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
-
-
@seoelevated Thanks. I see your reasoning. It's also valid.
-
@andykubrin I would like to add that another valid approach is to ignore the "issue". Are all 4 of your form pages currently indexed? If so, then this Moz-reported issue is not necessarily an actual issue. There is no "penalty" for duplicate content like this. The situation we all wish to avoid is for the search engine to choose one of the pages to index, because it sees them all as duplicates, and not necessarily index the one we want or associate with all our desired keywords we've individually targeted per page. But, if all 4 of your pages are currently indexed, and if they rank for the terms that you want, then it would be OK to ignore the issue.
As well, you might think about whether you want these pages to be indexed/rank at all. If your desire is for traffic to go to the service description pages and then flow to the forms, and if the service description pages are the ones which actually are ranking, the issue may not even matter to you. And so again, you might decide to ignore. And that would be a valid choice.
-
Hi @nigel_carr ,
You've pointed the way to a solution.
I offer four services. I have a service description page for each one, with around 300 words on each page and a link to a separate HubSpot form. I use four separate HubSpot forms because that arrangement allows me to tailor the automated responses I send to each person who requests more information on a given service.
So I think the two best options for a solution are:
-
Keep the service descriptions and forms separate, but noindex each individual form
-
Incorporate the forms into the service description pages
The first option provides a neater appearance, but the second option would shorten the visitor's path to the form, so that's probably the better option.
Thank you for your advice.
Regards,
Andy
-
-
Hi Andy
The reason why they are coming up with a duplicate content warning is likely because there is very little content on the pages other than the forms.
You have a couple of options:
- Flesh out the content on the pages so that the subject is clearly defined in each case. This would involve writing 300+ words/adding an image+alt/H1/Meta etc on the subjects of:
Content Marketing Consultation
Copywriting Consultation- The other two
- If you can't write unique content for each form because the subjects are too close (Copyright vs Content) then it begs the question why you have the 4 forms in the first place.
If you want to keep the 4 forms then can canonicalize 3 of them to the main one, so only 1 is set to rank.
Note: If you do canonicalize it is not guaranteed that Google won't feature either one or all the other forms. You are simply telling Google that that is your preference.
- You could noindex three of the four forms which would be a perfectly acceptable solution even though most scanning software will warn you of the no indexes.
I hope that helps
Nigel
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 analysis
Hi all,We have some pages being flagged as duplicates by the google search console. However, we believe the content on these pages is distinctly different (for example, they have completely different search results returned, different headings etc). An example of two pages google finds to be duplicates is below. if anyone can spot what might be causing the duplicate issue here, would very much appreciate suggestions! Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Eric_S
Examples: https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/IFA-financial-advisor-mortgage/harborne
https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/accountant/harborne0 -
Duplicate content : domain alias issue
Hello there ! Let's say my client has 2 webshops (that exists since long time, so many backlinks & good authority on both) : individuals.nl : for individuals (has 200 backlinks, let's say) pros.nl : exact same products, exact same content, but with a different branding intended to professionnals (has 100 backlinks, let's say) So, both websites are 99% identical and it has to remain like that !!! Obviously, this creates duplicate content issues. Goal : I want "individuals.nl" to get all ranking value (while "pros.nl" should remain accessible through direct access & appear on it's own brand queries). Solution ? Implement canonical tags on "pros**.nl**" that goes to "individuals.nl". That way, "individuals.nl" will get all ranking value, while "pros.nl" will still be reachable through direct access. However, "individuals.nl" will then replace "pros.nl" from SERP in the long-term. The only thing I want is to keep "pros.nl" visible for its own brand queries -> it won't be possible through organic search result, so, I'm just gonna buy those "pros" queries through paid search ! Put links on all pages of pros.nl to individuals.nl (but not the other way around), so that "pros.nl" will pass some ranking value to "individuals.nl" (but only a small part of the ranking value -> ideally, I would like to pass all link value to this domain). Could someone advise me ??? (I know it sound a bit complicated... but I don't have much choice ^^)
Technical SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Image centric site and duplicate content issues
We have a site that has very little text, the main purpose of the site is to allow users to find inspiration through images. 1000s of images come to us each week to be processed by our editorial team, so as part of our process we select a subset of the best images and process those with titles, alt text, tags, etc. We still host the other images and users can find them through galleries that link to the process and unprocessed image pages. Due to the lack of information on the unprocessed images, we are having lots of duplicate content issues (The layout of all the image pages are the same, and there isn't any unique text to differentiate the pages. The only changing factor is the image itself in each page) Any suggestions on how to resolve this issue, will be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | wedlinkmedia0 -
URL query considered duplicate content?
I have a Magento site. In order to reduce duplicate content for products of the same style but with different colours I have combined them on to 1 product page. I would like to allow the pictures to be dynamic, i.e. allow a user to search for a colour and all the products that offer that colour appear in the results, but I dont want the default product image shown but the product image for that colour applying to the query. Therefore to do this I have to append a query string to the end of the URL to produce this result: www.website.com/category/product-name.html?=red My question is, will the query variations then be picked up as duplicate content: www.website.com/category/product-name.html www.website.com/category/product-name.html?=red www.website.com/category/product-name.html?=yellow Google suggest it has contingencies in its algorithm and I will not be penalised: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2007/09/google-duplicate-content-caused-by-url.html But other sources suggest this is not accurate. Note the article was written in 2007.
Technical SEO | | BlazeSunglass0 -
How to get rid of duplicate content
I have duplicate content that looks like http://deceptionbytes.com/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&link=932fea0640143bf08fe157d3570792a56dcc1284 - however I have 50 of these all with different numbers on the end. Does this affect the search engine optimization and how can I disallow this in my robots.txt file?
Technical SEO | | Mishelm1 -
Mod Rewrite / .htaccess avoid duplicate content
I have been searching and testing for hours but cannot find a solution. I am able to get a URL to display with out the file exntension. i.e domain.com/file instead of domain.com/file.php The problem is both versions of the URL above work, therefore a duplicate content issue. How can I force the URL with the file extension not to resolve and give a 404 error? Or just redirect to the non extension URL? IF it helps here is my code. Options +FollowSymLinks
Technical SEO | | MiamiWebCompany
RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ $1.php [L,QSA]0 -
Mod Rewrite question to prevent duplicate content
Hi, I'm having problems with a mod rewrite issue and duplicate content On my website I have Website.com Website.com/directory Website.com/directory/Sub_directory_more_stuff_here Both #1 and #2 are the same page (I can't change this). #3 is different pages. How can I use mod rewrite to to make #2 redirect to #1 so I don't have duplicate content WHILE #3 still works?
Technical SEO | | kat20 -
Duplicate Content via a product feed & data
We have uniquely created all of our product content on our website (Titles, product descriptions, images etc). However, we are also a manufacturer of these products and supply to a number of trade customers. These customers often wish to setup their own websites to re-sell these products. In the past we have quite happily given this content in order to assist our customers sell on their sites. Generally we give them a 'data dump' of our web data and images, but reading about duplicate content this will lead to the search engines seeing lots of identical content on these customer sites. Whilst we wish to support our customers we do not want to harm our (and their) site by issuing lots of duplicate content around the web. Is there a way we can help them with the data without penalizing ourselves? The other issue is that we also take this data feed and use it to sell on both Amazon & Googlebase. Will using this identical data also rank as duplicate content as a quick search does show both our website and amazon product page? When creating Amazon listing do these need to vary from the standard website descriptions? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bwfc770