Why are my tags causing duplicate error?

[econley]

Hi,

When I run an SEO moz crawl it is picking up duplicate errors from my tags.

Currently I have these set as domain url/tag/name of the tag. Is this incorrect?

Is there anything I can do to stop this being picked up as duplicate pages?

Thanks,

Eliz

[dogflog]

Duplicate page content or duplicate page titles?

The URL Structure is ok.

[Keszi]

Hi Eliz,

If you have a Wordpress website, than most probable you have this issue all the time. If you "tag" a post with more than one tag than that specific post will appear as:

1. example.com/tag1/post

2. example.com/tag2/post

n. and so on

In order to fix this issue it would be advised to use a canonical link which will point out which is the "main" version of the article.

Although this will be picked up with the SEOmoz crawl, still Search Engines will see which is the main version that you are targeting.

Gr.,

Istvan

[econley]

It is showing as a duplicate page content error in the diagnostic crawl results.

[econley]

It is a wordpress site and yes I have used the tag sometimes on more than one post because sometimes the tag such as copywriting or business plan applies to more than one article. All the posts have a canonical tag.

I'm not totally sure what to do here?

Thanks.

Eliz

[Chammy]

Hi Eliz

You could just noindex the tag archives so in time they would drop out of the index.

The easiest way to do this is if you have an SEO plugin installed like Joast or All in One SEO. Both these plugins give you check boxes to tick saying you want to noindex tag archives (as well as lots of other stuff). You can also noindex categories and Archives which can give the same problem.

If you don't have one installed then I suggest you download Joast's.

Good luck

Wendy

[Keszi]

I totally agree with Wendy, the easiest solution would be to noindex the tag-archives.

If you do not want to do that, you could use canonicals, but that is tricky if you don't to it right.

Gr.,

Istvan

[csmm]

Hi Eliz,

I had the same problem a while ago and noindexed the tag archives as Wendy and Istvan have suggested; it took care of the problem.

Good luck!

Carolina

[econley]

Thanks that is really helpful. I have the All in One SEO plugin so I think I can do this.