Best way to fix duplicate content issues
-
Another question for the Moz Community. One of my clients has 4.5k duplicate content issues. For example: http://www.example.co.uk/blog and http://www.example.co.uk/index.php?route=blog/blog/listblog&year=2017. Most of the issues are coming from product pages.
My initial thoughts are to set up 301 redirects in the first instance and if the issue persists, add canonical tags.
Is this the best way of tackling this issue?
-
I have to agree with James Wolff, canonical tags look like the best course of action given the examples above. It does not seem like the 301 redirects are going to be necessary.
-
Hello,
Yes the content should be "canonicalized" and also 301 redirects can help. This is a common problem with sites like you are talking about. It is important to fix the issues of duplicate content as soon as possible so that it does not become a issues in thge search engines.
There is a good article here on MOZ on the subject so I suggest you take a look at it. I hope it helps you with your problem.
Article on "Duplicate Content".
Best Regards
-
Hi Laura-EMC,
I cant make up from your example what kind of duplicate content this is. You say it is from product pages but the first url looks like the homepage for your blog.
Anyway as a basis you should redirect duplicate content to the right page when the page doens´t need to be available for your users. e.g. you had a page for a product but now you have a better one and you redirect the users to this one.
A canonical should be used when the page needs to be available for your users but you don´t want them in the index. e.g. you have a shoe page for shoe size 41 but you also have a page for shoe size m. As the only difference on the page will be the size the content on them will be almost completely igual. you still want the users to be able to visite the page but not have it in the index.
Hope this 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
-
We need a bit of help from someone to fix the following issues causing speed issues on our website.
Hi We need a bit of help from someone to fix the following issues causing speed issues on our website.Does anyone know of someone that can help? Reduce server response time Optimize images Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content Avoid landing page redirects Leverage browser caching Minify CSS Minify JavaScript Minify HTML
Technical SEO | | Bev.Aquaspresso0 -
Finding a specific link - Duplicating my own content
Hi Mozzers, This may be a bit of a n00b question and i feel i should know the answer but alas, here i am asking. I have a page www.website.co.uk/page/ and im getting a duplicate page report of www.website.co.uk/Page/ i know this is because somewhere on my website a link will exists using the capitalised version. I have tried everything i can think of to find it but with no luck, any little tricks? I could always rewrite the urls to lowercase, but I have downloadable software etc also on the website that i dont want to take the capitals out of. So the best solution seems to be finding the link and remove it. Most link checkers I use treat the capitalised and non capitalised as the same thing so really arent helping lol.
Technical SEO | | ATP0 -
How to fix HTTP/HTTPS duplicate content
I recently installed an SSL certificate on the site: https://libertywholesalesupply.com Moz is now reading thousands of duplicate content pages because it is reading both http and https. I set up the configuration in Magento to auto-redirect the base URL, created a permanent redirect for the URL in the SEO settings, and adjusted the canonical settings. What am I missing??
Technical SEO | | adamxj20 -
Joomla: content accesible through all kinds of other links >> duplicate content?!
When i did a site: search on Google i've noticed all kind of URL's on my site were indexed, while i didn't add them to the Joomla navigation (or they were not linked anywhere on the site). Some examples: www.domain.com/1-articlename >> that way ALL articles are publicly visible, even if they are not linked to a menu-item... If by accident such a link get's shared it will be indexed in google, you can have 2 links with same content... www.domain.com/2-uncategorised >> same with categories, automatically these overview pages are visible to people who know this URL. On it you see all the articles that belong to that category. www.domain.com/component/content >> this gives an overview of all the categories inside your Joomla CMS I think most will agree this is not good for your site's SEO? But how can this be solved? Is this some kind of setting within Joomla? Anyone who dealt with these problems already?
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
How to fix duplicate content errors with Go Daddy Site
I have a friend that uses a free GoDaddy template for his business website. I ran his site through Moz Crawl diagnostics, and wow - 395 errors. Mostly duplicate content and duplicate page title I dug further and found the site was doing this: URL: www.businessname.com/page1.php and the duplicate: businessname.com/page1.php Essentially, the duplicate is missing the www. And it does this 2 hundred times. How do I explain to him what is happening?
Technical SEO | | cschwartzel0 -
Duplicate content issue
Hi everyone, I have an issue determining what type of duplicate content I have. www.example.com/index.php?mact=Calendar,m57663,default,1&m57663return_id=116&m57663detailpage=&m57663year=2011&m57663month=6&m57663day=19&m57663display=list&m57663return_link=1&m57663detail=1&m57663lang=en_GB&m57663returnid=116&page=116 Since I am not an coding expert, to me it looks like it is a URL parameter duplicate content. Is it? At the same time "return_id" would makes me think it is a session id duplicate content. I am confused about how to determine different types of duplicate content, even by reading articles on Seomoz about it: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/duplicate-content. Could someone help me on how to recognize different types of duplicate content? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Help removing duplicate content from the index?
Last week, after a significant drop in traffic, I noticed a subdomain in the index with duplicate content. The main site and subdomain can be found below. http://mobile17.com http://232315.mobile17.com/ I've 301'd everything on the subdomain to the appropriate location on the main site. Problem is, site: searches show me that if the subdomain content is being deindexed, it's happening really slowly. Traffic is still down about 50% in the last week or so... what's the best way to tackle this issue moving forward?
Technical SEO | | ccorlando0 -
Duplicate content question with PDF
Hi, I manage a property listing website which was recently revamped, but which has some on-site optimization weaknesses and issues. For each property listing like http://www.selectcaribbean.com/property/147.html there is an equivalent PDF version spidered by google. The page looks like this http://www.selectcaribbean.com/pdf1.php?pid=147 my question is: Can this create a duplicate content penalty? If yes, should I ban these pages from being spidered by google in the robots.txt or should I make these link nofollow?
Technical SEO | | multilang0