Duplicate Content From My Own Site?!
-
When I ran the SEO Moz report it says that I have a ton of duplicate content.
The first one I looked at was my home page.
All of the above 3 have varying internal links, page authority, and link root domains. Only the first has any external links.
All of the others only seem to have 1 other duplicate page. It's a difference between the www and the non-www version.
I have a verified acct for www.kisswedding.com in google webmaster tools. The non-www version is in there too but has not been verified.
Under settings for the verified account (www.kisswedding.com), "Don't set a preferred domain" is checked off. Is that my mistake. And if so, which should I select? The www version or the non-www version?
Thanks!
-
Hi Ryan
I'm really sorry, but could you tell me what rule(s) to add to my htaccess file. I've been to my host (bluehost) but they don't know. Nice eh!?
I'd really appreciate it. And SO sorry!
-
I think I just had a major Duh! moment. Instead of linking back to index.html could I have been linking back to / all this time?
YES! Once you decide upon a correct URL structure for your website, you should always link directly to the appropriate URL.
On your site, you have chosen http://www.kisswedding.com/ to represent your home page. 100% of your links to the home page should use that URL. Any non-www links and /index.html links should be changed to this format.
Also, any signatures you use and content on other sites which you have control over should be updated to the proper format. Facebook, twitter, articles you published on other sites, etc. should all be updated.
-
omg.
I think I just had a major Duh! moment. Instead of linking back to index.html could I have been linking back to / all this time?
And thank you for confirming. Much appreciated. It all seems logical and it's all stuff I thought needed to happen - but was hoping didn't.
-
Your understanding is correct. The most important item is #3.
You asked how do you know the www version because is getting more links
Well, I was taking your word for it. In your original question you stated "Only the first has any external links."
Since you asked I just checked and actually all 3 URLs have external links, but the www version has by far the most.
With respect to the index.html file, it does not have to exist but that is the way your site is currently set up. Either way, it is ok. Simply 301 redirect the /index.html page to the / page.
What you need to understand is that while on your site the /index.html page is the same as the / page, it is not necessarily that way on every site. Additionally while on your site the www and non-www version of a URL is the same page, it is not necessarily that way on every site. For this reason Google will treat each of these pages separately. It will appear to Google that you are duplicating content. Also, your link juice will be divided. A properly configured 301 redirect will resolve these issues.
-
Thank you Maurizio!!! Just what I needed to know!
-
Thank you so much Ryan.
You answered a lot of the questions I was contemplating. Can you confirm I've understood your suggestions?
1. Verify the non-www version in GWT
2. Set preferred domain to the www version because that's getting more links (how do you know that btw?).
3. Set up 301 redirects in my htaccess file.
4. You've recommended that i set my home page as http://www.kisswedding.com VERSUS http://kisswedding.com/index.html or http://kisswedding.com
--- question about this last one. Isn't the index.html always going to exist because if I link back to my site within my own site I use the index.html extension? In fact, all my links are like that - I don't include my entire site url when i'm linking from one page to another on the site.
-
Hi Susan.
I agree with Maurizio and will offer a few more details.
It is important for each web page on your site to only be accessible from a single URL. It is up to you to decide which URL you prefer, then ensure all other URLs are removed or redirected to your chosen URL.
With respect to www or non-www, it does not make any difference but is rather your choice. In this case, since you already have links to the www version and not the non-www version, I would recommend choosing the www version and sticking with it.
The most important change you need to make is on your site. You need to 301 redirect all non-www URLs to their www equivalent. If you are unsure how to make this change and have managed hosting (most small sites do) then contact your host and they can easily make the change. Once the change has been made, test it! First go to your non-www home page and make sure you are redirected. Next, go to any of your inner pages, remove the "www" from the URL and make sure you are redirected to the same page but with the "www" added to the URL.
For Google WMT, you need to verify the site first. You should not have to upload any new file or change any code, but simply click through the options and the site will likely verify. Next, choose the preferred domain as the "www" version. If you wish to be very thorough, you can log into Bing Webmaster Tools and perform the same action. Once your 301 redirect is in place, the search engines would automatically make the change anyway, but it will likely take a month for all the pages of your site to be adjusted.
For the index.html, I would recommend 301 redirecting that URL to your http://www.kisswedding.com/ url.
Lastly, please review all links on your site and ensure they all use the "www" prefix. Include any signatures, social pages (facebook, twitter, etc).
-
Hi
i think that is not different from wwww and without wwww but you must decide in the google webmaster tools.
and i think that you can rediret (301 permanent) with htaccess to show only one site online.
example if you decide to have http://www.kisswedding.com/ when somebody digit a url without wwww ( http://kisswedding.com) you can redirect to wwww.
So you can avoid a duplicate content
Ciao
Maurizio
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
-
Using Site Maps Correctly
Hello I'm looking to submit a sitemap for a post driven site with over 5000 pages. The site hasn't got a sitemap but it is indexed by google - will submitting a sitemap make a difference at this stage? Also, most free sitemap tools only go up to 5000 pages, and I'm thinking I would try a sitemap using a free version of the tool before I buy one - If my site is 5500 pages but I only submit a sitemap for 5000 (I have no control of which pages get included in the sitemap) would this have a negative effect for the pages that didn't get included? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | wearehappymedia0 -
Google Analytics Set-Up for site with both http & https pages
We have a client that migrated to https last September. The site uses canonicals pointing to the https version. The client IT team is reluctant to put 301 redirects from the non-secure to the secure and we are not sure why they object. We ran a screaming frog report and it is showing both URLs for the same page (http and https). The non-secure version has a canonical pointing to the secure version. For every secure page there is a non-secure version in ScreamingFrog so Google must be ignoring the canonical and still indexing the page however, when we run a site: we see that most URLs are the secure version. At that time we did not change the Google Analytics setup option to use: "https" instead of "http" BUT GA appears to be recording data correctly. Yesterday we set up a new profile and selected "https" but our question is: Does the GAnalytics http/https version make a difference if so, what difference is it?
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB1 -
Google Analtyics during site redesign
Hi, We will be launching a new redesign for our website. There will be new URLs and navigation and almost everything (except for static pages like about and contact) will be different. The overwhelming opinion seems to say that it's important to keep the same Google Analytics profile. How can we compare the past URLs to the new ones if they are completely different. Does anyone have any experience in this? Did you create any segmentation? Thanks 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | WSteven0 -
Fresh Content Still As important?
We have an internal debate, that perhaps y'all can help us resolve. In the past "freshness" of content has been important, correct? (Google's QDF for example) In the past (to present) when we build a site with the intent to SEO the site, we build the core pages with the expectation that we will be adding more site pages as the project progresses, thus settling the "fresh content" factor. But it has been proposed to us, from a client, that completely building the site out with all the pages you hope to rank, getting the upfront bang for your buck. The expectation is that the traffic soars right-off. Now the client says that he has been doing this for years and has not been affected by any alog changes. (although we have not seen proof of this from him) So our question is this: Is it better to provide a website full of fresh content at the beginning of the project, for a jumpstart on traffic, then leave the site alone ( for the most part) or Is it better to have core pages of fresh content at the start, and build out new pages from their, so the website remains fresh every month? And can you prove your argument? (we need cold hard facts to be convinced 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | Britewave0 -
Which Algorithm Change Hurt the Site? A causation/correlation issue
The attached graph is from google analytics, a correlation of about 14 months of Organic Google visits with algo changes, data from moz naturally 🙂 Is there any way to tell from this which will have affected the site? for example #1 or #2 seems to be responsible for the first dip, but #4 seems to fix it and it broke around 6, or is the rise between 4 and 7 an anomaly and actually 1 or 2 caused a slip from when it was released all the way to when 7 was released. Sorry if the graph is a little cloak and dagger, that is partly because we don't have permissions to reveal much about the identity, and partly because we were trying to do a kind of double blind, separating the data from our biases 🙂 We can say though the different between the level at the start and end of the graph is at least 10,000 visits per day JarMzoK.png
Reporting & Analytics | | Fammy0 -
Moz Crawler suddenly reporting 1000s of duplicates (BE.net)
In the last 3-4 days we've had several thousand 'duplicate content' warnings appear in our crawl report, 99% of them related to our on-site blog. The blog is BlogEngine.Net, but the pages simply don't exist. The majority seem to be Roger trying quasi-random URLs like:
Reporting & Analytics | | Progauto
/?page=410 /?page=151 Etc. etc. The blog will present content for these requests, but it is of course the same empty page since there's only unique content for up to /?Page=10 or so. Two questions: 1. Did something change recently? These blogs have been up for months, and this problem has only come up this week. Did Roger change to become more aggressive lately? 2. Suggested remediation? On one of the blogs I've put no-index no-follow for any page that has a /?page querystring, and we'll see what effect that has come next crawl next week. However, I'm not sure this will work as per: http://moz.com/community/q/functionality-of-seomoz-crawl-page-reports Anyone else had dynamic blogs suddenly blossom into thousands of duplicate content warnings? Google (rightly) ignores these pages completely.0 -
Google Analytics Content Experiments don't deliver 50/50?
Our A/B test is actually delivering at about a 70/30 page view rate. 70% in favor of the original version and only 30% of the new. We are sending 100% of our traffic to this homepage test. Has anyone else experienced this? There seems to be a lot of folks experiencing this.....anyone know why?
Reporting & Analytics | | VistageSEO0 -
How to find out which URLs are NOT indexed on a site
Is there a way to easily find out which URLs on a store-type site are NOT being indexed in Google? For example, if my sitemap information in Google Webmaster tools shows I have 7342 URLs in my sitemap and 5699 of those indexed, how do I find out what the 1643 non-indexed URLS are? Thanks for any help!
Reporting & Analytics | | GregWalt0