Ask a Question
-
SEO Moz has found a bunch of duplicate content errors on one of my sites because blog archives has created a new page for each tag.
For example: http://examplesite.com/blog/tag/travel
http://examplesite.com/blog/tag/travel-photography
http://examplesite.com/blog/tag/tours
http://examplesite.com/blog/tag/accommodations
The above urls are just tags for the same exact page, hence making them all duplicates. Is it normal for each tag to be a separate page? Do the search engines see this as duplicate content? If so, how do I correct this issue if I want to keep the tags? Regards,Dino
-
Ok, I'm at a complete loss now. I've now enabled the sitemap for the yeast SEO plugin and have checked the box in the plugin settings to not allow tags or categories in the sitemap. I've also went into each tag and plugin page and have selected to noindex and to not include in sitemap tags and plugins. Did this for each one, yet I just ran another crawl report and still getting duplicate pages from SEOMoz. Any suggestions why Seomoz is still finding those pages? What else can I do? Regards, Dino
-
OK, thanks Dan, and you're right, I should have gone back and read your first response again because in the end, that is exactly what I ended up doing. I no-indexed each tag with the SEO Yoast Plugin options.
I'm expecting that the next time SEO Moz crawls my sight that it won't count these as duplicates anymore. Am I correct in believing that?
Regards,
Dino
-
Thanks for chiming in! Just want to clarify, canonical tags would be the last resort. In this case, especially for WordPress, noindexing tag archves and noindexing subpages is the way to go first.
-Dan
-
Hey There
See my other answer. You first have to noindex tag archives. Then you can exclude them from the XML sitemap.
Noindexing tags will not harm SEO. Google has been not returning tag pages in search results very much at all anymore. You really want your articles themselves to rank.
-Dan
-
Hi There
What you need to do is;
- Using your SEO plugin (hopefully Yoast SEO plugin) - noindex tag archives.
- Also, noindex subpages of archives
It is normal for tags to be their own page, but it is not desirable to let the search engines index them, thus why we'll add the noindex for tag pages. The search engines can potentially see them as duplicate or thin content. It's OK they exist, just not ok to index them.
Some resources;
My article on Moz about setting up WordPress correctly
-Dan
-
Hey Donford:
I tried to uncheck the tags box in my Sitemap Plugin for Wordpress so the tags wouildn't be included in the Sitemap. In the latest crawl report, however, it is still showing all those tag pages as duplicate pages.
In the Edit Tag pages in Wordpress there are two boxes that allow me to "no index" the tag and another one to "exclude from Sitemap." Do think I am safe if I do both? I am "no indexing" all tags and am also eliminating them from the sitemap. Do you think I may be doing any harm to SEO?
Thanks, Dino.
-
You're very welcome
-
Right on, Donford! Thanks for the quick response. Regards, Dino
-
Hi Dino here are your questions and my answers
The above urls are just tags for the same exact page, hence making them all duplicates. Is it normal for each tag to be a separate page? This is powered by your CMS content mangment system, Wordpress and Joomla have ways to fix this issue. Check with your CMS forums to see if this is way to modify this behavior, or use canonical tags to prevent the duplicate content from being indexed.
Do the search engines see this as duplicate content? Yes
If so, how do I correct this issue if I want to keep the tags? Canonical tags or change the way the tags are generated and or content is archived.Hope that helps
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
-
Viral Marketing SEO Question: If you build a truly great piece of content, what are the best ways to seed it?
There are a few techniques you can use to spread out and get your content out there.
Moz Pro | | shoobi
1. Email bloggers and tell them about your content
2. Share it on bookmarking sites (like Reddit)
3. Contact influential Twitter and Facebook profiles about it
4. Make it easy for visitors to share your infographic with an embed code at the bottom
5. Share it on infographic websites (like https://www.prizebondtime.com)
6. Share it with your email subscribers (if you have an email subscriber list)
7. Post it on your blog, Facebook page, Twitter, etc. Basically everywhere. The name of the game here is to get your content out in front of as many eyeballs you can as possible. Then after that, it's up to how good your content is to begin the viral loop.0 -
1500 Domains... Where to begin? & Web Structure Question.
So, as the title says, I am stuck. I recently have been brought on as the SEO guru for a small-mid size company with the task of rebuilding their web presence. Their website is in pretty unfortunate condition. The more research I do, the farther and farther I am going down the rabbit hole of chaos. Essential the previous CEO was doing all SEO work. He purchased 1500 domains, all keyword specific. Installed wordpress on roughly 1,000 and then began pumping out content. Of the 1,000 roughly 300 of them have about 600-2,000 characters worth of content that is absolute fluff. From there the linking began. Now the content is different enough that Google doesn't seem to notice that its the SAME FREEKIN THING on each domain, but I am very concerned. The company has their main multi-page domain which has other links and sources of traffic, but in essence the previous owner created a micro link web. My advice is to cut those links ASAP and remove the previous work. At the same time, I also don't want them to lose rank. So I guess I am asking a whole slew of questions... Am I right in thinking that we have to build a bridge before we burn a bridge? Is it worth fixing up some of those other domains to have original content to try and bolster what we already have? Would it be better to combine everything into one website, or try and have different domains represent different things. For example Envato.com is an umbrella website with 8 separate websites operating under the same roof using different domains.? Where do I begin? I feel like I have started this project numerous times. I know the keywords, I know where the duplicate content is, I know the structure of the main domain, I am getting the structure of the entire link web. Lastly, any thoughts you all have would be greatly appreciated. I realistically have minimal experience in this realm. I am a a major nub. I understand SEO in theory, sorta. So I'm getting there!
Moz Pro | | HashtagHustler0 -
Total link graph question
how is it that our website and our two competitors basically have the exact same link graph, except for at different levels?
Moz Pro | | imageworks-2612900 -
Question About Moz Reports
Hey guys Is it possible to change the date/time that SEOmoz runs its ranking reports? I put together ranking reports each Monday which I need to feedback to the business and it would be good if I could schedule these for late Sunday or early Monday mornings for me coming in to the office.
Moz Pro | | EwanFisher0 -
I have another Duplicate page content Question to ask.Why does my blog tags come up as duplicates when my page gets crawled,how do I fix it?
I have a blog linked to my web page.& when rogerbot crawls my website it considers tags for my blog pages duplicate content.is there any way I can fix this? Thanks for your advice.
Moz Pro | | PCTechGuy20120 -
2 SEO questions
Hello everyone 🙂 I have two questions for all you fine seo people this morning... 1 - Is there a website that I could go to to make sure that I do not have duplicate content floating around on the web that I am not aware of? Sometimes people take information from my site and post it as their own and I want to make sure that google does not ping me for it. 2 - Does anyone know how I can report a spam site to google? I have filled out the reports many times over the past year and posted it in the webmaster discussion forum and it is still up there 🙂 I sent one email to bing and the next day they contacted me with a thank you email and indicated that I was 100% correct and they removed the site from their index. Thank you all!!!!
Moz Pro | | nazmiyal0 -
OSE Link Report Question.
Hi, when i export a link report as a csv file via the export tool on OSE, there is a column in the exported table called "Numder of Link". Please explain me, what does this column says exactly. Its located between "Domain Authorithy" and "Number of Domains Linking to Domain". Thanx, Seb.
Moz Pro | | TheHecksler0 -
Quick Keyword Difficulty Question
Hello good people. Quick question about the Keyword Difficulty Tool (which is great by the way). I am wondering specifically about the "keyword difficulty score" If I were to type in "blue widget," the tool returns a diffiiculty score of 51%. "red widget" on the other had returns a score of 40%. My question is how much more difficult is the term, "blue widget" when compared to "red widget?" 20% harder? more, less? I just don't know. I'm sure the info is somewhere on the seomoz site, but I have searched high and low and cannot find it. Thanks a lot, Joe
Moz Pro | | sawa00190