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 to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content
-
I've attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section.
Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com.
Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages.
I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up.
This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me.
I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.
-
Hi Todd,
Oh no, looks like all your canonicals are pointing towards the homepage....
<link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="[http://www.cherrycreekspine.com<](view-source:http://www.cherrycreekspine.com%3C/)"/>
Also looks like there's an extra carrot "<" at the end of the URL. Looks like it's coming from the wonky code.
Regardless, this isn't what you want. This basically tells search engines that every page is a canonical of the homepage - and that all these other pages aren't important on their own. It's likely search engines will start to drop these pages out of their index unless this tag is removed immediately. Reminds me of Dr. Pete's canonical nightmares.
In short... remove that canonical ASAP. It's probably better to have some duplicate content than a sitewide canonical that points to your homepage.
Have you tried the Joomla Canonicalisation Plugin? Haven't tried it myself, but it might be smidgen easier than trying to code the php yourself. You can find it here: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/site-management/seo-a-metadata/url-canonicalization-/5355
My guess is you can completely remove whatever manual canonical code you wrote, and the plugin will take care of the rest.
Remember, when the code is working properly, each page with point to itself (without extra parameters and so on) the way a proper canonical should.
Best of luck!
-
View page source shows HTML. If I can't see the PHP file i.e. which generates the HTML it's impossible for me to know how. I'm not very clear on this. You can PM the file to me if you want - but don't send me any passwords please.
-
Yikes... so, I checked the template html file and all including PHP info is there...
View page source did not show all the code.
So, still stuck.
-
Hold on .... not all the copy was properly entered by me... I'll fix and retest.
-
Mr., I replaced the line in the html but no change. I'm completely new to this, so please forgive me. All of these concepts are new to me.
Any other thoughts or direction? I looked at one of the Whiteboard videos... buy over my head.
Thanks in advance... Todd
-
You need to code it again:
In the HTML I can see on Line 15:
rel="canonical" href="http://www.cherrycreekspine.com<?php echo parse_url($canonical, PHP_URL_PATH); ?>"/>
You need to write everything after href="
and before "/>
in php; probably:
<link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo="" '<a="" class=" " href="http://www.cherrycreekspine.com%26lt%3B/?php%20echo%20parse_url($canonical,%20PHP_URL_PATH);%20?%3E" target="_blank">http://www.cherrycreekspine.com<'.parse_url($canonical, PHP_URL_PATH); ?>"/></link rel="canonical" href="<?php>
If it doesnt sort it, post again and I'll try to help you further.
Also, you either apply canonical values or remove duplicate content (the post title is slightly confused, I think)
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
-
Should I apply Canonical Links from my Landing Pages to Core Website Pages?
I am working on an SEO project for the website: https://wave.com.au/ There are some core website pages, which we want to target for organic traffic, like this one: https://wave.com.au/doctors/medical-specialties/anaesthetist-jobs/ Then we have basically have another version that is set up as a landing page and used for CPC campaigns. https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ Essentially, my question is should I apply canonical links from the landing page versions to the core website pages (especially if I know they are only utilising them for CPC campaigns) so as to push link equity/juice across? Here is the GA data from January 1 - April 30, 2019 (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International0 -
Is it best practice to have a canonical tags on all pages
The website I'm working on has no canonical tags. There is duplicate content so rel=canonicals need adding to certain pages but is it best practice to have a tag on every page ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ColesNathan0 -
No Index thousands of thin content pages?
Hello all! I'm working on a site that features a service marketed to community leaders that allows the citizens of that community log 311 type issues such as potholes, broken streetlights, etc. The "marketing" front of the site is 10-12 pages of content to be optimized for the community leader searchers however, as you can imagine there are thousands and thousands of pages of one or two line complaints such as, "There is a pothole on Main St. and 3rd." These complaint pages are not about the service, and I'm thinking not helpful to my end goal of gaining awareness of the service through search for the community leaders. Community leaders are searching for "311 request service", not "potholes on main street". Should all of these "complaint" pages be NOINDEX'd? What if there are a number of quality links pointing to the complaint pages? Do I have to worry about losing Domain Authority if I do NOINDEX them? Thanks for any input. Ken
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KenSchaefer0 -
Directory with Duplicate content? what to do?
Moz keeps finding loads of pages with duplicate content on my website. The problem is its a directory page to different locations. E.g if we were a clothes shop we would be listing our locations: www.sitename.com/locations/london www.sitename.com/locations/rome www.sitename.com/locations/germany The content on these pages is all the same, except for an embedded google map that shows the location of the place. The problem is that google thinks all these pages are duplicated content. Should i set a canonical link on every single page saying that www.sitename.com/locations/london is the main page? I don't know if i can use canonical links because the page content isn't identical because of the embedded map. Help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nchlondon0 -
Duplicate Content through 'Gclid'
Hello, We've had the known problem of duplicate content through the gclid parameter caused by Google Adwords. As per Google's recommendation - we added the canonical tag to every page on our site so when the bot came to each page they would go 'Ah-ha, this is the original page'. We also added the paramter to the URL parameters in Google Wemaster Tools. However, now it seems as though a canonical is automatically been given to these newly created gclid pages; below https://www.google.com.au/search?espv=2&q=site%3Awww.mypetwarehouse.com.au+inurl%3Agclid&oq=site%3A&gs_l=serp.3.0.35i39l2j0i67l4j0i10j0i67j0j0i131.58677.61871.0.63823.11.8.3.0.0.0.208.930.0j3j2.5.0....0...1c.1.64.serp..8.3.419.nUJod6dYZmI Therefore these new pages are now being indexed, causing duplicate content. Does anyone have any idea about what to do in this situation? Thanks, Stephen.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MyPetWarehouse0 -
Partial duplicate content and canonical tags
Hi - I am rebuilding a consumer website, and each product page will contain a unique product image, and a sentence or two about the product (and we tend to use a lot of the same words in different ways across products). I'd like to have a tabbed area below the product info that talks about the overall product line, and this content would be duplicate across all the product pages (a "Why use our products" type of thing). I'd have this duplicate content also living on its own URL's so they can be found alone in the SERP's. Question is, do I need to add the canonical tag to this page, since there's partial duplicate content on the product pages? And if I did that, would my product pages go un-indexed?? I understand how to handle completely duplicated content, it's the partial duplicate that I'm having difficulty figuring out.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny10 -
Artist Bios on Multiple Pages: Duplicate Content or not?
I am currently working on an eComm site for a company that sells art prints. On each print's page, there is a bio about the artist followed by a couple of paragraphs about the print. My concern is that some artists have hundreds of prints on this site, and the bio is reprinted on every page,which makes sense from a usability standpoint, but I am concerned that it will trigger a duplicate content penalty from Google. Some people are trying to convince me that Google won't penalize for this content, since the intent is not to game the SERPs. However, I'm not confident that this isn't being penalized already, or that it won't be in the near future. Because it is just a section of text that is duplicated, but the rest of the text on each page is original, I can't use the rel=canonical tag. I've thought about putting each artist bio into a graphic, but that is a huge undertaking, and not the most elegant solution. Could I put the bio on a separate page with only the artist's info and then place that data on each print page using an <iframe>and then put a noindex,nofollow in the robots.txt file?</p> <p>Is there a better solution? Is this effort even necessary?</p> <p>Thoughts?</p></iframe>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbaylor0 -
Duplicate Content From Indexing of non- File Extension Page
Google somehow has indexed a page of mine without the .html extension. so they indexed www.samplepage.com/page, so I am showing duplicate content because Google also see's www.samplepage.com/page.html How can I force google or bing or whoever to only index and see the page including the .html extension? I know people are saying not to use the file extension on pages, but I want to, so please anybody...HELP!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebbyNabler0