Duplicate content - working with CMS constraints

[combska]

Hi,

We use an industry-specific CMS and I'm struggling to figure out how we can fix duplicate content issues.

Thankfully, the vendor has agreed to work on 301 vs 302 redirects.

However, they aren't currently able to give us the ability to add rel=canonical tags to page headers (we've put it in their "suggestion box" which tends to take a long time, if ever, to materialize).

My understanding is that the tag will not be recognized if it's in the body code, correct? (aka the part of the page we can edit from the CMS)

Is there anything else I can do?

[Deacyde]

Yes you're right, needs to be in the header,

What CMS is this? The resulting answer would be what determines the possible alternatives. Drupal was one I worked with for a few years and still do, modules and some template editing was what solves some SEO issues I've had experience with. But again, not all CMS are created equal.

[combska]

This post is deleted!

[combska]

We're a K-12 and use a CMS called Schoolwires: http://www.schoolwires.com/

(I'm worried since it's so niche we might be out of luck...)

[Deacyde]

Ahh yes, this is a very niche product, they just haven't had enough users to bring up all the various features that are desired. Or just don't understand SEO and how to develop for it, which is something many CMS providers have dealt with or are dealing with.

From reading through the editor guide pdf, seems it really gives you the basic options of site editing, no backend or much frontend control in that aspect either.

Can I ask why the duplicate content can't be deleted? Is it that it's one content piece but being displayed on various pages? If it's not too much content being duplicated, you might be ok.

[combska]

Thanks for your replies!!

There are a few instances of duplicate content where we can actually delete, but mostly it's many URLs going to the same page due to the structure of the site, ie:

http://www.sanjuan.edu/Domain/2396 (this is the URL for the "section" that houses many pages)

http://www.sanjuan.edu/Page/4808 (this is the URL for the page)

http://www.sanjuan.edu/family (this is the friendly URL that we've created that in an ideal world we'd have be the rel=canonical)

I will ask other districts using the CMS to upvote my suggestion in the vendor's suggestion box...I guess that may be the best I can do...

[Deacyde]

You're very welcome, we're all in this google together.

I know that issue all too well, happens a lot with sitemap pages, sites that don't declare one type or url structure so they have site.com/ and site.com.

I'm kinda surprised the CMS doesn't redirect the url when you create the friendly url, but glad they agreed to work on it, I would utilize your best offense and get the other customers of the CMS to upvote and squeak their wheels.  Since this also seems like a case of a CMS missing crucial features for site growth.

If they don't fix this promptly, consider if possible a switch to a more commonly used CMS like Drupal, Wordpress or even Joomla, all are established for years with these kinda issues already worked out and in some cases extra addons to help assist. But understand, often the choice of CMS isn't always up to us.

It does seem like for now, best you can do is try and reduce what you can on that page, but could be that the issue will keep presenting itself until the root cause is contained.