#hashtag Anchor text within content
-
Hi, i have a question about anchor text within my sites content.
It 'jumps' to content displayed further down the page via a side navigation at the top. These links don't take you away to any other page, instead take you further down the page to the relavent content.
My question is this: I've noticed in the URL that the anchor text - #jumpnavlink is placed at the end of the pages URL like so..
www.mywebsite.com/example-page.php#jumpnavlink
Is this creating a problem for duplicate content?
Is it creating a new URL for viewers to use?
Is it ok to have lots of these running throughout my sites content pages?Many thanks for any light that is shed on this one!
Cheers
Alex -
Hi Alex,
Matt is absolutely right - engines ignore everything to the right of the hash (properly called a "named anchor" or "URL fragment").
They ignore fragments for the reason you just described. Fragments have traditionally been used in web design to build "table of contents" navigation that drops a user down the page to a specific position on the page, whether a different section, or a specific user's comment, etc. If a page has 10 sections with 10 corresponding fragments, obviously the engine just wants to index the root URL, rather than waste time and money indexing all the fragments, which would be duplicates of the root URL.
Fragments can be very useful for visitors who want to link to a specific part of a long article, or directly to a comment they made.
There is no problem whatsoever with using lots of fragments for in-page navigation.
-
yup .. search engine will see it as single page -
www.mywebsite.com/example-page.php
_Now, if you numerous pages with hash tags that means, you are cramming loads of content in the same page that is www.mywebsite.com/example-page.php. This may be bad for the users but SEO's perspective this URLs bad, really bad.
To target different pages, you need to have URLs without the hash tag. _
-
As far as I am aware Google doesn't index urls with a hashtag as this is pointing to an internal part of the page - essentially it will only index the url without the hashtag, so it isn't creating a new URL. However to be certain of this I would stick a site: query with your url including the hashtag and see if it appears with the hashtag, if, as I expect it doesn't then you shouldn't have an issue with duplicate content under two urls. As far as them being ok in relation to your SEO efforts I don't see why there should be a negative impact as you are essentially making your site more user-friendly and pointing to a specific part of the page that is already indexed - your are not duplicating that part of the page by creating an internal anchor to that specific content.
Just for your confirmation I can tell you I have a page that uses an internal anchor (#) and when you do a site search in Google this page doesn't appear. When you search for it without the # it does...
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
-
Content on desktop and mobile
My website hasn't using responsive design and separate domain for mobile optimize, But we using dynamic serving for mobile version, Read more about dynamic serving here So our website must different design for both version, And then what would be happen in term of SEO if our website hasn't show the same content as desktop but still align with the main content, Such as Desktop has longer content compare to mobile version or Desktop has long H1 but mobile is shorter than. What should we do for this case and how to tell Google Bot.
Technical SEO | | ASKHANUMANTHAILAND0 -
How to Handle Subdomains with Irrelevant Content
Hi Everyone, My company is currently doing a redesign for a website and in the process of planning their 301 redirect strategy, I ran across several subdomains that aren't set up and are pointing to content on another website. The site is on a server that has a dedicated IP address that is shared with the other site. What should we do with these subdomains? Is it okay to 301 them to the homepage of the new site, even though the content is from another site? Should we try to set them up to go to the 404 page on the new site?
Technical SEO | | PapercutInteractive0 -
Link Anchor Text
When we have run a Open Site Explorer analysis on our own site, it says that for all our internal links the Link Anchor Text is 'Help with logging in' I am a bit confused as to why it shows that. That text does appear in the header of the page, but is not the first piece of text. Why is it happening on our site?
Technical SEO | | MattAshby
Why do I not see this on other sites?
What affect does this have on our ranking?
What's the best fix? Example page that we ran on Open Site Explorer: www.rightboat.com/search?manufacturer=Beneteau&model=Antares+9.800 -
Duplicate Content Due to Pagination
Recently our newly designed website has been suffering from a rankings loss. While I am sure there are a number of factors involved, I'd like to no if this scenario could be harmful... Google is showing a number of duplicate content issues within Webmaster Tools. Some of what I am seeing is duplicate Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions for page 1 and page 2 of some of my product category pages. So if a category has many products and has 4 pages, it is effectively showing the same page title and meta desc. across all 4 pages. I am wondering if I should let my site show, say 150 products per page to get them all on one page instead of the current 36 per page. I use the Big Commerce platform. Thank you for taking the time to read my question!
Technical SEO | | josh3300 -
SEO for User Authenticated Content
Hi Everyone - I have a potential client who is seeking SEO for a site that contains about 95% of content only accessible through user authentication . Does anyone have tips for getting this indexed without having to open it up to the public? I was considering adding "snippets" into the robots.txt or creating an additional page with snippets linking to the login page. I'd appreciate any thoughts! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | manutx0 -
Duplicate content, Original source?
Hi there, say i have two websites with identicle content. website a had content on before website b - so will be seen as the original source? If the content was intended for website b, would taking it off a then make the orinal source to google then go to website b? I want website b to get the value of the content but it was put on website a first - would taking it off website a then give website b the full power of the content? Any help of advice much appreciated. Kind Regards,
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
WordPress Duplicate Content Issues
Everyone knows that WordPress has some duplicate content issues with tags, archive pages, category pages etc... My question is, how do you handle these issues? Is the smart strategy to use robots meta and add no follow/ no index category pages, archive pages tag pages etc? By doing this are you missing out on the additional internal links to your important pages from you category pages and tag pages? I hope this makes sense. Regards, Bill
Technical SEO | | wparlaman0 -
Question about duplicate content within my site
Hi. New here to SEOmoz and also somewhat new to SEO in general. A friend has asked me to help do some onsite SEO for their company's website. The company uses Drupal Content Management System. They have a couple product pages that contain a tabbed section for features, accessories, etc. When they built their tabs, they used a Drupal module called Quicktabs, by which each individual tab is created as a separate page and then pulled into the tabs from those pages. So, in essence, you now have instances of repeated content. 1) the page used to create the tab, and 2) the tab that displays on the product page. My question is, how should I handle the pages that were used to create the tabs? Should I make them NOINDEX? Thank you for your advice in advance.
Technical SEO | | aprilm-1890400