Duplicate content and 404 errors

[AliMac26]

I apologize in advance, but I am an SEO novice and my understanding of code is very limited. Moz has issued a lot (several hundred) of duplicate content and 404 error flags on the ecommerce site my company takes care of.

For the duplicate content, some of the pages it says are duplicates don't even seem similar to me. additionally, a lot of them are static pages we embed images of size charts that we use as popups on item pages. it says these issues are high priority but how bad is this? Is this just an issue because if a page has similar content the engine spider won't know which one to index?

also, what is the best way to handle these urls bringing back 404 errors? I should probably have a developer look at these issues but I wanted to ask the extremely knowledgeable Moz community before I do

[Vijay-Gaur]

Hi Ali,

Please check the title of your pages, if they are same then those links would be counted as duplicates. Also, check how many duplicates are being reported in google webmaster, these are also good indicators for duplicate pages.

This link  should help as well

http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content

& this is a link to a 301 redirect generator

http://www.htaccessredirect.com

Remember to also use a
Rel=Canonical put this tag in the correct page you want to show people.

Then do a 301 redirect on the pages that are duplicates and point them on ONLY right one

As for 404, they will need to be reviewed and handled with 301 to map them to actual URL.

I hope this helps, please feel free to respond if you have further questions.

Regards,

Vijay

[Jason_Rogers]

Hi Ali,

Are you on WordPress?

Jason

[TwoOctobers]

Ali,

If you are on WordPress you can try some of these. First, set up the free Yoast SEO plugin if you have not already.

I have been working on this exact issue. The way Tags are set up (on the client site) we are getting duplicate pages. I am trying a couple of things:

1. In Yoast XML Sitemaps > Taxonomies you can set "Tags" to "Not in Sitemap". Removing them from the XML Sitemap will at least lessen the frequency that Google accesses Taged pages.

2. In Yoast Titles & Meta > Taxonomies you can select Index or Noindex for your Tags.

Following the Tag idea, you might get a 404 if a Tag is changed or deleted. It's hard to diagnose 404s without seeing them. Consider a custom 404 error page, if you have not already. That will at least improve the user experience. With htaccess you set different redirects and custome 404 pages depending on the site section.

Tags in WP don't seem to add much benefit, and probably cause more problems (like dupe content). Even if you are diligent with Tag consisitency, most blogs end up with nearly duplicate Tags.

There are many Moz posts on the topic of duplicate content in WP specific to Tags that might further illuminate your question.

Did you change anything universally, like switch to https? Missed redirects can cause a 404.

The WP Broken Links in Tools will direct you straight to the 404 pages.

Here are some more tips for dealing with 404 in WP:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/6-best-free-404-plugins-for-wordpress/

The WP plugin "Redirection" is well regarded, but use caution with lots of ecomm url variables.

Hope this helps!