Hello all,
I'm a new SEOer and I'm currently trying to navigate the layman's minefield that is trying to understand duplicate content issues in as best I can.
I'm working on a website at the moment where there's a duplicate content issue with blog archives/categories/tags etc.
I was planning to beat this by implementing a noindex meta tag on those pages where there are duplicate content issues.
Before I go ahead with this I thought: "Hey, these Moz guys seem to know what they're doing! What would Rand do?"
Blogs on the website in question appear in full and in date order relating to the tag/category/what-have-you creating the duplicate content problem.
Much like Rand's blog here at Moz - I thought I'd have a look at the source code to see how it was dealt with.
My amateur eyes could find nothing to help answer this question:
E.g.
Both the following URLs appear in SERPs (using site:moz,com and very targeted keywords, but they're there):
https://moz.com/rand/does-making-a-website-mobile-friendly-have-a-universally-positive-impact-on-mobile-traffic/
https://moz.com/rand/category/moz/
Both pages have a rel="canonical" pointing to themselves.
I can understand why he wouldn't be fussed about the category not ranking, but the blog? Is this not having a negative effect?
I'm just a little confused as there are so many conflicting "best practice" tips out there - and now after digging around in the source code on Rand's blog I'm more confused than ever!
Any help much appreciated,
Thanks