Blog tags are creating excessive duplicate content...should we use rel canonicals or 301 redirects?
-
We are having an issue with our cilent's blog creating excessive duplicate content via blog tags. The duplicate webpages from tags offer absolutely no value (we can't even see the tag). Should we just 301 redirect the tagged page or use a rel canonical?
-
The easiest way to resolve issues with tags is to noindex them. I wrote a post about how you can safely do this: http://www.evolvingseo.com/2012/08/10/clean-sweep-yo-tag-archives-now (you basically just double check to see if they are receiving traffic, and leave the few that receive traffic via search indexed).
But at the root level it comes down to knowing how to use tags correctly on a blogging platform to begin with - and knowing how they function, and what happens when you tag something.
First off, tagging any post creates a new page called a "tag archive". The only way someone can get to tag archives by default is if you allow some sort of navigation or links to them on the site itself. This is usually in the form of a "tag cloud" (sidebar or footer) or at the bottom of posts when it says "tagged in....." and links to the tags.
Then if they are internally linked to, they will get indexed (unless you noindex them like I have suggested above). They are typically low to no-value pages because most bloggers just tag everything, and use lots of tags per post. Then you end up with hundreds of pages (tag archives) with no value.
So noindexing them is the safest way to go, except for very extreme cases where a blogger uses them 100% perfect (which is rare, so I always assume most people asking should just noindex but use my post to check for traffic to any of them first).
-
Thanks for chiming in! Just to reiterate something - canonical tags are only a suggestion, not a hard directive. Google can and does ignore them. The canonical tag and also pass noindexing directives to the page you point them at. So with tag archives, if they are set to noindex and you canonical them to posts, you might deindex your posts.
And finally, canonical is only something that should be used that can't be solved via indexation, crawling or architecture solutions. In the case of tags in a blogging system (probably wordpress) the easiest and 100% definite way to handle tags is just to noindex them. Then you don't need to worry about canonicals or duplicate content.
Also, tags are no harmful because of duplicate content per se, but just that they add a lot of unneeded pages to the index.
-
You can set tags to noindex/follow. If you're using WordPress and one of the more popular SEO plugins, this could be done with a couple of clicks. But are these tags actually generating duplicate content? Usually a snippet of the tagged posts isn't considered duplicate.
Anyway, noindex should be more effective than it was in the past. And as Highland has said, setting a canonical would be a good idea as well.
If the tags aren't really helping out site users, they aren't using them - etc., and they don't have any link equity - you could just 410 them. Plus you could submit the tag URLs for removal in GWT.
So check the referral traffic and backlinks for those pages and go with either removal or noindex follow and a canonical.
-
Canonical hands down. This is what canonical was made for anyways: duplicate content you can't remove.
Canonical simply lets you tell Google which duplicate content should "win" the indexation race and Google will take it into consideration. I can think of many reasons why you'd have overlapping tags but would not want to remove them (which is what a 301 would do)
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
-
If I use links intag instead of "ahref" tag can Google read links inside div tag?
Hi All, Need a suggestion on it. For buttons, I am using links in tag instead of "ahref". Do you know that can Google read links inside "div" tag? Does it pass rank juice? It will be great if you can provide any reference if possible.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pujan.bikroy0 -
Penalties for duplicate content
Hello!We have a website with various city tours and activities listed on a single page (http://vaiduokliai.lt/). The list changes accordingly depending on filtering (birthday in Vilnius, bachelor party in Kaunas, etc.). The URL doesn't change. Content changes dynamically. We need to make URL visible for each category, then optimize it for different keywords (for example city tours in Vilnius for a list of tours and activities in Vilnius with appropriate URL /tours-in-Vilnius).The problem is that activities overlap very often in different categories, so there will be a lot of duplicate content on different pages. In such case, how severe penalty could be for duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpuzakov0 -
Review site using canonical tag in a puzzling way.
Have just been looking at a review site and they're using the canonical tag very strangely, to me. For example, they may have several pages of reviews of the same item - they use the canonical tag on page 2/3/4 to point back at page 1 - and yet there is no duplication between the pages. Any idea why they might be doing this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
When is it recommended to use a self referencing rel "canonical"?
In what type of a situation is it the best type of practice to use a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? Are there particular practices to be cautious of when using a self referencing rel "canonical" tag? I see this practice used mainly with larger websites but I can't find any information that really explains when is a good time to make use of this practice for SEO purposes. Appreciate all feedback. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO_Promenade0 -
Using Canonical Attribute
Hi All, I am hoping you can help me? We have recently migrated to the Umbraco CMS and now have duplicate versions of the same page showing on different URLs. My understanding is that this is one of the major reasons for the rel=canonical tag. So am I right in saying that if I add the following to the page that I want to rank then this will work? I'm just a little worried as I have read some horror stories of people implementing this attribute incorrectly and getting into trouble. Thank you in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Creditsafe0 -
Is it ok to use both 301 redirect and rel="canonical' at the same time?
Hi everyone, I'm sorry if this has been asked before. I just wasn't able to find a response in previous questions. To fix the problems in our website regarding duplication I have the possibility to set up 301's and, at the same time, modify our CMS so that it automatically sets a rel="canonical" tag for every page that is generated. Would it be a problem to have both methods set up? Is it a problem to have a on a page that is redirecting to another one? Is it advisable to have a rel="canonical" tag on every single page? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SDLOnlineChannel0 -
Duplicate Content on Product Pages
I'm getting a lot of duplicate content errors on my ecommerce site www.outdoormegastore.co.uk mainly centered around product pages. The products are completely different in terms of the title, meta data, product descriptions and images (with alt tags)but SEOmoz is still identifying them as duplicates and we've noticed a significant drop in google ranking lately. Admittedly the product descriptions are a little bit thin but I don't understand why the pages would be viewed as duplicates and therefore can be ranked lower? The content is definitely unique too. As an example these three pages have been identified as being duplicates of each other. http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/regatta-landtrek-25l-rucksack.html http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/canyon-bryce-adult-cycling-helmet-9045.html http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/outwell-minnesota-6-carpet-for-green-07-08-tent.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gavinhoman0 -
How do I fix the error duplicate page content and duplicate page title?
On my site www.millsheating.co.uk I have the error message as per the question title. The conflict is coming from these two pages which are effectively the same page: www.millsheating.co.uk www.millsheating.co.uk/index I have added a htaccess file to the root folder as I thought (hoped) it would fix the problem but I doesn't appear to have done so. this is the content of the htaccess file: Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^millsheating.co.uk RewriteRule (.*) http://www.millsheating.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,9}\ /index\.html\ HTTP/ RewriteRule ^index\.html$ http://www.millsheating.co.uk/ [R=301,L] AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JasonHegarty0