How to fix duplicate content errors with Go Daddy Site

[cschwartzel]

I have a friend that uses a free GoDaddy template for his business website. I ran his site through Moz Crawl diagnostics, and wow - 395 errors. Mostly duplicate content and duplicate page title

I dug further and found the site was doing this:

URL: www.businessname.com/page1.php

and the duplicate: businessname.com/page1.php

Essentially, the duplicate is missing the www. And it does this 2 hundred times. How do I explain to him what is happening?

[FedeEinhorn]

Does your friend have FTP access? If he/she does, then put a 301 redirect from the one you want to rank to the other. Having a site with "www" and without is actually having 2 pages with the same content, something you can easily fix by redirecting the entire domain to the other with a 301 response.

If he/she does have FTP access, look for the .htaccess file and put the following:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !=businessname.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://businessname.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Remember to change "businessname.com" with the actual domain name.

Hope that helps!