Up to my you-know-what in duplicate content
-
Working on a forum site that has multiple versions of the URL indexed. The WWW version is a top 3 and 5 contender in the google results for the domain keyword. All versions of the forum have the same PR, but but the non-WWW version has 3,400 pages indexed in google, and the WWW has 2,100. Even worse yet, there's a completely seperate domain (PR4) that has the forum as a subdomain with 2,700 pages indexed in google.
The dupe content gets completely overwhelming to think about when it comes to the PR4 domain, so I'll just ask what you think I should do with the forum. Get rid of the subdomain version, and sometimes link between two obviously related sites or get rid of the highly targeted keyword domain? Also what's better, having the targeted keyword on the front of Google with only 2,100 indexed pages or having lower rankings with 3,400 indexed pages?
Thanks.
-
You've pretty much confirmed my suspicions. I can set the redirects up myself, its just been about 5 years since I've done any SEO work. What I meant was should I mod_rewrite or "redirect 301 /oldurl /newurl" ...I've forgot a lot of stuff that I used to do with ease. My own sites were always started off right and weren't as bad as the one I'm working on now, so I'm in unfamiliar territory. Thanks for your advice, I appreciate it
-
I want to make sure that you are getting the proper advice. Can you provide me the URLs here, or PM them to me to keep them private? Once I see the problem firsthand, I can reply with the answer here for you. I am pretty sure my advice above is the way to go, but it doesn't hurt to double check!
You need to choose ONE domain for going forward. I don't care which one it is, but choose one. It makes sense to choose the one with the better rankings, at least from my perspective.
After that, you 301 redirect all versions the URLs to the proper URL (which would be WWW if it was my choice).
Yes, mod_rewrite is a server-side redirect that you can choose. Make sure whoever sets them up knows what he is doing. Having a ton of server-side redirects can increase load times and cause issues with site speed if it is not done properly. Don't be afraid of doing it, but just make sure you know what you are doing, especially since you're dealing with thousands of URLs.
You want to use permanent 301 redirects, yes.
-
Thanks I appreciate the advice. So you don't think having 2 seperate domains pointing (or redirecting) to each other occasionally will hurt anything? I have like 1000+ URLs I need to redirect already on the completely separate domain.com, as for the keyworddomain.com forum I don't think I need too many redirects as just one from seperate.domain.com to keyworddomain.com, and then one there from nonWWW to WWW should fix all the broken URLs right? When you say 301 do you mean "redirect 301" or mod_rewrite? Thanks for the help
-
I would first, choose which version you want to use going forward. You have three versions: subdomain, non-www, and www. Don't use the subdomain, that is a given. I personally like using WWW instead of non-WWW, however there are reasons to use non-WWW over WWW. But, given this scenario, it makes sense to use the WWW version. I know that the non-WWW version has more pages indexed, but pages indexed doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. Given that WWW has good rankings and is more identifiable to a user, I would choose that. Of course, if you choose non-WWW my advice below will remain the same.
Now that you have chosen what version you want to use going forward, you need to do a few things:
-
Implement a .htaccess 301 server-side redirect and redirect non-WWW to WWW (or vice versa if you so choose), make sure it's permanent. This way going forward, it'll fix your non-www and WWW issue.
-
Next, you need to redirect all non-WWW indexed pages and URLs to their WWW version. This is not easy, especially with thousands of pages. However, it must be done to help preserve the PR and link-juice so it passes as much as it can through. What I recommend is seeing if there is a plugin or extension for whatever forum software you use that can aid you in this effort, or hire a programmer to build you one. It's actually not that complex to do and I have done it before in a similar situation and it does work. If you need more advice on that, PM me.
-
You need to take care of the subdomain by setting up a permanent redirect to the main WWW version if someone goes to the subdomain, and also setup redirects for existing subdomain pages/URLs that have PR/Rank/LinkJuice.
-
From there, make sure that you are utilizing sitemaps properly, that can greatly increase your indexing rate and volume.
I hope that these help, if you need anything further please do not hesitate to PM me or post here.
Good luck!
-
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
-
International SEO And Duplicate Content Within The Same Language
Hello, Currently, we have a .com English website serving an international clientele. As is the case we do not currently target any countries in Google Search Console. However, the UK is an important market for us and we are seeing very low traffic (almost entirely US). We would like to increase visibility in the UK, but currently for English speakers only. My question is this - would geo-targeting a subfolder have a positive impact on visibility/rankings or would it create a duplicate content issue if both pieces of content are in English? My plan was: 1. Create a geo-targeted subfolder (website.com/uk/) that copies our website (we currently cannot create new unique content) 2. Go into GSC and geo-target the folder to the UK 3. Add the following to the /uk/ page to try to negate duplicate issues. Additionally, I can add a rel=canonical tag if suggested, I just worry as an already international site this will create competition between pages However, as we are currently only targeting a location and not the language at this very specific point, would adding a ccTLD be advised instead? The threat of duplicate content worries me less here as this is a topic Matt Cutts has addressed and said is not an issue. I prefer the subfolder method as to ccTLD's, because it allows for more scalability, as in the future I would like to target other countries and languages. Ultimately right now, the goal is to increase UK traffic. Outside of UK backlinks, would any of the above URL geo-targeting help drive traffic? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tom3_150 -
How do I avoid this issue of duplicate content with Google?
I have an ecommerce website which sells a product that has many different variations based on a vehicle’s make, model, and year. Currently, we sell this product on one page “www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001” and we show a modal to sort through each make, model, and year. This is important because based on the make, model, and year, we have different prices/configurations for each. For example, for the Jeep Wrangler and Jeep Cherokee, we might have different products: Ultimate Pet Liner - Jeep Wrangler 2011-2013 - $350 Ultimate Pet Liner - Jeep Wrangler 2014 - 2015 - $350 Utlimate Pet Liner - Jeep Cherokee 2011-2015 - $400 Although the typical consumer might think we have 1 product (the Ultimate Pet Liner), we look at these as many different types of products, each with a different configuration and different variants. We do NOT have unique content for each make, model, and year. We have the same content and images for each. When the customer selects their make, model, and year, we just search and replace the text to make it look like the make, model, and year. For example, when a custom selects 2015 Jeep Wrangler from the modal, we do a search and replace so the page will have the same url (www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001) but the product title will say “2015 Jeep Wrangler”. Here’s my problem: We want all of these individual products to have their own unique urls (cargoliner.com/products/2015-jeep-wrangler) so we can reference them in emails to customers and ideally we start creating unique content for them. Our only problem is that there will be hundreds of them and they don’t have unique content other than us switching in the product title and change of variants. Also, we don’t want our url www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001 to lose its link juice. Here’s my question(s): My assumption is that I should just keep my url: www.cargoliner.com/products.php?did=10001 and be able to sort through the products on that page. Then I should go ahead and make individual urls for each of these products (i.e. cargoliner.com/products/2015-jeep-wrangler) but just add a “nofollow noindex” to the page. Is this what I should do? How secure is a “no-follow noindex” on a webpage? Does Google still index? Am I at risk for duplicate content penalties? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | kirbyfike0 -
Responsive Code Creating Duplicate Content Issue
Good morning, Our developers have recently created a new site for our agency. The site is responsive for mobile/tablets. I've just put the site through Screaming Frog and I've been informed of duplicate H2s. When I've looked at some of the page sources, there are some instances of duplicated H2s and duplicated content. These duplicates don't actually appear on the site, only in the code. When I asked the development guys about this, they advised this is duplicated because of the code for the responsive site. Will the site be negatively affected because of this? Not everything is duplicated, which leads me to believe it probably could have been designed better... but I'm no developer so don't know for sure. I've checked the code for other responsive sites and no duplicates can be found. Thanks in advance, Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Is duplicate content ok if its on LinkedIn?
Hey everyone, I am doing a duplicate content check using copyscape, and realized we have used a ton of the same content on LinkedIn as our website. Should we change the LinkedIn company page to be original? Or does it matter? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Taking descriptions from Manufacturer sites and Duplicate content
We are doing some inventory improvements eg new photographs from various angles, etc. We are also writing descriptions for each product.. As one of our suppliers has perfect desriptions on their site what is the theory on how duplicate content will affect our ranking for these products if we copy and paste? Also if we change the descriptions, just how different do they need to be? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley1 -
How to avoid duplicate content penalty when our content is posted on other sites too ?
For recruitment company sites, their job ads are posted muliple times on thier own sites and even on other sites too. These are the same ads (job description is same) posted on diff. sites. How do we avoid duplicate content penalty in this case?
Technical SEO | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Anyone know how to fix duplicate content and titles with news section?
We use django for out site and it's working really well, but we're having an issue with duplicate titles and content via the news section. The news is basically stories sourced from other sites and we link to them via our news section. I'm not sure how to fix the duplicate title issue in this case. I noticed people recommend archiving or using a canonical, but because the news section is set up how it is I don't think that would work. Does anyone have a way around this?A
Technical SEO | | KateGMaker0 -
Duplicate content issues caused by our CMS
Hello fellow mozzers, Our in-house CMS - which is usually good for SEO purposes as it allows all the control over directories, filenames, browser titles etc that prevent unwieldy / meaningless URLs and generic title tags - seems to have got itself into a bit of a tiz when it comes to one of our clients. We have tried solving the problem to no avail, so I thought I'd throw it open and see if anyone has a soultion, or whether it's just a fault in our CMS. Basically, the SEs are indexing two identical pages, one ending with a / and the other ending /index.php, for one of our sites (www.signature-care-homes.co.uk). We have gone through the site and made sure the links all point to just one of these, and have done the same for off-site links, but there is still the duplicate content issue of both versions getting indexed. We also set up an htaccess file to redirect to the chosen version, but to no avail, and we're not sure canonical will work for this issue as / pages should redirect to /index.php anyway - and that's we can't work out. We have set the access file to point to index.php, and that should be what should be happening anyway, but it isn't. Is there an alternative way of telling the SE's to only look at one of these two versions? Also, we are currently rewriting the content and changing the structure - will this change the situation we find ourselves in?
Technical SEO | | themegroup0