DUPLICATE PAGE TITLE ISSUE
-
Hi
We have 25 pages with a download form on it. People arrive at the page through a ink with optimised anchor text which sits on the information pages.
As there is no information on these pages we do not need them to be optimised so the developer has given all the download pages exactly the same page title.
Although the pages in themselves are not significant would this effect the way Google viewed the whole site, and would it pay to make each one unique or doesn't it really matter.
Alternatively, is there a better way to handle this? and if so would that ligate the benefit of the anchor text.
Thanks
-
Hi Dan
Thank you - that is the final piece of information I needed to get so I could have an overall feel as to the way I should look at this. in a holistic way.
Best wishes
PH
-
Hi
First check to see if the pages are indexed in Google by doing site:www.mydomain.com as a search. If they are not, you have nothing to worry about (as long as you block them in robots.txt soon) Your developer should be able to edit your robots.txt file extremely easily. Its just a file that sits in the root directory of the website.
If the 25 pages are indexed though, it could have a negative impact to have 25 duplicate title tags. As to how much impact, that may depend on how large the site is, how deep into the site they are, etc.
-Dan
-
Hi EGOL
Thank you for your reply - very good suggestions, especially for some other products - however, this one is about a certain element of manufacturing - so sexy titles don't quite work in this market (and my client may have a fit).
Having said all that, we have had a better response than we expected and it does create great leads.
I will speak with the developer to see what can be done though.
Thanks again
-
Hi EGOL
Thank you for your reply - very good suggestions, especially for some other products - however, this one is about a certain element of manufacturing - so sexy titles don't quite work in this market (and my client may have a fit).
Having said all that, we have had a better response than we expected and it does create great leads.
I will speak with the developer to see what can be done though.
Thanks again
-
Hi Byrce
Thank you for your helpful reply - there are different products and this allows for tracking and ultimately collating the product against the applicants details whch are then forwarded to the sales guys.
-
HI Dan
Thank you for your reply - I may end up going down your route as the subject matter is manufacturing issues - so not rivetting facebook content, that's for sure.It is amazing how three different answers all contribute another perspective - all helpful as well.
My other challenge is battling with the developer!!
I would love an answer to the query tucked in the middle of my question - does having 25 identical page titles effect the way Google view the whole site?
Many thanks again
-
Do you mean to say that you do not want these pages indexed at all? You say "there is no information on these pages and they do not need to be optimized". If in fact, you don't want them indexed, you would add them to your robots.txt file as such:
Disallow: /filename.html
Disallow: /folder/filname.html
etc.
However, what EGOL and Bryce have suggested would be the most work, but make the most sense overall. If you can find a way to re-structure the 25 downloads / add content etc to capture the additional traffic that would seem to be the best choice.
-
Alternatively, is there a better way to handle this? and if so would that ligate the benefit of the anchor text.
Put some unique and interesting information on those pages, describe your download in detail, show screenshots or samples, write unique and sexy titles, optimize them, enjoy the traffic.
Download pages on my sites get LOTS of traffic. LOTS. One received 2475 visitors from search yesterday.
Lots of people link to download pages, tweet about them, like them on FB. This could be a huge opportunity.
-
Is there a reason you have 25 different pages? Could you consolidate everything into one page or does each page offer a separate download item?
If they are different tasks, they should have different titles. If they are the same, then there should probably only be one page.
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
-
Is it important to have the brand name in all page title?
Hi Moz community, May be this is an obvious question but as i am not sure about the answer.... I prefer to ask you! If yes, is "keywords" - "BRAND NAME " the good option? If not, is there any rule? Thanks a lot, Amaury
On-Page Optimization | | adbds19730 -
Pages with near duplicate content
Hi Mozzers, I need your opinion on the following. Imagine that we have a product X (brand Sony for example), so if we sell parts for different models of items of this product X, we then have numerous product pages with model number. Sony camera parts for Sony Camera XYZ parts for Sony Camera XY etc. So the thing is that these pages are very very similar, like 90% duplicate and they do duplicate pages for Panasonic, Canon let's say with small tweaks in content. I know that those are duplicates and I would experiment removing a category for one brand only (least seached for), but at the same time I cannot remove for the rest as they convert a lot, being close to the search query of the customer (customer looks for parts for Sony XYZ, lands on the page and buys, insteading of staying on a page for Sony parts where should additionally browse for model number). What would you advise to make as unique as possible these pages, I am thinking about: change page titles. meta descriptions tweak the content as much as I can (very difficult, there is nothing fancy or different in those :(() i will start with top top pages that really drive traffic first and see how it goes. I will remove least visited pages and prominently put the model number in Sony parts page to see how it goes in terms of organic and most importantly conversions Any other ideas? I am really concerned about dupes and a penalty, but I try to think of solutions in order not to kill conversions at this point. Have a lovely Monday
On-Page Optimization | | SammyT0 -
Title tag of product page including category keyword?
I'm doing some work on a site that essentially is about giving and getting reviews. It's heirarchy has categories and products within those categories. For the title tag of the product pages, they currently have "Best {Category} | {Product} Reviews" I've advised them that they should remove the "Best {Category}" part because a) they're already targeting the category pages themselves and b) from a user perspective, the product page should just have a title tag that makes sense for that particular page (the page is not necessarily the "best" and certainly is not a series of products within that category). I wanted to post here to confirm that my advice is sound. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | jim_shook0 -
Google not displaying my page title and meta description
Google is automatically picking up random text from my page and displaying it in place of the page title and meta description on the SERP. What can I do to avoid this? I want my page title and meta description to show up on the SERP. The url of my website is: wishpicker dot com Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | seomanicster0 -
On page SEO Strategy / What pages to use?
What is the best page to use for targeting your hard to rank keywords? The keyword phrases in question here are "Acrylic Tank Manufacturing", "Custom Aquariums", & "Acrylic Aquariums" As of right now we have created 3 separate pages for each one of these keyword phrases. http://seaquaticaquariums.com/custom-aquariums for "Custom Aquariums" http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/custom-aquariums/acrylic-aquariums/ for "Acrylic Aquariums" http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/services/acrylic-tank-manufacturing/ for "Acrylic Tank Manufacturing" Or are we better of using the home page http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/ for the our main hard to rank for terms. Generally speaking I would think more people will link to our home page.
On-Page Optimization | | SeaQuatic0 -
Events in Wordpress Creating Duplicate Content Canonical Issues
Hi, I have a site which uses Event Manager Pro within Wordpress to create Events (as custom post types on my blog. I use it to advertise cookery classes. In a given month I might run one type of class 4 times. The event page I have made for each class is the same and I duplicate it 4 times and just change the dates to promote it. The problem is with over 10 different classes, which are then duplicated up to 4 times each per month. I get loads of duplicate content errors. How can I fix this without redirecting people away from the correct page for the date they are interested in? Is it best just to use a no follow for ALL events and rely on the other parts of my site for SEO? Thanks, T23
On-Page Optimization | | tekton230 -
Page Title in Local SEO Title Tags?
Hi All, Still working on my title tag usage for local SEO, and I was hoping for some more feedback. My question is this: In Local SEO titles, I'm using location + keyword combinations, unique on each page. However, since each page has a specific title for the client, I figure I should be placing that at the front. My thought here was that this helps with the overall usability to the reader of the website. Ex. Contact Us page for Pizza shop Contact Us | Springfield IN Gourmet Pizza | Moe's Italian Pizza Anyone have thoughts on this one? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | kbaltzell0 -
Do product pages need unique content or does having duplcate content hurt on those pages?
We are adding product rapidly to our website but this requires allowing duplicate to exist on our product pages of furniture-online.com. From an SEO standpoint do we need to make this content unique for each product. Since we aren't link building to specific product pages and we don't anticipate product pages being found in a search result, are we ok leaving the duplicate content in place and spending our dollars elsewhere?
On-Page Optimization | | gallreddy0