Fixed "lower-case/mixed-case" Internal Links causing duplicate- Now What?

[yogitrout1]

Hi,

So after a site re-launch, Moz crawled it and reported over 150 duplicate content errors.  It was determined that it was because of incorrect uses of capitalization in internal links.  Using screaming frog, I found all (500+) internal links and fixed them to match the actual URL.  Now the site is100% consistent across the board as best I can tell.

I am unsure what to do next though.   We launched the site with all the internal link errors, and now many of the pages that are indexed and ranked are with the incorrect URL form.   Some have said to use a canonical tag.  But how can I use a canonical tag on a page doesn't even exist?   Same thing with 301.  Can I redirect  /examplepage to /ExamplePage if only /ExamplePage actually exists?

I would really appreciate some advice on what to do.   After I fixed the internal links, I waited a week and Moz crawled the site again and reported all the same errors, and then even more.  All capitalization.  Seems like it's a mess.  After I did another Screaming Frog crawl, it showed no duplicates, so I know I was successful in fixing the internals.

Help!!

[danny.wood]

My advice would be:

• Resubmit key pages to index through WMT (Google & Bing)
• Make sure your Sitemaps are up to date with the proper page URLs, and submitted to WMT
• Set up the 301s if you have the time. You can create redirections using your .htaccess file, as long as you have an Apache-based site. This page is a great guide to writing .htaccess commands, including 301s and others

I had a similar problem with a slightly different manifestation, related to trailing slashes on my URLs. It was hard, but after doing the first two steps and setting up redirects, it was just a question of waiting for Google and MOZ to catch-up. Redirects took care of bad SERP links, and at this point (just over 2-weeks after launch with bad links), everything has been updated with the correct page URLs. Good luck!

[Milian]

Just to add, you don't need a page to physically exist to add a 301 redirect Kristin, so you can set the redirects from these old pages fine.

[yogitrout1]

Thanks, this helps!