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 -
Traffic from Google analytics compared to traffic in Moz, quick question.....
When I look at the campaign for my website in MOZ it shows me my 'organic search visits' are radically different than when I look at Google analytics. In Moz I have 10 visits the week of 10/24 but using 'visits' in Google analytics I have 320 visits the same week. In Moz I have 20 visits the week of 11/1 (following the gold total line) but according to Google I have almost 500 visits that week. I just totally redid my site (www.sawwebmarketing.com) and posted a bunch of new content and looking to see what it did to my traffic and according to Google my visits have fallen dramatically but according to Moz my 'organic search visits' have multiplied by 6. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Matthew
Moz Pro | | Mrupp440 -
A 301 redirect to a page with a rel canonical to a page with a 301 question...
MOZ registers thousands of DC and Duplicate titles on a Drupal site which has a little strange setup. Example: www.1234.com/en-us 301 redirects to www.realsite.com/en-us which has a rel canonical to www.1234.com which 301 redirects to www.realsite.com. If you're still with me I thank you.
Moz Pro | | Crunchii
My question is since MOZ registers errors, if indeed the rel canonical isn't recognized due to a 301 redirect?0 -
OK Crawl Test Link Question Again!
I've downloaded a crawl test and column G Link Count reads 62 and yep there are a total of 62 links on the page in question. Column AM Internal Links reads 303 and yep there are somewhere in the order of 303 pages pointing at this one. Root Domains is surprisingly low at 6, so maybe there are only 6 domains linking to this page. BUT... External Links read 51. There are not 51 links pointing away from this domain on this page, no way hozay, so can anybody tell me what is meant by 'External Links? A humble thank you in anticipation of an education. Jem
Moz Pro | | JemRobinson0 -
How to un-answer a question?
Being new here I'm pressing all sorts of buttons and breaking things... I posted a question, liked someone's answer so click "good answer" thinking it was like a "thumbs up" but it actually set my question to "answered". How does one set their own question to un-answered?
Moz Pro | | eatyourveggies1 -
Technical Question about tools available in market
Hi, I am looking for a tool most probably web based tool like opensiteexplorer / majestic seo that gives me the list of URL For example, on google we can do site:seomoz.org , and it's saying About 115,000 results. I need to get list of those 115,000 URLS in any file whether it's csv or any other. anybody care to share ?
Moz Pro | | sumairr1230 -
How come I cannot ask one question a month to the pro's ?
I just got a major increase of errors on my website on the last crawl. I haven't touched my web site ( other than adding content ) for the past 3 months. It's like more than 500 errors I got on the last crawl, How can I call SeoMoz tech support ? I cannot use my 'One question a month to the pro's a option', cannot select the option pretending I have used my question this month where it is not true. Need help. Thanks
Moz Pro | | processia0 -
Some questions on Canonical tag AND 301 redirect
Hi everyone, I'm new here - always loved SEOMoz and glad to be part of the Pro community now. I have 2 questions regarding the Canonical URL tag. Some background info: We used to run an OsCommerce store, and recently migrated to Magento. In doing so, we right away created 301 redirects of the old category pages (OsCommerce) to the new category pages (Magento) via the Magento admin. Example: www.example.com/old-widget-category.html
Moz Pro | | yacpro13
301 redicrected to
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html In Magento admin, we have enabled the Canonical tag for all product and category pages. Here's how Magento sets up the Canonical tag: The URL of interest which we want to rank is:
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html However Magento sets up the canonical tag on this page to point to:
www.example.com/old-widget-category.html When using the SEOMoz On Page Report Card, it pick this up as an error because the Canonical tag is pointing to a different URL. However, if we dig a little deeper, we see that the URL being pointed to
www.example.com/old-widget-category.html
has a 301 redirect to
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html
which is the URL we wan to rank. So because we set up a 301 redirect of the old-page to the new-page, on the new-page the canonical tag points to the old-page. Question 1)
What are you opinions on this? Do you think this method of setting up the Canonical tag is acceptable? Second question... We use pagination for category pages, so if we have 50 products in one category, we would have 5 pages of 10 products. The URL's would be: www.example.com/new-widget-category.html (which is the SAME as ?p=1)
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=1
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=2
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=3
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=4
www.example.com/new-widget-category.html?p=5 Now ALL the URLs above have the canonical tag set as:
<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/new-widget-category" /> However, the content of each page (page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is different because different products are displayed. So far most what I read regarding the Canonical tag is that it is used for pages that have the same content but different URLs. I would hope that Google would combine the content of all 5 pages and view the result as a single URL www.example.com/new-widget-category Question 2) Is using the canonical tag appropriate in the case described above? Thanks !0