Why do I get duplicate content errors just for tags I place on blog entries?
-
I the SEO MOZ crawl diagnostics for my site, www.heartspm.com, I am getting over 100 duplicate content errors on links built from tags on blog entries. I do have the original base blog entry in my site map not referencing the tags.
Similarly, I am getting almost 200 duplicate meta description errors in Google Webmaster Tools associated with links automatically generated from tags on my blog. I have more understanding that I could get these errors from my forum, since the forum entries are not in the sitemap, but the blog entries are there in the site map.
I thought the tags were only there to help people search by category. I don't understand why every tag becomes its' own link. I can see how this falsely creates the impression of a lot of duplicate data.
As seen in GWT:
Pages with duplicate meta descriptions Pages [Customer concerns about the use of home water by pest control companies.](javascript:dropInfo('zip_0div', 'none', document.getElementById('zip_0zipimg'), 'none', null);)/category/job-site-requirements/tag/cost-of-water/tag/irrigation-usage/tag/save-water/tag/standard-industry-practice/tag/water-use 6 [Pest control operator draws analogy between Children's Day and the state of the pest control industr](javascript:dropInfo('zip_1div', 'none', document.getElementById('zip_1zipimg'), 'none', null);)/tag/children-in-modern-world/tag/children/tag/childrens-day/tag/conservation-medicine/tag/ecowise-certified/tag/estonia/tag/extermination-service/tag/exterminator/tag/green-thumb/tag/hearts-pest-management/tag/higher-certification/tag/higher-education/tag/tartu/tag/united-states -
Nice if you can get your tags to reflect the broad range of topics covered by your site, but I think sometimes it can give a visitor the perception that your content is a little thin when you only have one article against each topic.
Say you're reading an article, you see that it's tagged with the topic you're interested in, click on that tag and only get the one article that you've just read.
When deciding on tags to use, try and think of how your visitors may wish to explore your content. Remember to try and maintain an external perspective and use tags that are meaningful to your visitors.
If you've got the time and enough traffic to give you the info, you could use your analytics data to see how people are using tags vs. site search for example.
Of course, as you point out, this doesn't have anything to do with the duplicate content problem.
-
Doug, thank you so much for responding quickly. I will have to explore the archive. I really haven't ever explored this section. You've given me a new place to research and I appreciate that.
As far as reducing the number of tags, that I don't understand as being an issue. Because if I am doing something wrong, i.e. presenting the whole article via tags rather than references to it, that is the problem, whether I have 2 tags or 20 tags. I want to find a solution that will solve the core issue regardless of the number of tags created.
Is that a different reason that you suggest reducing the number of tags? I have heard around town that it is good not to have so many tags, but shouldn't I create them if a post covers a wide range of topics. For example, if I wrote one post about a trip to Europe, chosing not to divide it into 15 posts for 15 countries, wouldn't I want to create a tag for each of the countries I mention in the post?
Doug, thanks again.
Gerry Weitz
-
As you mention, you use tags to give visitors the ability to browse articles with that cover the same subject matter. Normal practice would be to give the visitor a list of articles that have been tagged with this term.
A list of articles shouldn't flag up as a duplicate of any of the other article pages.
However, I notice that on a couple of the tag pages I took a look at that I just get one article being displayed, and being displayed in full. This is obviously going to be a duplicate of the original article.
I suspect that this is because for a number of the tags there is only one article to be returned.
I would look at how you are presenting articles when listed in the "tag archive" view and perhaps only display the introduction to the page with a link to the full article.
You may also want to think about the tags you are using so that you have fewer tags with only one article.
Hope this helps!
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
-
Duplicate content question
Hey Mozzers! I received a duplicate content notice from my Cycle7 Communications campaign today. I understand the concept of duplicate content, but none of the suggested fixes quite seems to fit. I have four pages with HubSpot forms embedded in them. (Only two of these pages have showed up so far in my campaign.) Each page contains a title (Content Marketing Consultation, Copywriting Consultation, etc), plus an embedded HubSpot form. The forms are all outwardly identical, but I use a separate form for each service that I offer. I’m not sure how to respond to this crawl issue: Using a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right, because each page/form combo is independent and serves a separate purpose. Using a rel=canonical link doesn’t seem right for the same reason that a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right. Using the Google Search Console URL Parameters tool is clearly contraindicated by Google’s documentation (I don’t have enough pages on my site). Is a meta robots noindex the best way to deal with duplicate content in this case? Thanks in advance for your help. AK
Technical SEO | | AndyKubrin0 -
I have duplicate content but // are causing them
I have 3 pages duplicated just by a / Example: https://intercallsystems.com/intercall-nurse-call-systems**//**
Technical SEO | | Renalynd
https://intercallsystems.com/intercall-nurse-call-systems**/** What would cause this?? And how would I fix it? Thanks! Rena0 -
Quickview popup duplicate content
Hi We have an eccomerce site. We just added to the product list view a quickview tab - when you roll mouse over it a popup window with the product image and short description shows up - is this a problem of duplicate content( its the same content that's on the product pages except there we also have a long detailed description) - t is done with javascript. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | henya0 -
Ways of Helping Reducing Duplicate Content.
Hi I am looking to no of anyway there is at helping to reduce duplicate content on a website with out breaking link and affecting Google rankings.
Technical SEO | | Feily0 -
Lots of duplicate content warnings
I have a site that says that I have 2,500 warnings. It is a real estate website and of course we use feeds. it says I have a lot of duplicate content. One thing is a page called "Request an appointment" and that is a url for each listing. Since there are 800 listings on my site. How could I solve this problem so that this doesn't show up as duplicate content since I use the same "Request an Appointment" verbeage on each of those? I guess my developer who used php to do it, created a dedicated url to each. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | SeaC0 -
Link Structure & Duplicate Content
I am struggling with how I should handle the link structure on my site. Right now most of my pages are like this: Home -> Department -> Service Groups -> Content Page For Example: Home -> IT Solutions -> IT Support & Managed Services -> IT Support Home -> IT Solutions -> IT Support & Managed Services -> Managed Services Home -> IT Solutions -> IT Support & Managed Services -> Help Desk Services Home -> IT Solutions -> Virtualization & Data Center Solutions -> Virtualization Home -> IT Solutions -> Virtualization & Data Center Solutions -> Data Center Solutions This structure lines up with our business and makes logical sense but I am not sure how to handle the department and service group pages. Right now you can click them and it just brings you to a page with a small snippet for the links below. The real content is on the content pages. What I am worried about is that the snippets on those pages are just a paragraph or two of the content that's on the content page. Will this hurt me and get considered duplicate content? What is the best practice for dealing with this? Those department/service group pages have some good content on them but it's just parts of other pages. Am I okay doing this because there are not direct duplicates of other pages just parts of a few pages? Any help on this would be great. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | ZiaTG0 -
If two websites pull the same content from the same source in a CMS, does it count as duplicate content?
I have a client who wants to publish the same information about a hotel (summary, bullet list of amenities, roughly 200 words + images) to two different websites that they own. One is their main company website where the goal is booking, the other is a special program where that hotel is featured as an option for booking under this special promotion. Both websites are pulling the same content file from a centralized CMS, but they are different domains. My question is two fold: • To a search engine does this count as duplicate content? • If it does, is there a way to configure the publishing of this content to avoid SEO penalties (such as a feed of content to the microsite, etc.) or should the content be written uniquely from one site to the next? Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | HeadwatersContent0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Just signed up for pro and did my first diagnostic check - I came back with something like 300 duplicate content errors which suprised me because every page is unique. Turns out my pages are listed as www.sportstvjobs.com and just sportstvjobs.com does that really count as duplicate? and if so does anyone know what I should be doing differently? I thought it was just a canonical issue, but best I can tell I have the canonical in there but this still came up as a duplicate error....maybe I did canonical wrong, or its some other issue? Thanks Brian Clapp
Technical SEO | | sportstvjobs0