How do I eliminate duplicate page titles?
-
Almost...I repeat almost all of my duplicate page titles show up as such because the page is being seen twice in the crawl. How do I prevent this?
<colgroup><col width="336"> <col width="438"></colgroup>
| www.ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html | Contact ENSO Plastics |
| ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html |Contact ENSO Plastics
|
This is what is from the CSV...there are many more just like this. How do I cut out all of these duplicate urls?
-
thank you for the follow up, Dr. Pete!
-
I don't see anything wrong with your home-page canonical. We usually suggest pointing the home-page to the root:
...and not including the filename (just for the home-page), but that's not necessary. You link internally to "index.html", so what you have is fine, and keeps it consistent. I think the error is only happening because our crawler is trying to view the "/" version and sees the canonical to "index.html" (so, they look different).
-
So if I want the www. page to be the one that shows up in google...what do I put in the head of the ContactUs.html page exactly? As you can see when I put this in the head then I get the critical error from SEOMOZ. So this fix just isn't making sense to me right now. IF I take it back out then the critical error is gone but then I get the message that I should add the canonical to the page.
<dt>Canonical URL</dt>
<dd>"http://www.ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html"</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd>
-
So, just to be clear - these are the same physical page. Google sees the two URLs as being two different pages, but in terms of actual physical documents on your server, there's only one (ContactUs.html). So, you just need the one canonical tag per page.
If you have any dynamic (database/code-driven) pages, then be careful and make sure that the canonical tag is being create dynamically to match the correct page. You don't want to end up with canonical tags to the wrong pages.
-
I'd follow the advice to 301 or canonical, but it doesn't hurt to also declare a canonical version in Google Webmaster Tools - it's under "Site Configuration" > "Settings". You still need to canonicalize, but it's one additional signal to Google (and it's easy).
-
the index page canonical should point to index page,
the content page to the same content page (it is just for eliminating the duplicate issue)
don't put a canonical that points to a page that is not its duplicate
-
Once I add it in and crawl the page I end up with a critical error... so something is not right.
Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
Moderate fix
<dl>
<dt>Canonical URL</dt>
<dd>"http://www.ensoplastics.com/index.html"</dd>
<dt>Explanation</dt>
<dd>If the canonical tag is pointing to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. Make sure you're targeting the right page (if this isn't it, you can reset the target above) and then change the canonical tag to reference that URL.</dd>
<dt>Recommendation</dt>
<dd>We check to make sure that IF you use canonical URL tags, it points to the right page. If the canonical tag points to a different URL, engines will not count this page as the reference resource and thus, it won't have an opportunity to rank. If you've not made this page the rel=canonical target, change the reference to this URL. NOTE: For pages not employing canonical URL tags, this factor does not apply.</dd>
</dl>
-
ok, good luck!
-
Ok I will put the canonical in the head of the html files and see what happens.
-
you have 1 page, that can be reached from two or even more paths. we talk about these paths, and these are creating the duplicate content.
It is like having your site duplicate on your non www. of your domain.
With the canonical, you tell search engines which path, which .html file you are optimizing for.
-
This actually does not solve the problem. I have only one index.html file. So how in the world do I access a page that does not exist in my hierarchy? For example if I have the following two pages there is really only on instance of that page I can edit the head with an html file, it is not like there is actually 2 html pages that exist for each one so in this case am I just stuck creating redirects for each instance where this occurs?
|
www.ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html
ensoplastics.com/ContactUs/ContactUs.html
|
-
you just insert into each html file the canonical that points to www url. and it should work it out.
-
So then in the page without the www I should insert this into the head and do the same for all other pages?
-
Hi again
So basically canonicals are better.
And why you get this: when robots crawl your website they see the following pages as different:
And we could continue with variants. Canonicals tell search engines that these pages are the same, and they should handle it as same page.
so if you put a into index file, you will have the following results:
www.example.com (no matter which URL does the search engine visit, they will handle as the canonical link)
This is also good for links, because people might link to you as example.com or example.com/index, etc. etc. Then if you insert the canonical you focus all the links to one URL.
Hope it helped,
Istvan
-
Which is better, and also I am interested in knowing why this happens?
-
Hi,
These duplicate URLs can be resolved two ways easily.
1. 301 from non www. to www. or vice versa
2. canonical to one of the links.
This way you will focus all the link juice on only one page. More power
I hope it helped,
Istvan
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
-
Customer Reviews on Product Page / Pagination / Crawl 3 review pages only
Hi experts, I present customer feedback, reviews basically, on my website for the products that are sold. And with this comes the ability to read reviews and obviously with pagination to display the available reviews. Now I want users to be able to flick through and read the reviews to help them satisfy whatever curiosity they have. My only thinking is that the page that contains the reviews, with each click of the pagination will present roughly the same content. The only thing that changes is the title tags which will contain the number in the H1 to display the page number. I'm thinking this could be duplication but i have yet to be notified by Google in my Search console... Should i block crawlers from crawling beyond page 3 of reviews? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Train4Academy.co.uk0 -
My client is using a mobile template for their local pages and the Google search console is reporting thousands of duplicate titles/meta descriptions
So my client has 2000+ different store locations. Each location has the standard desktop location and my client opted for a corresponding mobile template for each location. Now the Google search console is reporting thousands of duplicate titles/meta descriptions. However this is only because the mobile template and desktop store pages are using the exact same title/meta description tag. Is Google penalizing my client for this? Would it be worth it to update the mobile template title/meta description tags?
Technical SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Titling Category Pages Like You Would a Blog Page?
So, with our 600 or so category pages, I was curious... on each of these category pages we show the top 12 products for that category. In trying to increase click through rate, I wonder if it would be prudent to use some of the strategies I see used for Blog posts with thee category pages. i.e. Instead of Category Name - Website Name How about: Top 12 Kitty Litters We Carry - View the Best and the Rest! Or something like that. And then in the description, I could put, "Number 8 made my jaw drop!!!" (Ok, kidding about that one...) But serious about the initial question... Thanks! Craig
Technical SEO | | TheCraig0 -
Is <title>different from <h1> and "meta tag title"?</title>
hi guys, new to MOZ and SEO. Basic question here. is <title>different from <h1> and "meta tag title"?</p> <p>I have lots of "title missing or blank" errors as reported by a recent Moz crawl. What do i need to add into the pages to clear these? an <h1>? an <title>? or <meta tag title>? </p> <p>Im running a volusion site, and from what ive read (negative & positive) Volusion can be a pain to optimize my SEO as i dont have full access to all my pages.?</p></title>
Technical SEO | | Jerrion0 -
Duplicate Page Title for a Large Listing Website
My company has a popular website that has over 4,000 crawl errors showing in Moz, most of them coming up as Duplicate Page Title. These duplicate page titles are coming from pages with the title being the keyword, then location, such as: "main keyword" North Carolina
Technical SEO | | StorageUnitAuctionList
"main keyword" Texas ... and so forth. These pages are ranked and get a lot of traffic. I was wondering what the best solution is for resolving these types of crawl errors without it effecting our rankings. Thanks!0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Content
Hi All, I am getting warnings about duplicate page content. The pages are normally 'tag' pages. I have some blog posts tagged with multiple 'tags'. Does it really affect my site?. I am using wordpress and Yoast SEO plugin. Thanks
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
Duplicate Page Issue
Dear All, I am facing stupid duplicate page issue, My whole site is in dynamic script and all the URLs were in dynamic, So i 've asked my programmer make the URLs user friendly using URL Rewrite, but he converted aspx pages to htm. And the whole mess begun. Now we have 3 different URLs for single page. Such as: http://www.site.com/CityTour.aspx?nodeid=4&type=4&id=47&order=0&pagesize=4&pagenum=4&val=Multi-Day+City+Tours http://www.tsite.com/CityTour.aspx?nodeid=4&type=4&id=47&order=0&pagesize=4&pagenum=4&val=multi-day-city-tours http://www.site.com/city-tour/multi-day-city-tours/page4-0.htm I think my programmer messed up the URL Rewrite in ASP.net(Nginx) or even didn't use it. So how do i overcome this problem? Should i add canonical tag in both dynamic URLs with pointing to pag4-0.htm. Will it help? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DigitalJungle0 -
Sneaky Page Title?
Hi Mozzers, I am a newbie, for sure. But I have been able to figure out how to help my customer very well; with the help of SEOMOZ of course. Here is the question: My customer (ZR) has a competitor and they use the phrase ZR.com in the title of one of their high ranked pages. Please see the enclosed graphic for the complete story. I would love to know if it is even legal (a pro would know) please see enclosed JPG... Thanks a bunch! OJ0ZL.jpg
Technical SEO | | Giggy0