Duplicate Title tags even with rel=canonical
-
Hello,
We were having duplicate content in our blog (a replica of each post automatically was done by the CMS), until we recently implemented a rel=canonical tag to all the duplicate posts (some 5 weeks ago).
So far, no duplicate content were been found, but we are still getting duplicate title tags, though the rel=canonical is present.
Any idea why is this the case and what can we do to solve it?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Tej Luchmun
-
Has this ever been done? Would be very handy.
-
Hi Sean,
Thanks a lot for your reply.
Indeed having the rel=canonical pointing to the wrong page would be another issue. What David Lee suggested me is using the rel=canonical on both the original post and the duplicate post. This can be set programmatically instead of the ignore button.
But surely, the ignore button would be much more easier, in some situations. Please keep us update once this ignore feature has been implement.
Thanks again for your help.
Tej Luchmun
-
Hi Sheena,
Yes, Moz Crawl Diagnostics Report is showing duplicate title tag for the content that already have a rel=canonical tag.
I contacted them, and they suggested that i should include the canonical tag on the duplicate and original post, where both tags are pointing to the original post.
I have not yet tested it out, but hopefully, this should solve the issue.
Thanks again for your help.
Tej Luchmun
-
Thanks a lot Karl, indeed with the canonical tag, neither the title nor the content becomes a duplicate.
It's just the MOZ crawl issue that raised the alarm.
Thanks again.
Tej Luchmun
-
Hi Tej,
Thanks for writing us on this! So Sheena and Karl are both correct. Although, an REL Canonical may solve the issue with Google it is still technically a duplicate title tag. When designing the tool we found that having the crawler pick up the REL Canonicals can be problematic for a coding and SEO standpoint. It is often possible that an REL Canonical will be directed to an incorrect page and since our crawler is so literal it would have issues recognizing the canonical was bad.
Our product staff is aware of this and they hope to get to a place where we provide an ignore feature, so if you feel that the tag was implemented correctly you can select ignore and we will no longer report that issue for that page.
I know that this is not ideal for many customers, but hopefully our solution will be comprehensive enough to encapsulate many of the solutions SEO's have found for these issues.
Hopefully this helps and if you have any other questions or concerns let me know.
Have a great day!
-
Do you mean that your Moz Analytics Crawl Diagnostics Report is showing duplicate titles for pages that have rel=canonical? If so, this is something I noticed a few months ago & brought up to the Moz team. I believe it's something they're working to implement/somehow allow us to 'check off' pages in the report that we've already implemented a solution for. Also, if this is your situation, I think you should add your experience / request to Moz's feature request forum.
I hope this helps!
-
Technically it is still a duplicate title tag, you just won't be getting penalised for it that's all.
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
-
How to title my products?
Hi, really struggling with product titles. Or should I say keeping staff writing out titles. If I sell a Coat. I would like the product titled like: Armani Jeans Coat Green but staff are doing it like Armani Jeans Fur Hooded Coat Green. Now I think this effects our SEO efforts as how likely are people to search for the Fur Hooded coat part? Yes we might hit the numbers of the small search but is it really worth it? Would it not be best put this Fur Hooded part in the short description and long description? I am trying to make my SEO titles and meta descriptions consistant for 1 product. But find it hard writing out Fur Hooded in the Meta Title when I know numbers will be minimal? The SEO titles or the product titles are effectively links on the website for each product. So hold more weight and the product titles act as the H1 titles on the product page itself. Surely we would be best using Armani Jeans Coat Green rather than such a long, obscure title that will gain very little search? Whats best way to approach this issue? As we can have products titled like: Creative Recreation Kaplan Patent Leather/Snake Trainers Charcoal. Which to me is too long, too obscure. Surely the extra detail should go in Short Description which is visible on the catelog page and keep the product titles shorted and more to the point, eg Creative Recreation Kaplan Trainers Snake Charcoal? All this Patent Leather/ business seems pointless to me? Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0 -
Duplicate Content
Hi, So I have my great content (that contains a link to our site) that I want to distribute to high quality relevant sites in my niche as part of a link building campaign. Can I distribute this to lots of sites? The reason I ask is that those sites will then have duplicate content to all the other sites I distribute the content to won;t they? I this duplication bad for them and\or us? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
K3 duplicate page content and title tags
I'm running a Joomla site, have just installed k2 as our blogging platform. Our Crawl Report with SEOMOZ shows a good bit of duplicate content and duplicate title tags with our K2 blog. We've installed sh404SEF. Will I need to go into sh404SEF each time we generate a blog entry to point the titles to one URL? If there is something simpler please advise. Thank you, Don
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | donaldmoore0 -
Duplicate page titles Wordpress SEO/Yoast
Hi I have a Wordpress site using the Wordpress SEO plugin by Yoast. Everything appears to be fine except that on 1 Feb SEOMoz crawl suddenly picked up a bunch of errors. The errors are duplicate page titles, and these exist only for the mysite.com/page/X pages. I can't find any setting in Yoast that looks wrong or tells me how to fix this. The pages are also dynamically canonicalizing to themselves - not sure if this makes any difference although I don't know how this is happening. Does anyone know how to fix this duplicate title error? Alex
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alextanner0 -
How get rid of duplicate content, titles, etc on php cartweaver site?
my website http://www.bartramgallery.com was created using php and cartweaver 2.0 about five years ago by a web developer. I was really happy with the results of the design was inspired to get into web development and have been studying ever since. My biggest problem at this time is that I am not knowledgable with php and the cartweaver product but am learning as I read more. The issue is that seomoz tools are reporting tons of duplicate content and duplicate title pages etc. This is likely from the dynamic urls and same pages with secondary results etc. I just made a new sitemap with auditmypc I think it was called in an attempt to get rid of all the duplicate page titles but is that going to solve anything or do I need to find another way to configure the site? There are many pages with the same content competing for page rank and it is a bit frustrating to say the least. If anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated even pointing me in the right direction. Thank you, Jesse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WSOT0 -
Duplicate page content and duplicate pate title
Hi, i am running a global concept that operates with one webpage that has lot of content, the content is also available on different domains, but with in the same concept. I think i am getting bad ranking due to duplicate content, since some of the content is mirrored from the main page to the other "support pages" and they are almost 200 in total. Can i do some changes to work around this or am i just screwed 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | smartmedia0 -
Canonical tag for similar page with different theme.
Our commerce system allows products to be shared across multiple categories/sections of our site. E.G. /boxes/blue-box.html /circles/blue-box.html This enables the product to show up in different areas of the site, but does not link to an evergreen URL. We are considering using the canonical tag to resolve this issue, but our question relates to the similarity of the pages. Each section folder (e.g. /boxes/ and /circles/) has a different header, left navigation and footer. They are similar in layout and some content is the same, but a good portion is different in the header and nav. Each category nav basically deals with deeper links in it's own category. The product title, image, description, etc. is all the same and makes up the bulk of the page. Is this a good candidate for the canonical tag or should we attempt to accommodate an evergreen URL?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh-att0