LGA, and obviously SuperShuttle serves ~200 airports. So this means for every airport's page, they have the super shuttle box. All the provider info is stored in a database with tags for the airports they serve, and then we dynamically create the page. A good example follows: http://www.mozio.com/lga_airport_transportation/ http://www.mozio.com/jfk_airport_transportation/ http://www.mozio.com/ewr_airport_transportation/ All 3 of those pages have a lot in common. Now, I'm not sure, but they started out working decently, but as I added more and more pages the efficacy of them went down on the whole. Is what I've done qualify as "duplicate content", and would I be better off getting rid of some of the pages or somehow consolidating the info into a master page? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | moziodavid0 -
Duplicate content problem from an index.php file
Hi One of my sites is flagging a duplicate content problem which is affecting the search rankings. The duplicate problem is caused by http://www.mydomain.com/index.php which has a page rank of 26 How can I sort the duplicate content problem, as the main page should just be http://www.mydomain.com which has a page rank of 42 and is the stronger page with stronger links etc Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Duplicate titles Question
Hi eveyone, I have around 1000 duplicate titles and meta description. The poblem was that I had pages in my home page and different pages had the same title. For example, index.php/site/articles/should_you_eat_protein_every_2-3_hours_for_muscle_growth/ /index.php/site/articles/should_you_eat_protein_every_2-3_hours_for_muscle_growth/N12//index.php/site/articles/should_you_eat_protein_every_2-3_hours_for_muscle_growth/N1444//index.php/site/articles/should_you_eat_protein_every_2-3_hours_for_muscle_growth/N1448//index.php/site/articles/should_you_eat_protein_every_2-3_hours_for_muscle_growth/N1448/P6//index.php/site/articles/should_you_eat_protein_every_2-3_hours_for_muscle_growth/N1452/I have 172 of the same page!So I took off all the pagination on my home page and just added 'click fo more'. When they click more, it takes them to the category.So my question is will google slowly start deleting or non-indexing these duplicate titles or pages as I have removed it from my website? (Just so that you know I added a canonical link and figuring out how to add page numbers to met titles and meta description tags for categories with pages)
Technical SEO | | anoopbal0 -
Help With Joomla Duplicate Content
Need another set of eyes on my site from someone with Joomla experience. I'm running Joomla 2.5 (latest version) and SEOmoz is giving my duplicate content errors on a lot of my pages. I checked my sitemap, I checked my menus, and I checked my links, and I can't figure out how SEOmoz is finding the alternate paths to my content. Home page is: http://www.vipfishingcharters.com/ There's only one menu at the top. Take the first link "Dania Beach" under fishing charters for example. This generates the SEF url: http://www.vipfishingcharters.com/fishing-charters/broward-county/dania-beach-fishing-charters-and-fishing-boats.html Somehow SEOmoz (and presumably all other robots) are finding duplicate content at: http://www.vipfishingcharters.com/broward-county/dania-beach-fishing-charters-and-fishing-boats.html SEOmoz says the referrer is the homepage/root. The first URL is constructed using the menu aliases. The second one is constructed using the Joomla category and article alias. Where is it getting this and how can I stop it? <colgroup><col width="601"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | NoahC0 -
How to Solve Duplicate Page Content Issue?
I have created one campaign over SEOmoz tools for my website. I have found 89 duplicate content issue from report. Please, look in to Duplicate Page Content Issue. I am quite confuse to resolve this issue. Can any one suggest me best solution to resolve it?
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit0