High number of Duplicate Page titles and Content related to index.php

[jfeld222]

It appears that every page on our site (www.bridgewinners.com) also creates a version of itself with a suffix.

This results in Seomoz indicating that there are thousands of duplicate titles and content.

1. Does this matter? If so, how much?

2. How do I eliminate this (we are using joomla)?

Thanks.

[RyanKent]

Hi Jason.

Yes, it matters. I can see there is a site linking to www.bridgewinners.com/index.php. That link should be to www.bridgewinners.com/. Since the link is for the wrong page, your home page is not receiving the juice from that link.

How much it matters depends on how many links you have to pages on your site that include index.php in the URL, the anchor text used in those links, the ranking of the linking domain and page, along with how important your search engine ranking is for your site. If you are at SEOmoz, it seems that it matters enough and should be fixed.

I am just learning Joomla now. There should either be an option to use "friendly URLs" or a plugin which provides that feature.

[OgyDog]

Jason:

1. As Ryan recommended, use an SEF plugin for Joomla. We use sh404SEF since 2007 on all our sites. That will prevent many duplicate pages caused by different item ids and other url parameters.

2. if you use friendly URL plugin, then you should be able to block all Joomla URLs starting with index.php and index2.php via robots.txt file. Check this website as an example of Joomla site with additional URLs blocked using robots.txt file: http://www.bulletinbag.com/robots.txt

3. Finally, use a properly configured sitemap extension for Joomla and submit it to search engines. This will tell search engines which pages to consider first if it finds duplicated pages. We recommend using XMAP Joomla extension.

Best,

Ogy

[RyanKent]

In Joomla 1.6 login as an administrator then look at Site > Global Configuration > Site Settings. On the right side you will see SEO Settings. The 2nd option is Use URL rewriting. If you are on an Apache web server using a htaccess file (the most common web configuration) then check the YES box and it will remove the index.php from your URLs.

This change does not require any plugin to work. I have a new, clean install and it works for me.

[OgyDog]

True, however native friendly url handling in Joomla has serious limitations when it comes to url and metadata handling.

Looking at www.bridgewinners.com, he already has friendly URLs. If using sh404SEF, Jason should ensure to enable .htaccess flie to lose /index.php/ in URLs.

[RyanKent]

Thanks for the tip Ognjen. I am just learning Joomla. I love it so far but it will take months for me to begin to have any level of comfort with the software.

[OgyDog]

Good luck & enjoy Joomla

[jfeld222]

Thank you Ryan and Ogy. Those answers are much appreciated.