Duplicate Content and Titles in SEOMoz reports

[TRICORSystems]

I've had to rename some of the pages on my site and also move them to different locations. I placed a rel="canonical" on the old page pointing to the new one. The reports on my PRO Dashboard are telling me that I have Duplicate Content and Page Title errors.

Do the SEOMoz automated reports take the rel="canonical" link into consideration or do I need to remove these pages and do a 301 redirect from the old to the new page?

[AlanMosley]

not sure what rogerbot does here, but i would definatly 301 rather then use rel canonical, if they have no incomming links i would let them 404

[TRICORSystems]

Thanks for your response. I've been reading a lot about the rel=canonical for duplicate content so I figured that I had a situation in which I should utilize it. I also found this Matt Cuts video where he describes when to use rel=canonical and when to 301.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zW5UL3lzBOA

watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zW5UL3lzBOA

[AlanMosley]

From that video i would use a 301 as Matt stated, I could not see any circustance he mentioned to use canonical unless you dont have access to do a 301, there are other reaons also, if you use a canonical, you need to update both pages as the user is not redirected the new page with a canonical.

I think you have misunderstood when to use a rel canonical, a rel canonical is good for un aviodable duplicate content, where you have to have 2 pages the same, you can tell google what is the canonical, but this is not the case for you, you canuse a 301 redirect, that is What Matt suggested as tghe best solution.

You must also remebeer whan Matt Cutts is giveing advice he is giving advice from a google point of view, what it is good for google for you to know. If you notived he said near the end that there is not a lot of difference between the amount of pagerank passed between a canonical and a 301, that means there is a difference. He also states that they only leak a littlle bit of page rank, from all tests and writings on the subject that little bit is between 5% to 15%. i would not call that little myself. From tthe original algorithm google released years ago, i believe that it is 15%, So one has to wonder how much difference there is between a canonical and a 301 in link juice passed.

[TRICORSystems]

Yes, I did misinterpret when to properly use rel canonical. Google seemed to respond the way I was expecting though. All of my new pages went into the index while the old pages were ignored.

Once a 301 is in place, is it safe to remove the old page from the server?