Duplicate content: using the robots meta tag in conjunction with the canonical tag?
-
We have a WordPress instance on an Apache subdomain (let's say it's blog.website.com) alongside our main website, which is built in Angular. The tech team is using Akamai to do URL rewrites so that the blog posts appear under the main domain (website.com/more-keywords/here). However, due to the way they configured the WordPress install, they can't do a wildcard redirect under htaccess to force all the subdomain URLs to appear as subdirectories, so as you might have guessed, we're dealing with duplicate content issues.
They could in theory do manual 301s for each blog post, but that's laborious and a real hassle given our IT structure (we're a financial services firm, so lots of bureaucracy and regulation). In addition, due to internal limitations (they seem mostly political in nature), a robots.txt file is out of the question.
I'm thinking the next best alternative is the combined use of the robots meta tag (no index, follow) alongside the canonical tag to try to point the bot to the subdirectory URLs. I don't think this would be unethical use of either feature, but I'm trying to figure out if the two would conflict in some way? Or maybe there's a better approach with which we're unfamiliar or that we haven't considered?
-
Hey there,
Try to avoid using both canonical and noindex, it is not advised (source: https://www.seroundtable.com/noindex-canonical-google-18274.html).
If you are using canonical on the subdomain it should be more than enough to deindex the subdomain version (if in any way it gets indexed) and resolve the duplicate content issue.
Greetings, Keszi
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 issue
Hi, A client of ours has one URL for the moment (https://aalst.mobilepoint.be/) and wants to create a second one with exactly the same content (https://deinze.mobilepoint.be/). Will that mean Google punishes the second one because of duplicate content? What are the recommendations?
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
I am trying to generate GEO meta tag for my website where on one page there are multiple locations My question is, Can I add GEO tagging for every address?
Am I restricted to 1 geo tag per page or can i add multiple geo tags ?
Technical SEO | | lina_digital0 -
Duplicate Content - Different URLs and Content on each
Seeing a lot of duplicate content instances of seemingly unrelated pages. For instance, http://www.rushimprint.com/custom-bluetooth-speakers.html?from=topnav3 is being tracked as a duplicate of http://www.rushimprint.com/custom-planners-diaries.html?resultsperpg=viewall. Does anyone else see this issue? Is there a solution anyone is aware of?
Technical SEO | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Duplicate Content Issues - Where to start???
Dear All I have recently joined a new company Just Go Holidays - www.justgoholidays.com I have used the SEO Moz tools (yesterday) to review the site and see that I have lots of duplicate content/pages and also lots of duplicate titles all of which I am looking to deal with. Lots of the duplicate pages appear to be surrounding, additional parameters that are used on our site to refine and or track various marketing campaigns. I have therefore been into Google Webmaster Tools and defined each of these parameters. I have also built a new XML sitemap and submitted that too. It looks as is we have two versions of the site, one being at www.justgoholidays.com and the other without the www It appears that there are no redirects from the latter to the former, do I need to use 301's here or is it ok to use canonicalisation instead? Any thoughts on an action plan to try to address these issues in the right order and the right way would be very gratefully received as I am feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. (we also use a CMS system that is not particularly friendly and I think I will have to go directly to the developers to make lots of the required changes which is sure to cost - therefore really don't want to get this wrong) All the best Matt
Technical SEO | | MattByrne0 -
Duplicate content issue
Moz crawl diagnostic tool is giving me a heap of duplicate content for each event on my website... http://www.ticketarena.co.uk/events/Mint-Festival-7/ http://www.ticketarena.co.uk/events/Mint-Festival-7/index.html Should i use a 301 redirect on the second link? i was unaware that this was classed as duplicate content. I thought it was just the way the CMS system was set up? Can anyone shed any light on this please. Thanks
Technical SEO | | Alexogilvie0 -
What is the best way to use canonical tag
Hi, i have been researching this since yesterday and have looked at this subject many times before but still cannot get my head around it. i done a report on my site which was very useful, i used http://www.juxseo.com for my site www.in2town.co.uk and it brought me some useful information but part of that info was it was telling me that i should have on my home page a canonical tag which would improve my seo. Now i am using sh404sef for my friendly urls and i am using joomla 3.0 and when i approached the makers of the sh404sef to ask about the tag they said i would need to be careful of using it as it could damage my site and my rankings. i have read lots of information but still do not have a clear understanding behind it. can anyone please explain the best way to use this and should i be using where i may have some sort of duplicate page, any help to understand this would be great.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How different should content be so that it is not considered duplicate?
I am making a 2nd website for the same company. The name of the company, our services, keywords and contact info will show up several times within the text of both websites. The overall text and paragraphs will be different but some info may be repeated on both sites. Should I continue this? What precautions should I take?
Technical SEO | | savva0 -
Duplicate content and http and https
Within my Moz crawl report, I have a ton of duplicate content caused by identical pages due to identical pages of http and https URL's. For example: http://www.bigcompany.com/accomodations https://www.bigcompany.com/accomodations The strange thing is that 99% of these URL's are not sensitive in nature and do not require any security features. No credit card information, booking, or carts. The web developer cannot explain where these extra URL's came from or provide any further information. Advice or suggestions are welcome! How do I solve this issue? THANKS MOZZERS
Technical SEO | | hawkvt10