Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How can I avoid duplicate content for a new landing page which is the same as an old one?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How can I avoid duplicate content for a new landing page which is the same as an old one?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    5
    5
    1669
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Virginia-Girtz
      Virginia-Girtz Subscriber last edited by

      Hello mozers!

      I have a question about duplicate content for you...

      One on my clients pages have been dropping in search volume for a while now, and I've discovered it's because the search term isn't as popular as it used to be. So... we need to create a new landing page using a more popular search term.

      The page which is losing traffic is based on the search query "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory" this only gets 0-10 searches per month according to the keyword explorer tool. However, if we changed this to "replacing conservatory roof with solid roof" this gets up to 500 searches per month. Muuuuch better!

      The issue is, I don't want to close down and re-direct the old page because it's got a featured snippet and sits in position 1. So I'd like to create another page instead... however, as the two are effectively the same content, I would then land myself in a duplicate content issue.

      If I were to put a rel="canonical" tag in the original "can I put a solid roof...." page but say the master page is now the new one, would that get around the issue?

      Waqas4630 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Waqas4630
        Waqas4630 @Virginia-Girtz last edited by

        @Virginia-Girtz To avoid duplicate content issues when creating a new landing page that is similar to an old one, consider the following strategies:

        1. 301 Redirect: If the old landing page is no longer needed, you can redirect its URL to the new landing page using a 301 redirect. This tells search engines that the old page has permanently moved to the new location.

        2. Canonical Tags: Implement canonical tags on the new landing page pointing to the old landing page URL. This informs search engines that the content on the new page is a duplicate of the old page and should be indexed under the old page's URL.

        3. Content Variation: Rewrite the content on the new landing page to make it sufficiently different from the old one. This could involve changing the wording, adding new information, or altering the layout.

        4. Noindex Tag: If the old landing page is still relevant but you want to prioritize the new one, you can use a noindex tag on the old page. This prevents search engines from indexing the old page while still allowing users to access it.

        5. Consolidate Content: Consider consolidating the content from both landing pages into a single, comprehensive page. This helps avoid duplication and can improve user experience by providing all relevant information in one place.

        6. Robots.txt: Use the robots.txt file to block search engines from crawling one of the landing pages. However, this approach should be used cautiously as it may also prevent search engines from discovering other valuable content on your site.
          I apply all these experiment on this of my client site
          By implementing one or a combination of these strategies, you can effectively address duplicate content concerns while maintaining the visibility and relevance of your landing pages.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • sarahwalsh
          sarahwalsh last edited by

          So what you want for every page and blog post on your website is unique, high-quality white hat content marketing.

          We applied this white hat SEO method to a U.K garden room company, website and after we rewrote the pages, the organic visitor numbers increased.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • KristinaKledzik
            KristinaKledzik last edited by

            What I've usually seen with canonicals is that Google either removes the noncanonical page from its index, or it ignores your canonical and treats them as two separate pages. I haven't seen an example where a canonical lets you get the best of both worlds.

            I agree with Nozzle - you can tweak your existing content to target both phrases! Google understands synonyms, so if anything, you're just creating a more all around relevant page.

            Good luck!

            Kristina

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • Nozzle
              Nozzle last edited by

              Since it is effectively the same content you should be able to rank the same page for both phrases.

              You just need to include the new keyword within the existing content and test out a few title tag variations to find one that helps you move up the rankings for the new keyword without dropping your ranking for the old keyword.

              The first thing I'd test would be to change your title tag from "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory?" to "Replacing Conservatory Roof with Solid Roof - Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory?". Wait until Google re-crawls the page and check how your rankings fared. If you lose your snippet or drop in rankings for the low volume phrase you can always test out the reverse, "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory? Replacing Conservatory Roof with Solid Roof", and see what happens then.

              Don't be scared to test many variations, even long title tags that seemingly don't follow best practice. You can always change it back to the original and your rankings will go back to what they were before you tested (assuming your competitors didn't gain some awesome back links to overtake you).

              Don't mess with the section of content that is being pulled into the featured snippet though so as not to lose that snippet.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • MJTrevens

                Can I use duplicate content in different US cities without hurting SEO?

                So, I have major concerns with this plan. My company has hundreds of facilities located all over the country. Each facility has it's own website. We have a third party company working to build a content strategy for us. What they came up with is to create a bank of content specific to each service line. If/when any facility offers that service, they then upload the content for that service line to that facility website. So in theory, you might have 10-12 websites all in different cities, with the same content for a service. They claim "Google is smart, it knows its content all from the same company, and because it's in different local markets, it will still rank." My contention is that duplicate content is duplicate content, and unless it is "localize" it, Google is going to prioritize one page of it and the rest will get very little exposure in the rankings no matter where you are. I could be wrong, but I want to be sure we aren't shooting ourselves in the foot with this strategy, because it is a major major undertaking and too important to go off in the wrong direction. SEO Experts, your help is genuinely appreciated!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MJTrevens
                1
              • shauna7084

                Multiple Landing Pages and Backlinks

                I have a client that does website contract work for about 50 governmental county websites.  The client has the ability to add a link back in the footer of each of these websites.  I am wanting my client to get backlink juice for a different key phrase from each of the 50 agencies (basically just my keyphrase with the different county name in it).  I also want a different landing page to rank for each term.  The 50 different landing pages would be a bit like location pages for local search.  Each one targets a different county.  However, I do not have a lot of unique content for each page.  Basically each page would follow the same format (but reference a different county name, and 10 different links from each county website). Is this a good SEO back link strategy?  Do I need more unique content for each landing page in order to prevent duplicate content flags?

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shauna7084
                0
              • iamgreenminded

                Trailing Slashes for Magento CMS pages - 2 URLS - Duplicate content

                Hello, Can anyone help me find a solution to Fixing and Creating Magento CMS pages to only use one URL  and not two URLS? www.domain.com/testpage www.domain.com/testpage/ I found a previous article that applies to my issue, which is using htaccess to redirect request for pages in magento 301 redirect to slash URL from the non-slash URL.  I dont understand the syntax fully in htaccess , but I used this code below. This code below fixed the CMS page redirection but caused issues on other pages, like all my categories and products with this error: "This webpage has a redirect loop ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS" Assuming you're running at domain root.  Change to working directory if needed. RewriteBase / # www check If you're running in a subdirectory, then you'll need to add that in to the redirected url (http://www.mydomain.com/subdirectory/$1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
                RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] Trailing slash check Don't fix direct file links RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
                RewriteRule ^(.)$ $1/ [L,R=301] Finally, forward everything to your front-controller (index.php) RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
                RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
                RewriteRule .* index.php [QSA,L]

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iamgreenminded
                0
              • KJ-Rodgers

                Location Pages On Website vs Landing pages

                We have been having a terrible time in the local search results for 20 + locations. I have Places set up and all, but we decided to create location pages on our sites for each location - brief description and content optimized for our main service. The path would be something like .com/location/example. One option that has came up in question is to create landing pages / "mini websites" that would probably be location-example.url.com. I believe that the latter option, mini sites for each location, would be a bad idea as those kinds of tactics were once spammy in the past. What are are your thoughts and and resources so I can convince my team on the best practice.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KJ-Rodgers
                0
              • fablau

                Can too many "noindex" pages compared to "index" pages be a problem?

                Hello, I have a question for you: our website virtualsheetmusic.com includes thousands of product pages, and due to Panda penalties in the past, we have no-indexed most of the product pages hoping in a sort of recovery (not yet seen though!). So, currently we have about 4,000 "index" page compared to about 80,000 "noindex" pages. Now, we plan to add additional 100,000 new product pages from a new publisher to offer our customers more music choice, and these new pages will still be marked as "noindex, follow". At the end of the integration process, we will end up having something like 180,000 "noindex, follow" pages compared to about 4,000 "index, follow" pages. Here is my question: can this huge discrepancy between 180,000 "noindex" pages and 4,000 "index" pages be a problem? Can this kind of scenario have or cause any negative effect on our current natural SEs profile? or is this something that doesn't actually matter? Any thoughts on this issue are very welcome. Thank you! Fabrizio

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
                0
              • BobGW

                PDF for link building - avoiding duplicate content

                Hello, We've got an article that we're turning into a PDF. Both the article and the PDF will be on our site. This PDF is a good, thorough piece of content on how to choose a product. We're going to strip out all of the links to our in the article and create this PDF so that it will be good for people to reference and even print. Then we're going to do link building through outreach since people will find the article and PDF useful. My question is, how do I use rel="canonical" to make sure that the article and PDF aren't duplicate content? Thanks.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW
                0
              • HD_Leona

                Blocking Pages Via Robots, Can Images On Those Pages Be Included In Image Search

                Hi! I have pages within my forum where visitors can upload photos.  When they upload photos they provide a simple statement about the photo but no real information about the image,definitely not enough for the page to be deemed worthy of being indexed.  The industry however is one that really leans on images and having the images in Google Image search is important to us. The url structure is like such:  domain.com/community/photos/~username~/picture111111.aspx I wish to block the whole folder from Googlebot to prevent these low quality pages from being added to Google's main SERP results.  This would be something like this: User-agent: googlebot Disallow: /community/photos/ Can  I disallow Googlebot specifically rather than just using User-agent:  * which would then allow googlebot-image to pick up the photos?  I plan on configuring a way to add meaningful alt attributes and image names to assist in visibility, but the actual act of blocking the pages and getting the images picked up... Is this possible? Thanks! Leona

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HD_Leona
                0
              • Gestisoft-Qc

                Can PDF be seen as duplicate content? If so, how to prevent it?

                I see no reason why PDF couldn't be considered duplicate content but I haven't seen any threads about it. We publish loads of product documentation provided by manufacturers as well as White Papers and Case Studies. These give our customers and prospects a better idea off our solutions and help them along their buying process. However, I'm not sure if it would be better to make them non-indexable to prevent duplicate content issues. Clearly we would prefer a solutions where we benefit from to keywords in the documents. Any one has insight on how to deal with PDF provided by third parties? Thanks in advance.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gestisoft-Qc
                1

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.