Duplicate page titles and hreflang tags
-
Moz is flagging a lot of pages on our site which have duplicate page titles. 99% of these are international pages which hreflang tags in the sitemap.
Do I need to worry about this? I assumed that it wasn't an issue given the use of hreflang. And if that's the case, why is Moz flagging them as an issue?
Thanks.
-
We're all students of the game. I hope I never stop learning about marketing.
I had read about the sitemap implementation but never tried it. Then I ran into an enterprise client who has over 40,000 indexed pages & 20 separate languages.
One of the languages didn't have a subfolder but all the rest did. Instead of coding it in, I figured my way through sitemaps & thought it was SO much easier in the end. I've used it a few times since and it's great.
-
I updated my first answer to point out my error - thanks again!
-
Hi everyone
Oh wow! I can't believe I missed that! I stand 100% corrected - thanks so much guys, I am sorry about that!
Looks like you should be all good then!
Thanks again for pointing this out - cheers everyone
-
No, you don't need to worry. If you've implemented hreflang into the sitemap properly, it will work and you don't have to worry about the Moz reading. Moz tries to cover off the main things that affect you and give you an indication of what Google may like & dislike on your site but by no means are the implementations of everything exactly the same. So yes, Google will understand your 'duplicate' page titles are not.
@Patrick - you can definitely implement hreflang in sitemap. I was surprised when I saw that the first time, too, but I've tried it for a few clients lately and it works well.
-
Hi,
I'm fairly sure you can put the tags in a sitemap rather than the header.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Placing the tags into the header is a much bigger technical issue for us at present.
Cheers
-
Hi there
Are you saying that your hreflang tags are in your sitemap? If that's the case, that's not the proper implementation. THIS IS IN FACT NOT CORRECT AS POINTED OUT BY ahyde & MattAntonino BELOW
These tags are supposed to live in the tag of the page(s) which are region and language targeted.
I would read into hreflang tags and make sure that you have the proper implementation. You should also look at language tags for Bing.
I would also take a look at this chart for guidance and make sure that your international pages have language/region specific content - if you're not changing the language, then the tag isn't really necessary. I would instead focus on canonical tags, setting up Webmaster Tools accounts for each region variation directory or subdomain, and country targeting those profiles to their separate regions in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools.
I would also take a look at the following resources as well:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)Let me know if this helps - I hope I am understanding - 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
-
Duplicate Page Titles in Crawl Errors (although Google is rewriting in serps ??)
Hi Im working on a client/project and crawl report is showing thousands of dupe page titles In the case of the blog/news section its aprox 50 since aprox 50 posts and they all have the same meta-title: "Brand News | Brand" as opposed to: "Title Unique to Page/Topic/KW Relating to Content | Brand" Since these are the main content pages we want to rank (in addition to the main site category pages) then i have instructed dev must prioritise populating these pages meta-titles with the actual post/article titles, as per the latter version of the above example. (I should mention that i have requested they fix all dupe titles but main content pages are the priority). Whilst this will reduce the number of dupe titles in crawl error/warning report which is a good thing, is it actually likely to increase the ranking of these news/content pages given that Google does seem to be rewriting the titles correctly in the serps based on the page content ? Many Thanks in advance for your input
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Index.php getting Duplicate page content.
I am quite new to SEO and have now got my first results. I am getting all my index.php pages returned as Duplicate page content. ie: blue-widgets/index.php
On-Page Optimization | | ivoryred
blue-widgets/ green-widgets/large/index.php
green-widgets/large/ How do solve this issue?0 -
Mobile blog creating duplicate title and content issues
My site is set up with a mobile website and after running the on page SEO report on moz it is returning multiple errors for duplicate title tags and duplicate content all related to the mobile website being a direct reflection of the main site. I want to know if this is really an issue. I'm sure Google actually knows the difference between my main site and the mobile version. Do I really need to go through each individual mobile page and change each page title and modify all the content? I really would like to avoid doing this but at the same time would like to fully optimize my site. Any advice is appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | shiftins0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Title
When you are in Error status for Duplicate Page Titles - but it is because of the root domain: Example.com and Example.com/index How to you go about changing the title of the same page without looking un-natural. My client has built his site with the - index file pulling to the root - but the crawlers are seeing TWO separate pages - when in reality they are the same. Riddle me this batman?
On-Page Optimization | | Chenzo0 -
Page title changes based on results per page
I have a product listing that allows customers to set a results per page option. This ads a GET variable to the URL. I've added the page number to the title of this page if they go past the first page. If this results per page variable is added to the URL then google see it as a different page. Do I need to change the page title for this?
On-Page Optimization | | BedInABox.com0 -
Title Tag, Are the Keywords Plucked out of it?
We are working on redoing our site and I read the article from rand about how to properly format title tags, here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tactical-seo-how-many-termsphrases-should-i-target-on-a-single-page He showed how he could take 6 keywords and use them all in the title tag: The title Tag:
On-Page Optimization | | donford
Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org The keywords:
Ted Baker
Ted Baker London
Ted Baker Clothing
Ted Baker Mens
Ted Baker Mens Clothing
Ted Baker Mens Collection So what I am wondering is the keyword Ted Baker Mens Collection actually getting found. In this case we are dealing with a contraction (men's) and a plural form of a keyword (collections). Is it plucked out from the title tag above?
Like this? Ted Baker London - Men's Clothing Collections 2005-2008 | Sartorialmoz.org In his article he goes on to say the biggest mistake he sees is, unfortunately exactly the way our site was built 6 years ago. That is people doing this: Ted Baker, Ted Baker London, Ted Baker Clothing, Ted Baker Men's Clothing, Ted Baker Clothing Collection - Buy Online Now at Manamialameseo.com Our site does just that, while we are PR 4 and get decent traffic for the business we are in, we are doing a huge update with new pages, information, and most importantly trying to get all the SEO the best as possible. I want to make sure before we make these what could be huge impact changes that search engines do in fact Pluck the keywords from the title tag, and they are not required to be together. Thank you for any thoughts, answers and most importantly your time. Example following this formula: Our Top 3 Keywords:
Molded Rubber
Rubber Molding
Custom Molded Rubber Our Old way:
Title: Custom Molded Rubber, Rubber Molding, Molded Rubber
The new way:
Title: Custom Molded Rubber - Molding Services | OurSite.com0 -
Best title tag structure?
Hi, In the below example, which one do you think would work best if any. The website is called greatshoes.co.uk (fictitious) The category is 'work shoes' and a page under this cat is lets say 'Size 9 work shoes' I tend to build my title tags like this: size 9 work shoes, cheap size 9 work shoes | greatshoes.co.uk BUT I have read on here it should be more like this: size 9 work shoes < work shoes | greatshoes.co.uk Does anyone think it would make a difference when targeting for the term 'size 9 work shoes' which title tag I use. Cheers
On-Page Optimization | | activitysuper0 -
How to avoid duplicate content on ecommerce pages?
I am currently building the site architecture for a very large ecommerce site. I am wondering how I should build it out if I have products that I want to include in multiple categories within my site. For example: Lets say I sell fitness equipment and I have categories for things such as: Treadmill, Exercise Bike, Stair Stepper, Weight Benches etc. But then I also have specific brand category pages such a: Precor, Life Fitness, Hammer, Body Solid So my question is how do I structure this so I am building this correctly? If I sell a Precor Treadmill I will want to include that product under the "Treadmill" category page as well as under the "Precor Equipment" category page. Can I get some advice for the best way to structure this? It's obviously something I want to avoid at all costs of doing improperly and having to fix later. Thank you Jake
On-Page Optimization | | PEnterprises0