How do I eliminate duplicate page titles?
-
Almost...I repeat almost all of my duplicate page titles show up as such because the page is being seen twice in the crawl. How do I prevent this?
<colgroup><col width="336"> <col width="438"></colgroup>
| www.ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html | Contact ENSO Plastics |
| ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html |Contact ENSO Plastics
|
This is what is from the CSV...there are many more just like this. How do I cut out all of these duplicate urls?
-
thank you for the follow up, Dr. Pete!
-
I don't see anything wrong with your home-page canonical. We usually suggest pointing the home-page to the root:
...and not including the filename (just for the home-page), but that's not necessary. You link internally to "index.html", so what you have is fine, and keeps it consistent. I think the error is only happening because our crawler is trying to view the "/" version and sees the canonical to "index.html" (so, they look different).
-
So if I want the www. page to be the one that shows up in google...what do I put in the head of the ContactUs.html page exactly? As you can see when I put this in the head then I get the critical error from SEOMOZ. So this fix just isn't making sense to me right now. IF I take it back out then the critical error is gone but then I get the message that I should add the canonical to the page.
<dt>Canonical URL</dt>
<dd>"http://www.ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html"</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd>
-
So, just to be clear - these are the same physical page. Google sees the two URLs as being two different pages, but in terms of actual physical documents on your server, there's only one (ContactUs.html). So, you just need the one canonical tag per page.
If you have any dynamic (database/code-driven) pages, then be careful and make sure that the canonical tag is being create dynamically to match the correct page. You don't want to end up with canonical tags to the wrong pages.
-
I'd follow the advice to 301 or canonical, but it doesn't hurt to also declare a canonical version in Google Webmaster Tools - it's under "Site Configuration" > "Settings". You still need to canonicalize, but it's one additional signal to Google (and it's easy).
-
the index page canonical should point to index page,
the content page to the same content page (it is just for eliminating the duplicate issue)
don't put a canonical that points to a page that is not its duplicate
-
Once I add it in and crawl the page I end up with a critical error... so something is not right.
Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
Moderate fix
<dl>
<dt>Canonical URL</dt>
<dd>"http://www.ensoplastics.com/index.html"</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd>
</dl>
-
ok, good luck!
-
Ok I will put the canonical in the head of the html files and see what happens.
-
you have 1 page, that can be reached from two or even more paths. we talk about these paths, and these are creating the duplicate content.
It is like having your site duplicate on your non www. of your domain.
With the canonical, you tell search engines which path, which .html file you are optimizing for.
-
This actually does not solve the problem. I have only one index.html file. So how in the world do I access a page that does not exist in my hierarchy? For example if I have the following two pages there is really only on instance of that page I can edit the head with an html file, it is not like there is actually 2 html pages that exist for each one so in this case am I just stuck creating redirects for each instance where this occurs?
|
www.ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html
ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html
|
-
you just insert into each html file the canonical that points to www url. and it should work it out.
-
So then in the page without the www I should insert this into the head and do the same for all other pages?
-
Hi again
So basically canonicals are better.
And why you get this: when robots crawl your website they see the following pages as different:
And we could continue with variants. Canonicals tell search engines that these pages are the same, and they should handle it as same page.
so if you put a into index file, you will have the following results:
www.example.com (no matter which URL does the search engine visit, they will handle as the canonical link)
This is also good for links, because people might link to you as example.com or example.com/index, etc. etc. Then if you insert the canonical you focus all the links to one URL.
Hope it helped,
Istvan
-
Which is better, and also I am interested in knowing why this happens?
-
Hi,
These duplicate URLs can be resolved two ways easily.
1. 301 from non www. to www. or vice versa
2. canonical to one of the links.
This way you will focus all the link juice on only one page. More power
I hope it helped,
Istvan
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
-
How to Remove Web Cache snapshot page & other language SEO Title in Google Search Engine?
Hi... Please tell me how to remove web cache link given below. I have changed my SEO title but it can't be changed...Any other methods for without using webmaster tools. Kw3arat
Technical SEO | | Thilak_geo040 -
Is <title>different from <h1> and "meta tag title"?</title>
hi guys, new to MOZ and SEO. Basic question here. is <title>different from <h1> and "meta tag title"?</p> <p>I have lots of "title missing or blank" errors as reported by a recent Moz crawl. What do i need to add into the pages to clear these? an <h1>? an <title>? or <meta tag title>? </p> <p>Im running a volusion site, and from what ive read (negative & positive) Volusion can be a pain to optimize my SEO as i dont have full access to all my pages.?</p></title>
Technical SEO | | Jerrion0 -
New Title and Desciptions on page is visible does that mean index postion is also
Hi, I have a question, Suppose I change some content on my web page, i.e. Title, Description, some body text. And then several days later I see this changes have been reflected within the contents displayed to me when I do a google search. I also notice that at the same time that these contents have been displayed to me that the position of my site has either dropped or increased by several positions. Is it a reasonable assumption to attribute the position change to the changes I made on the webpage or is there usually a delay in position movement upon changes visibly being displayed? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | Robdob20130 -
How to verify a page-by-page level 301 redirect was done correctly?
Hello, I told some tech guys to do a page-by-page relevant 301 redirect (as talked about in Matt Cutts video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lVPrYoBkA) when a company wanted to move to a new domain when their site was getting redesigned. I found out they did a 302 redirect on accident and had to fix that, so now I don't trust they did the page-by-page relevant redirect. I have a feeling they just redirected all of the pages on the old domain to the homepage of the new domain. How could I confirm this suspicion? I run the old domain through screaming frog and it only shows 1 URL - the homepage. Does that mean they took all of the pages on the old domain offline? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | EvolveCreative0 -
Error msg 'Duplicate Page Content', how to fix?
Hey guys, I'm new to SEO and have the following error msg 'Duplicate Page Content'. Of course I know what it means, but my question is how do you delete the old pages that has duplicate content? I use to run my website through Joomla! but have since moved to Shopify. I see that the duplicated site content is still from the old Joomla! site and I would like to learn how to delete this content (or best practice in this situation). Any advice would be very helpful! Cheers, Peter
Technical SEO | | pjuszczynski0 -
How do I deal with my pages being seen as duplicate content by SeoMoz?
My Dashboard is giving my lots of warnings for duplicate content but it all seems to have something to do with the www and the slash / For example: http://www.ebow.ie/ is seen as having the same duplicate content as http:/ebow.ie/ and http://www.ebow.ie Alos lots to do with how Wordpress categorizes pages and tags that is driving me bonkers! Any help appreciated! Dave. seomoz.png
Technical SEO | | ebowdublin0 -
Tags causing Duplicate page content?
I was looking through the 'Duplicate Page Content' and Too Many On-Page Link' errors and they all seem to be linked to the 'Tags' on my blog pages. Is this really a problem and if so how should I be using tags properly to get the best SEO rewards?
Technical SEO | | zapprabbit1 -
301 lots of old pages to home page
Will it hurt me if i redirect a few hundred old pages to my home page? I currently have a mess on my hands with many 404's showing up after moving my site to a new ecommerce server. We have been at the new server for 2 years but still have 337 404s showing up in google webmaster tools. I don't think it would affect users as very few people woudl find those old links but I don't want to mess with google. Also, how much are those 404s hurting my rank?
Technical SEO | | bhsiao1