Up to my you-know-what in duplicate content
-
Working on a forum site that has multiple versions of the URL indexed. The WWW version is a top 3 and 5 contender in the google results for the domain keyword. All versions of the forum have the same PR, but but the non-WWW version has 3,400 pages indexed in google, and the WWW has 2,100. Even worse yet, there's a completely seperate domain (PR4) that has the forum as a subdomain with 2,700 pages indexed in google.
The dupe content gets completely overwhelming to think about when it comes to the PR4 domain, so I'll just ask what you think I should do with the forum. Get rid of the subdomain version, and sometimes link between two obviously related sites or get rid of the highly targeted keyword domain? Also what's better, having the targeted keyword on the front of Google with only 2,100 indexed pages or having lower rankings with 3,400 indexed pages?
Thanks.
-
You've pretty much confirmed my suspicions. I can set the redirects up myself, its just been about 5 years since I've done any SEO work. What I meant was should I mod_rewrite or "redirect 301 /oldurl /newurl" ...I've forgot a lot of stuff that I used to do with ease. My own sites were always started off right and weren't as bad as the one I'm working on now, so I'm in unfamiliar territory. Thanks for your advice, I appreciate it
-
I want to make sure that you are getting the proper advice. Can you provide me the URLs here, or PM them to me to keep them private? Once I see the problem firsthand, I can reply with the answer here for you. I am pretty sure my advice above is the way to go, but it doesn't hurt to double check!
You need to choose ONE domain for going forward. I don't care which one it is, but choose one. It makes sense to choose the one with the better rankings, at least from my perspective.
After that, you 301 redirect all versions the URLs to the proper URL (which would be WWW if it was my choice).
Yes, mod_rewrite is a server-side redirect that you can choose. Make sure whoever sets them up knows what he is doing. Having a ton of server-side redirects can increase load times and cause issues with site speed if it is not done properly. Don't be afraid of doing it, but just make sure you know what you are doing, especially since you're dealing with thousands of URLs.
You want to use permanent 301 redirects, yes.
-
Thanks I appreciate the advice. So you don't think having 2 seperate domains pointing (or redirecting) to each other occasionally will hurt anything? I have like 1000+ URLs I need to redirect already on the completely separate domain.com, as for the keyworddomain.com forum I don't think I need too many redirects as just one from seperate.domain.com to keyworddomain.com, and then one there from nonWWW to WWW should fix all the broken URLs right? When you say 301 do you mean "redirect 301" or mod_rewrite? Thanks for the help
-
I would first, choose which version you want to use going forward. You have three versions: subdomain, non-www, and www. Don't use the subdomain, that is a given. I personally like using WWW instead of non-WWW, however there are reasons to use non-WWW over WWW. But, given this scenario, it makes sense to use the WWW version. I know that the non-WWW version has more pages indexed, but pages indexed doesn't mean much in the grand scheme of things. Given that WWW has good rankings and is more identifiable to a user, I would choose that. Of course, if you choose non-WWW my advice below will remain the same.
Now that you have chosen what version you want to use going forward, you need to do a few things:
-
Implement a .htaccess 301 server-side redirect and redirect non-WWW to WWW (or vice versa if you so choose), make sure it's permanent. This way going forward, it'll fix your non-www and WWW issue.
-
Next, you need to redirect all non-WWW indexed pages and URLs to their WWW version. This is not easy, especially with thousands of pages. However, it must be done to help preserve the PR and link-juice so it passes as much as it can through. What I recommend is seeing if there is a plugin or extension for whatever forum software you use that can aid you in this effort, or hire a programmer to build you one. It's actually not that complex to do and I have done it before in a similar situation and it does work. If you need more advice on that, PM me.
-
You need to take care of the subdomain by setting up a permanent redirect to the main WWW version if someone goes to the subdomain, and also setup redirects for existing subdomain pages/URLs that have PR/Rank/LinkJuice.
-
From there, make sure that you are utilizing sitemaps properly, that can greatly increase your indexing rate and volume.
I hope that these help, if you need anything further please do not hesitate to PM me or post here.
Good luck!
-
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
-
Canonical Tags - Do they only apply to internal duplicate content?
Hi Moz, I've had a complaint from a company who we use a feed from to populate a restaurants product list.They are upset that on our products pages we have canonical tags linking back to ourselves. These are in place as we have international versions of the site. They believe because they are the original source of content we need to canonical back to them. Can I please confirm that canonical tags are purely an internal duplicate content strategy. Canonical isn't telling google that from all the content on the web that this is the original source. It's just saying that from the content on our domains, this is the original one that should be ranked. Is that correct? Furthermore, if we implemented a canonical tag linking to Best Restaurants it would de-index all of our restaurants listings and pages and pass the authority of these pages to their site. Is this correct? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | benj20341 -
Duplicate content for vehicle inventory.
Hey all, In the automotive industry... When uploading vehicle inventory to a website I'm concerned with duplicate content issues. For example, 1 vehicle is uploaded to the main manufacturers website, then again to the actual dealerships website & then again to Craigslist & even sometimes to a group site. The information is all the same, description, notes, car details & images. What would you all recommend for alleviating duplicate content issues? Should I be using the rel canonical back to the manufacturers website? Once the vehicle is sold all pages disappear. Thanks so much for any advice.
Technical SEO | | DCochrane0 -
Rel=canonical overkill on duplicate content?
Our site has many different health centers - many of which contain duplicate content since there is topic crossover between health centers. I am using rel canonical to deal with this. My question is this: Is there a tipping point for duplicate content where Google might begin to penalize a site even if it has the rel canonical tags in place on cloned content? As an extreme example, a site could have 10 pieces of original content, but could then clone and organize this content in 5 different directories across the site each with a new url. This would ultimately result in the site having more "cloned" content than original content. Is this at all problematic even if the rel canonical is in place on all cloned content? Thanks in advance for any replies. Eric
Technical SEO | | Eric_Lifescript0 -
Duplicate page content
hi I am getting an duplicate content error in SEOMoz on one of my websites it shows http://www.exampledomain.co.uk http://www.exampledomain.co.uk/ http://www.exampledomain.co.uk/index.html how can i fix this? thanks darren
Technical SEO | | Bristolweb0 -
How critical is Duplicate content warnings?
Hi, So I have created my first campaign here and I have to say the tools, user interface and the on-page optimization, everything is useful and I am happy with SEOMOZ. However, the crawl report returned thousands of errors and most of them are duplicate content warnings. As we use Drupal as our CMS, the duplicate content is caused by Drupal's pagination problems. Let's say there is a page called "/top5list" , the crawler decided /top5list?page=1" to be duplicate of "/top5list". There is no real solution for pagination problems in Drupal (as far as I know). I don't have any warnings in Google's webmaster tools regarding this and my sitemap I submitted to Google doesn't include those problematic deep pages. (that are detected as duplicate content by SEOMOZ crawler) So my question is, should I be worried about the thousands of error messages in crawler diagnostics? any ideas appreciated
Technical SEO | | Gamer070 -
Forget Duplicate Content, What to do With Very Similar Content?
All, I operate a Wordpress blog site that focuses on one specific area of the law. Our contributors are attorneys from across the country who write about our niche topic. I've done away with syndicated posts, but we still have numerous articles addressing many of the same issues/topics. In some cases 15 posts might address the same issue. The content isn't duplicate but it is very similar, outlining the same rules of law etc. I've had an SEO I trust tell me I should 301 some of the similar posts to one authoritative post on the subject. Is this a good idea? Would I be better served implementing canonical tags pointing to the "best of breed" on each subject? Or would I be better off being grateful that I receive original content on my niche topic and not doing anything? Would really appreciate some feedback. John
Technical SEO | | JSOC0 -
Complex duplicate content question
We run a network of three local web sites covering three places in close proximity. Each sitehas a lot of unique content (mainly news) but there is a business directory that is shared across all three sites. My plan is that the search engines only index the business in the directory that are actually located in the place the each site is focused on. i.e. Listing pages for business in Alderley Edge are only indexed on alderleyedge.com and businesses in Prestbury only get indexed on prestbury.com - but all business have a listing page on each site. What would be the most effective way to do this? I have been using rel canonical but Google does not always seem to honour this. Will using meta noindex tags where appropriate be the way to go? or would be changing the urls structure to have the place name in and using robots.txt be a better option. As an aside my current url structure is along the lines of: http://dev.alderleyedge.com/directory/listing/138/the-grill-on-the-edge Would changing this have any SEO benefit? Thanks Martin
Technical SEO | | mreeves0 -
50+ duplicate content pages - Do we remove them all or 301?
We are working on a site that has 50+ pages that all have duplicate content (1 for each state, pretty much). Should we 301 all 50 of the URLs to one URL or should we just completely get rid of all the pages? Are there any steps to take when completely removing pages completely? (submit sitemap to google webmaster tools, etc) thanks!
Technical SEO | | Motava0