Duplicate Page Content Should we 301 - Best Practices?

[365ToursSafaris]

What would be the best way to avoid a Duplicate Page Content for these type of pages.

Our website generates user friendly urls, for each page..  
So it is the same exact page, just both versions of the url work..

Example:

http://www.safari365.com/about-africa/wildebeest-migration

http://www.safari365.com/wildebeest-migration

• I don't think adding code to the page will work because its the same page for the incorrect and correct versions of the page.

• I don't think i can use the URL parameter setting because the version with /about-africa/ is the correct (correct as it it follows the site navigation)

• I was thinking of using the htaccess to redirect to the correct version..

  Will that work ? and does it follow best Practices ?  any other suggestions that would work better ?

[TomRayner]

Hi there

If the page is technically the same page, then adding a <noindex>meta tag would not work.</noindex>

Your alternatives would be to either 301 one of the URLs using the .htaccess file, as you've suggested, or to use a rel=canonical tag on the page.  If you use the canonical tag in the code, it means that any other URL that is generated from it will refer to your designated canonical URL as the original.  This would give a very strong indication to Google to not index any URL other than the one you have defined, meaning it would remove any duplicate content risk.

For help on canonicals, check out this Moz guide and also this recent Google webmaster central blog post.

The 301 redirect would work equally as well, however.

[365ToursSafaris]

Thank you Tom,

I will have a look at the rel=canonical tag, doing things the google way always helps