Redirecting duplicate pages
-
For whatever reason, X-cart creates duplicates of our categories and articles so that we have URLs like this
www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars
www.k9electronics.com/dog-training-collars/or
http://www.k9electronics.com/articles/anti-bark-collar
http://www.k9electronics.com/articles/anti-bark-collar/now our SEO guy says that we dont have to redirect these because google is "smart enough" to know they are the same, and that we should "leave it as-is". However, everything I have read online says that google sees this as dupe content and that we should redirect to one or the other / or no /, depending on which most of our internal links already point to, which is with a slash. What should we do? Redirect or leave it as is? Thanks!
-
I agree 100% with Matt. I would also recommend checking your internal links to ensure that they are all following the same format with or without the /.
-
Hi there, URLs with a trailing slash or without a trailing slash..this has been very much discussed and debated in the SEO circles for quite a long time. The fact is you can go with either of these but be consistent with what you go with through out your website. Personally, I would prefer all the URLs ending with a folder name go with a trailing slash and all the URLs that end with file names should end with proper file extension. And for me if anything ends without a trailing slash, it would be a file and not a folder (don't you think I am biased towards static websites?). This issue is very common with dynamic websites and to conclude, as your SEO guy rightly mentioned, there is absolutely nothing to worry about and Google will take care of this issue (rather a common practice or should I call it a mistake?) pretty well. Good luck.
Regards,
Devanur.
-
Redirect the URLs to one version, for a start it will make your site more crawler friendly for search engines so they don't waste time crawling each version of the page fully and also as you mention it will eliminate duplicate content.
Why make Google do extra work? - your site architecture needs to be as clear as possible, so that Google can crawl it efficiently and not have to deal with duplicates..
This link says it all - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/to-slash-or-not-to-slash.html
Here is a recent Q&A from some of the others in the community backing up the fact that you should redirect one version of the URL to eliminate duplicate content
- http://www.seomoz.org/q/duplicate-content-issue-with-trailing
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
-
19 Hours Excessive to Code Single Wordpress Page?
My developer says that is will take 19 hours to modify a listing page of the wpcasa London real estate theme because the existing template is difficult to customize. I am attaching an image of the existing page before customization and an image of a final mock up. Is 19 hours a reasonable amount of time to customize this page? Look forward to feedback. New Design is visible at: https://imgur.com/a/42XBqDD Alan IQ1i0kg
Web Design | | Kingalan10 -
How to fix non-crawlable pages affected by CSS modals?
I stumbled across something new when doing a site audit in SEMRUSH today ---> Modals. The case: Several pages could not be crawled because of (modal:) in the URL. What I know: "A modal is a dialog box/popup window that is displayed on top of the current page" based on CSS and JS. What I don't know: How to prevent crawlers from finding them.
Web Design | | Dan-Louis0 -
Internal Linking: What is the best practice for pages not included in Nav bar?
I never quite understood why internal linking was such a big deal for SEO, but now I'm having second thoughts and perhaps understanding it more. I always thought since most websites have a navigation feature--usually the menu bar located at the top and often another one in the footer--that internal navigation was usually already built in to most websites and therefore, a silly topic to make a fuss over; however, I may be the silly one after all. I am now creating pages that are not included in the navigation so.... What is the best practice for this? If I am creating say, pages for certain locations and those location pages begin to number in the hundreds, it makes my navigation bar a little too cumbersome to have all those pages in a drop down menu. So I made a Locations page and just link to all those pages from that page (and from nowhere else). But now I'm wondering if this could be a bad internal linking practice and perhaps hurt my online visibility as an SEO ranking factor. Is this a crawl problem? And if so, is there a better option that provides a good visitor experience while appeasing the search engines.
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Best techniques for trying to rank a single page website?
I am new to SEO and am currently trying to market a single page website. Its proving to be hard. I have managed to get the site to page one for a few keywords and it is improving (upto page 2 for some desired keywords) but it seems to have stuck there for a few weeks now - with no movement. I am able to develop it if required. However I thought that I would just ask if there was anything that could give it a nudge without this? I have done on-site optimisation. As far as I'm aware that's about as good as it can be. So any advice?
Web Design | | Chstphrjohn0 -
Main page redirect affecting search results?
Question.... A recent change was made to our page www.BGU.edu by a marketing person. So now when you type in www.BGU.edu it actually redirects to a different page www.BGU.edu/inquiry This is a really bad idea isn't it? I do not know enough about SEO to know a lot, and just joined SEOmoz but do I need to tell the admin to change it back?
Web Design | | nongard10 -
Penalized by duplicate content?
Hello, I am in a very weird position. I am managing a website(EMD) which a part of it dynamically creates pages. The former webmaster who create this system though that this would help with SEO but I dought! The thing is that now the site has about 1500 pages which must look duplicate but are they really duplicate? Each page has a unique URL but the content is pretty much the same: one image and a different title with 5-8 words. There is more: All these pages are not accessible by the users but only for the crawlers!!! This URL machine is a part of a php - made photo gallery which i never understood the sense of it! The site overall is not performing very well in SERP, especially after Penguin, but judging by the link profile, the Domain authority, construction (ok besides that crazy photo gallery) and content, it never reached the position it should have in the past. The majority of these mysterious pages - and mostly their images - are cached by Google and some of them are in top places to some SERP - the ones that match the small title on page - but the numbers are poor, 10 - 15 clicks per month. Are these pages considered as duplicated, although they are cached, and is it safe for the site just to remove 1500 at once? The seomoz tools have pointed some of them as dups but the majority not! Can these pages impact the image of the whole site in search engines?( drop in Google and has disappeared from Yahoo and Bing!) Do I also have to tell Google about the removal? I have not seen anything like it before so any comment would be helpful! Thank you!
Web Design | | Tz_Seo0 -
Websites with only one "html file" and page href # is good for SEO?
I bought one website from templatemonster that contains only one HTML and the pages are generated by links (PROGRAMACAO) My website: www.nextformaturas.com.br This is good in term of SEO? or it is better an website with deveral pages with diferent contents? What are the pros and cons? I really lost on this.
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
Javascript Redirects
So I have a client who uses a program called test and target by Adobe to test different pages of content for the best layout, design, etc. They use javascript redirects and css hide and show to hide content with div tags. I'm wondering if anyone has experience with test and target or knows about how these hidden div tags and javascript redirects will affect my indexing and SEO. I'm hoping for some guidance fairly quickly as well 🙂
Web Design | | CoolSEOnStuff0