Fixing Duplicate Content Errors
-
SEOMOZ Pro is showing some duplicate content errors and wondered the best way to fix them other than re-writing the content.
Should I just remove the pages found or should I set up permanent re-directs through to the home page in case there is any link value or visitors on these duplicate pages?
Thanks.
-
Sorry, the thread was getting a bit nested, so I'm breaking out this response, even though it relates to a couple of replies. Although it is tough to tell without specifics, I suspect that you do need to canonicalize these somehow. Geo-pages that only differ by a keyword or two didn't fare well in the Panda updates, and Google is starting to see them as "thin" content. I do actually think the canonical tag is preferable to a 301 here (at least from my understanding of the problem). As Aran said, the 301 will remove the pages for visitors as well, and they may have some value.
While they're technically not 100% duplicates, Google is pretty liberal with their interpretation of the canonical tag in practice (in fact, I'd say they're actual interpretation is much more liberal than their stated interpretation). If the pages really have no search value, you could META NOINDEX them - it's unlikely that they're being linked to.
-
Not sure if this is the right usage of canonical. Seems a bit cheaty
-
Hi Paul,
I would have thought that a 301 is going to be a little confusing for your visitors, as they may be browsing the Lancashire part of your site and find themselves redirected to the bedfordshire side. I'd personally prefer to write some content for Lancashire/Bedford.
Understood you don't want to share the URL, but as I have said, difficult to answer the problem without seeing it in context.
Cheers
Aran
-
Good suggestion. Thanks for your help.
-
If the content is the same, you can use te canonical tag to tell search engines what is the original content.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html
Bye
-
Hi Aran,
I don't really want to post the URL on this public post, but I can say that I have a site that has some auto-generated regional content, which I realise is not recommended.
What's happened is two pages are completely identical down to the fact that various regions have similar town names and the code is showing the same page. E.g.
England/Bedfordshire/Bedford
England/Lancashire/BedfordIt would be easier for me to put 301 redirects on the dupes so I can avoid having to get into the code and remove the auto-generated duplicate pages. Links to the duplicate pages will still show if I just do redirects.
I think I've answered my own question really as it would be best to remove any links going to duplicate pages to reduce out-bound links on the linking pages.
Paul
-
Hi,
Can you provide examples of pages what contain duplicate content?
It's difficult to know how to handle them without seeing your site.
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
-
Can I use duplicate content in different US cities without hurting SEO?
So, I have major concerns with this plan. My company has hundreds of facilities located all over the country. Each facility has it's own website. We have a third party company working to build a content strategy for us. What they came up with is to create a bank of content specific to each service line. If/when any facility offers that service, they then upload the content for that service line to that facility website. So in theory, you might have 10-12 websites all in different cities, with the same content for a service. They claim "Google is smart, it knows its content all from the same company, and because it's in different local markets, it will still rank." My contention is that duplicate content is duplicate content, and unless it is "localize" it, Google is going to prioritize one page of it and the rest will get very little exposure in the rankings no matter where you are. I could be wrong, but I want to be sure we aren't shooting ourselves in the foot with this strategy, because it is a major major undertaking and too important to go off in the wrong direction. SEO Experts, your help is genuinely appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens1 -
Duplicate content issues from mirror subdomain : facebook.domianname.com
Hey Guys,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | b2bmarketer
Need your suggestions.
I have got a website that has duplicate content issue.
a sub-domain called facebook.asherstrategies .com comes from no where and is getting indexed.
Website Link : asherstrategies .com
subdomain link: facebook.asherstrategies .com This sub domain is actually a mirror of the website and i have no idea how is is created.
trying to resolve the issue but could not find the clue.0 -
URL Capitalization Inconsistencies Registering Duplicate Content Crawl Errors
Hello, I have a very large website that has a good amount of "Duplicate Content" issues according to MOZ. In reality though, it is not a problem with duplicate content, but rather a problem with URLs. For example: http://acme.com/product/features and http://acme.com/Product/Features both land on the same page, but MOZ is seeing them as separate pages, therefor assuming they are duplicates. We have recently implemented a solution to automatically de-captialize all characters in the URL, so when you type acme.com/Products, the URL will automatically change to acme.com/products – but MOZ continues to flag multiple "Duplicate Content" issues. I noticed that many of the links on the website still have the uppercase letters in the URL even though when clicked, the URL changes to all lower case. Could this be causing the issue? What is the best way to remove the "Duplicate Content" issues that are not actually duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
Big problem with duplicate page content
Hello! I am a beginner SEO specialist and a have a problem with duplicate pages content. The site I'm working on is an online shop made with Prestashop. The moz crawl report shows me that I have over 4000 duplicate page content. Two weeks ago I had 1400. The majority of links that show duplicate content looks like bellow:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ana_g
http://www.sitename.com/category-name/filter1
http://www.sitename.com/category-name/filter1/filter2 Firstly, I thought that the filtres don't work. But, when I browse the site and I test it, I see that the filters are working and generate links like bellow:
http://www.sitename.com/category-name#/filter1
http://www.sitename.com/category-name#/filter1/filter2 The links without the # do not work; it messes up with the filters.
Why are the pages indexed without the #, thus generating me duplicate content?
How can I fix the issues?
Thank you very much!0 -
Subcategories within "New Arrivals" section - duplicate content?
Hi there, My client runs an e-commerce store selling shoes that features a section called "New Arrivals" with subcategories, such as "shoes," "wedges," "boots," "sandals," etc. There are already main subcategories on the site that target these terms. These are specifically pages for "New Arrivals - Boots," etc. The shoes listed on each new arrivals subcategory page are also listed in the main subcategory page. Given that there is not really any search volume for "Brand + new arrivals in boots," but lots of search volume for "Brand + boots," what is the proper way to handle these new arrivals subcategory pages? Should each subcategory have a rel=canonical tag pointing to the main subcategory? Should they be de-indexed? Should I keep them all indexed but try to make the content as unique as possible? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
Should i fix 404 my errors?
We have about 250, 404 errors due to changing alot of page names throughout our site. I've read some articles saying to leave them and eventually they will go away. Normally I would do a 301 redirect. What's the best solution?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
Proper Hosting Setup to Avoid Subfolders & Duplicate Content
I've noticed with hosting multiple websites on a single account you end up having your main site in the root public_html folder, but when you create subfolders for new website it actually creates a duplicate website: eg. http://kohnmeat.com/ is being hosted on laubeau.com's server. So you end up with a duplicate website: http://laubeau.com/kohn/ Anyone know the best way to prevent this from happening? (i.e. canonical? 301? robots.txt?) Also, maybe a specific 'how-to' if you're feeling generous 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Subdomains - duplicate content - robots.txt
Our corporate site provides MLS data to users, with the end goal of generating leads. Each registered lead is assigned to an agent, essentially in a round robin fashion. However we also give each agent a domain of their choosing that points to our corporate website. The domain can be whatever they want, but upon loading it is immediately directed to a subdomain. For example, www.agentsmith.com would be redirected to agentsmith.corporatedomain.com. Finally, any leads generated from agentsmith.easystreetrealty-indy.com are always assigned to Agent Smith instead of the agent pool (by parsing the current host name). In order to avoid being penalized for duplicate content, any page that is viewed on one of the agent subdomains always has a canonical link pointing to the corporate host name (www.corporatedomain.com). The only content difference between our corporate site and an agent subdomain is the phone number and contact email address where applicable. Two questions: Can/should we use robots.txt or robot meta tags to tell crawlers to ignore these subdomains, but obviously not the corporate domain? If question 1 is yes, would it be better for SEO to do that, or leave it how it is?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EasyStreet0