Why do I get duplicate page title errors.

[bobbabuoy]

I keep getting duplicate page title errors on www.etraxc.com/ and www.etraxc.com/default.asp, which are both pointing to the same page.  How do i resolve this and how bad is it hurting my SEO.

[zigojacko]

Based on the URL's you provided above, it's more than just a duplicate page title issue as the contents on the page are almost identical too.

Normally, 'default.asp' is used as a true path to the homepage, similar to how 'index.php' works. If this is the case, you need to 301 redirect (Apache) or IIS redirect (ASP) default.asp to the homepage (/).

If these variations of essentially the same page are not handled, they are seen by search engines as duplicate pages. Please learn how to implement the above here.

[ahirai]

Add rel="canonical" href="http://www.etraxc.com/" /> to the header of default.asp.

But first, learn how the canonical tag works so you don't hurt yourself by mistake: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps

[bobbabuoy]

I can see real applications for this in query string based pages.  is there an advantage if I put that tag in my default page if I have removed any references to it throughout the site?

[bobbabuoy]

Yeah that is what I meant...but I eliminated all references to "default.asp" so hopefully that will help.

[ahirai]

If you have backlinks pointing to www.etraxc.com/default.asp then using the canonical tag to point to www.etraxc.com/ instead should still be helpful. Or you can do a permanent redirect from the former to the latter.

[zigojacko]

You'll have to rewrite the URL's rather than just remove reference to the path generally unless your CMS can cater for the required alterations.

[Dr-Pete]

Just adding to previous comments, both a 301-redirect or canonical tag should work here. Traditionally, we tend to suggest a 301-redirect for critical pages, but the canonical can sweep up other variants of the home-page (and it's common to have variations, like tracking parameters, https: versions, etc.), so I've gradually moved that direction.

In your case, the trick is that you're driving other content off of "default.asp", such as:

http://www.etraxc.com/default.asp?demo=part

I'm not clear if that's a unique page or if it's also a partial duplicate. If those pages are unique and you use the canonical tag, you'd knock those pages out of the index, so it would probably be the wrong choice here. If those are unintentional duplicates or low-value, then canonical is probably a good bet.

Even if you fix your internal links (which is the right thing to do), it's still good to sweep up the bad copies in Google's index, so I'd implement one of the fixes.