Duplicate page titles because of multi language setting
-
Hey SEO-ers!
I've run a Moz crawl on my clients site, and I'm getting back over 4,000 duplicate title errors which is a real headache for me! The reason why is because my client has 5 different languages on their website, so if you spoke French for example, you could change the language of the website to all be in french, so the domain would change from www.example.com to www.example.com/fr/
The duplicate titles are being picked up because all page titles are in English for all 5 languages - which I know, is an issue anyway - why would a French browser using Google.fr choose a website that has English meta tags!? Crazy.
So my question is... if I translate all page titles from my English title to the native language, will this fix my duplicate page titles as now they will be in the correct language? OR will it still be classed as a duplicate because in theory I'm just translating the same content 5 times?
Anyone had any experience in this? I'm using Polylang on my clients Wordpress site to change the locales, so if you have knowledge on this plugin too then great!
-
hi all the SEO experts
I would like to extend the question to the point that a lot of words and word combinations specifically in the tech arena can be used in English for some languages. I am working now on EN and DE websites on a website for SaaS, a lot of page titles coincide in both languages and they are actually not translated.
What would you recommend in this case? Would hreflang solve my issue?
Thank you
-
We agree with Eric, I would also explore setting Href Lang tags. Check out https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights and use Search Console to trouble-shoot the effort.
-
Yay! That was the answer I was hoping for! Thanks!
-
The duplicate titles are being picked up because all page titles are in English for all 5 languages -
That, there, is the issue. If the page is in French, then the title tag needs to be in French. That's why the title tags are being flagged as duplicates. Because they are duplicates.
The good news, though, is that if you do take the time to update/translate all of your title tags into the proper language, then I bet that your site's search engine rankings will improve quite a bit.
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
-
Local Site stuck on page 2 for years. Can’t penetrate page 1! Help!
Hey there Moz community! This is the first time I've ever asked a question here so please forgive if I slip up on any etiquette. I manage a website for a small Orlando Florida family law and divorce law firm who are targeting search phrases that include those "Orlando divorce attorney" variants. The site is located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/ If you run a search for "Orlando divorce attorney" along with close variant search terms our law firm website for about the past two years has hovered at the top of the second page of google but has never actually penetrated page 1. When you examine metrics such as page authority, domain authority, trust, and other traditional metrics it tells you that our site should be on page 1 but alas it's not happening. We have, however been featured quite often in the three pack for the local listings for the target search terms. Though valuable, our goal has always been to be featured in the top three of the organic search results. To add to the confusion we have a practice area page located at https://www.affordablefamilylawyer.com/orlando-divorce-lawyer/ dedicated to divorce and expected that page to rank for these divorce attorney search terms but it will not rank for the search terms and instead our homepage ranks for them every single time regardless of how we swap around the optimization on the page. Never had any manual actions. any help you guys can offer is greatly appreciated and I really appreciate your time!
Local SEO | | Seanthewood1230 -
Keyword rich domain names -> Point to sales funnel sites or to landing pages on primary domain?
Hey everyone,
Local SEO | | Transpera
We have a tonne of old domains we have done nothing with. All of them are keyword-rich domains.
Things like "[City]SEOPro" or "[City]DigitalMarketing" where [city] is a city that we are already targeting services in. So all of these domains will be targeted for local cities as keywords. We have been having an internal debate about whether or not we should just host sales funnel pages on these domains, that are rich in keywords and content......... ... Or ... ... Should we point these domains to landing pages on our existing domain that are basically the same as what we would do with the sales funnel pages, but are on our primary site? (keyword rich, with good and plentiful content) Then, as a follow-up question... Should these be set as just 301 redirects on these domains to our actual primary domain so the browser sees the landing page domain instead of the actual keyword-rich domain? ( [city]seopro.com ) Thanks guys. I know for some, the response will be an obvious one. However; we have probably way over thought this and have arguments for almost every scenario. We think we have an answer but wanted to send this out to the community first. I won't post what we are thinking yet, so that the answers can remain unbiased for now and we can have a conversation without it being swayed any one way. We understand that 301 redirects would be seen as a doorway page.
We are also only discussing in the context of organic search only.
If we ran the domains as their own sites, they would be about 3 pages of content only. Pretty static, but good content. Think of a PAS style sales funnel. Problem -> Acknowledgement -> Solution.0 -
Page Structure for Law Firm with Multiple Services
Hello and thanks in advance for any help. I'll try to keep this simple. I am about to do some major SEO for our Law Firm. We have 4 practice areas and I will be focusing on Lemon Law Attorneys for this example. I always try my best to keep it clean, organized and for the user. This one just has me a little confused about which direction to take as its a little more complex. The business is 1 location. The office is in San Diego but we service all of California. CURRENT PAGE STRUCTURE
Local SEO | | ChrisCanada
.com (home)
.com/practice-areas/
.com/practice-areas/lemon-law-attorneys/
.com/practice-areas/service-two-example/
.com/practice-areas/service-three-example/
.com/practice-areas/service-four-example/ I did some research and got better keywords (listed below) KEYWORD & SEARCH VOLUME lemon law 40500
- california lemon law 9900
- lemon law california 9900
- lemon law attorney 3600
- california lemon law attorney 880
- lemon law attorney san diego 170 It would be nice to rank for both California and San Diego search terms but I'm ok if that's not the right way to do it. These are the options I can think of using Lemon Law Attorney as an example. I'd love to hear what you think would work best and im open to other options. PAGE STRUCTURE (Option A)
.com/practice-areas/
.com/practice-areas/lemon-law-attorney-san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option B)
.com/practice-areas/
.com/practice-areas/california-lemon-law-attorney/
.com/practice-areas/california-lemon-law-attorney/lemon-law-attorney-san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option C)
.com/lemon-law/
.com/lemon-law/california-lemon-law-attorney/
.com/lemon-law/california-lemon-law-attorney/lemon-law-attorney-san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option D)
.com/lemon-law/
.com/lemon-law/california/
.com/lemon-law/california/san-diego/ PAGE STRUCTURE (Option E)
.com/lemon-law-attorney/
.com/lemon-law-attorney/california/
.com/lemon-law-attorney/california/san-diego/ The biggest problem I see if having to make unique Lemon Law content for both California and San Diego Lemon Law Attorney pages. I dont want the site to look spammy to the end user. At the same time I want to make sure im setting myself up for success from the start. Thank you,
Chris1 -
Separating facebook pages for 2 separate but similar companies
I am currently working with a payroll company that has two separate businesses. Payroll services and Time and Attendance services. Currently the client has 1 facebook page with about 50 likes that caters for both companies. My question is.... Should I separate the payroll and time and attendance companies and create 2 separate facebook pages, or since the businesses are so close together, we could use the one page to promote both businesses. We also have a similar issue with LinkedIn company pages. What do you guys think? Separate pages or combine pages? Currently there are 2 separate websites for each companies services.
Local SEO | | donsilvernail0 -
When is it ok to have title longer then 55 characters
I am doing a site audit for a potential new client. The previous web design company used very long titles like this (Case Management | Client Advocacy | Expert Witness | Legal Support | Medical Consultation | Pennsylvania and Michigan) 117 characters. This is the title for a services page. What is best practice here. To me this is key word stuffing but it is relevant to the clients page. Is it alright to grossly overdo the title character limit for the sake of keyword optimization? I would probably do something more like (Medical consultancy services | company name with location) What do you all think? Looking for a quick response!!!
Local SEO | | donsilvernail1 -
Multi location strategy - tracking keywords
I have very recently taken on a local business to manage and quite new to all of this. Your posts on the subject of multi-location SEO have been incredibly useful and the original blogpost on Local landing pages by Miriam Ellis is in my reading list and I am sure will be revisited regularly. I have another question on this obviously complex subject, what to do about tracking your keywords in MOZ Pro? I have subscribed and set up my main keywords and linked each to the 40 different service locations for our business, which is based in a single location but services a wide area, however this now gives me 400 keywords to track, which seems way too much and unmanageable. Can you give me some advice on how to make this much more effective? Many thanks, Sarah
Local SEO | | Mutatio_Digital0 -
Showing a preferred Google location in branded search for a multi-location business?
Background: A business has 5 brick and mortar locations, in 5 different states, with 5 separate Google+ profiles. The corporate headquarters are in Michigan. The Michigan Google+ Local profile is the one that should be most closely associated with the brand. Problem: We want the Michigan Google + Local page to show up for branded searches nationwide: right now, it only shows up on geolocated searches in Michigan. Of course, it totally makes sense that the other 4 Google+ local pages will appear for users searching with IP locations (or logged in locations) near those states. But for other states - is there a way to help Google understand or give preference to the main corporate location? What we're trying to prevent is someone in New York City searching for "company name", and then seeing a lesser location appear in SERPs associated with the brand, instead of our favored Michican location. Ideas so far: Continue to enhance out the Michigan location's Google+ page (check categories, photos, description, share content frequently, expand circles, get reviews, yada yada yada - we've already done much of this). _Maybe give this page more attention and content than other locations if we have to? _ Build links into Michigan Google+ page? Ensure general citations are up to date - use localeze/moz local etc. Website - We have a page for each location. While Michigan is featured, we also do promote our other offices as well - all kinda promoted equally on site in terms of metadata, content, etc. Any other brainstorming advice or out-of-the-box (oh no, did I just say "out-of-the-box"?) ideas to help Google associate the Michigan location as our "primary" one we want shown on more generic branded searches, even though of course the other 4 are impt too? Tricky...
Local SEO | | mirabile0 -
Francise Space: How to handle Duplicate Content?
We have a client - http://www.certapro.com/ with 330+ individual franchises. The individual franchisees all share the same content. If you perform a series of search by zipcode, you'll see the different regions all share the same copy blocks. How would you handle this situation? New content for all 330+? Canonicalize them to a single source? Keep in mind we need to scale and would have to work with the local partners who may not be web savvy. Also thinking about iframing the same content as an alternative.
Local SEO | | Aviatech0