7,608 High Priority Crawl Diagnostic problems

[emanbee]

Hey There,

I have an e-commerce site that is showing 7,608 High Priorities to fix - 7,536 are duplicate content. What's the most effective process to start with?

I'm open to outsourcing some of the work to an expert - email me on dave@emanbee.com

Thanks for your time,

Dave

[katemorris]

Start in Google Webmaster Tools or in the Moz Crawl. Identify those pages with the same title tag and work through that list. The title tag is usually a good indication of duplicate content.

If the content is duplicate for sure, determine if it's a useful duplicate. If so, use a canonical from the duplicate to the original. If it's just duplicated with no real reason, find out how to get rid of the duplicate. This can be anything from unnecessary parameters, to tag pages, and so many more.

You'll start to see trends in the data, try to fix the bigger problems as you see them.

[emanbee]

Hi Katemorris,

Thanks again for getting back to me.

I have started going through and fixing up pages. I'm hoping you can clarify something from MOZ for me?

In MOZ > crawl diagnostics> duplicate page content (the largest and only high priority issue listed for me) > the first link in the list > show the duplicate pages

Below is an example of 4 links that are all showing as duplicates of http://www.mooloolabamusic.com.au/page/brands in the moz software:

http://www.mooloolabamusic.com.au/live-sound-lighting/lighting/atmospheric-effects/?pr=72-82&rf=pr

http://www.mooloolabamusic.com.au/live-sound-lighting/lighting/atmospheric-effects/?pr=0-72&rf=pr

http://www.mooloolabamusic.com.au/studio-production/?pr=1732-1828&rf=pr

http://www.mooloolabamusic.com.au/studio-production/?pr=1770-1827&rf=pr

Can you please clarify how these pages have duplicate content and how to fix this? There are thousands like this.

When I have a look at them using the moz search bar there is already a cononical tag in the header which is either not working or the moz software does not pick it up or is the site template creating 'duplicate content'?

Thanks so much for your time,

Dave

[katemorris]

Looks like moz isn't taking the canonical into effect, as long as it's there, you're fine. But I'd warn you not to use relative canonical links ( /directory/page/ vs http://www.domain.com/directory/page/), link to the whole thing. I've seen this go wrong in the past. It's not causing issues now but could in the future.

[emanbee]

Cheers Kate.

From doing more reading, MOZ/ Google views thin content (300 words or less) or webpages with 95% of the same HTML code as duplicate. That will be the majority of what is showing in my crawl diagnostics.

That means I'm back to your original advice of fixing up duplicate page titles from GWT.

Currently, the canonical tags are generated sitewide through a template function. Without full control over the canonical tag I can't fix or structure things as easily as I'd like so I will see if a web dev can help out with this. We should be able to add the whole link too.

Thanks again,

Dave