How do I avoid duplicate content and page title errors when using a single CMS for a website

[kpreneur]

I am currently hosting a client site on a CMS with both a Canadian and USA version of the website. We have the .com as the primary domain and  the .ca is re-directed from the registrar to the Canadian home page. The problem I am having is that my campaign produces errors for duplicate page content and duplicate page titles. Is there a way to setup the two versions on the CMS so that these errors do not get produced?

My concern is getting penalized from search engines.

Appreciate any help.

Mark Palmer

[anthonytjm]

Does the CMS have a SEF plugin that can help make each page unique to the title, description and keywords that you enter when adding new pages? I am pretty sure Joomla has a feature like this and would think most cms applications would.

[AJPro]

You should look into using the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" This way you can specify what country and language the page is created for.

Read about it here:

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077

Good luck!

[kpreneur]

Yes the CMS has SEF tools that allow me to create unique URL's page ttiles and meta data with the exception of the blog module. I have been able to deal with most duplicate page titles using this. However, the big concern is the duplicate content - the client site has a need for unique content on some pages, but not all pages - will the site be penalized fro duplicate content based on this?

[kpreneur]

Thanks Stefan - looking into that link.

[anthonytjm]

I would still take precautions to not end up with duplicate content. Its an easy fix, so why take the chance. Hers an excerpt from google webmaster tools for using canonical tag.

If Google knows that these pages have the same content, we may index only one version for our search results. Our algorithms select the page we think best answers the user's query. Now, however, users can specify a canonical page to search engines by adding a element with the attribute rel="canonical" to the section of the non-canonical version of the page. Adding this link and attribute lets site owners identify sets of identical content and suggest to Google: "Of all these pages with identical content, this page is the most useful. Please prioritize it in search results."