Confused about SEO for Forums (Status Code 200)

[kentien93]

I recently created a forum for my website (lets say my site is xyz.com so my forum is forum.xyz.com) and I've been getting status code 200s for tons of my forum pages about duplicate content- especially for threads that have a ton of interaction. Is there a way to fix this? I want my forum to be indexed and not get penalized, but if i canonical tag my main forum page wouldn't that take away the glory the awesome interactions my users are having? Anyone with forum experience can shed some light on this? Thank you so much!

[RyanPurkey]

Hi Peiken. Status Code 200 is actually a good thing.  That's the HTTP status code that just means the page is OK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes#2xx_Success

Within the duplicate content checker on Moz.com you'll get a better view of the duplicate content issues by downloading the CSV using the "Download CSV" button.  Once that's open you'll have a better look into the pages with duplicate content.  My guess is that a root page for a thread or discussion is being compared to "duplicate" ones deeper in the thread.  Take a look at the CSV though and see if that begins to make more sense.  Cheers!

[kentien93]

Thank you Ryan, I'll look into the CSV file!