Fixing Duplicate Content Errors

[benners]

SEOMOZ Pro is showing some duplicate content errors and wondered the best way to fix them other than re-writing the content.

Should I just remove the pages found or should I set up permanent re-directs through to the home page in case there is any link value or visitors on these duplicate pages?

Thanks.

[Aran_Smithson]

Hi,

Can you provide examples of pages what contain duplicate content?

It's difficult to know how to handle them without seeing your site.

[benners]

Hi Aran,

I don't really want to post the URL on this public post, but I can say that I have a site that has some auto-generated regional content, which I realise is not recommended.

What's happened is two pages are completely identical down to the fact that various regions have similar town names and the code is showing the same page. E.g.

England/Bedfordshire/Bedford
England/Lancashire/Bedford

It would be easier for me to put 301 redirects on the dupes so I can avoid having to get into the code and remove the auto-generated duplicate pages. Links to the duplicate pages will still show if I just do redirects.

I think I've answered my own question really as it would be best to remove any links going to duplicate pages to reduce out-bound links on the linking pages.

Paul

[cfguti]

If the content is the same, you can use te canonical tag to tell search engines what is the original content.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

Bye

[benners]

Good suggestion. Thanks for your help.

[Aran_Smithson]

Hi Paul,

I would have thought that a 301 is going to be a little confusing for your visitors, as they may be browsing the Lancashire part of your site and find themselves redirected to the bedfordshire side. I'd personally prefer to write some content for Lancashire/Bedford.

Understood you don't want to share the URL, but as I have said, difficult to answer the problem without seeing it in context.

Cheers

Aran

[Aran_Smithson]

Not sure if this is the right usage of canonical. Seems a bit cheaty

[Dr-Pete]

Sorry, the thread was getting a bit nested, so I'm breaking out this response, even though it relates to a couple of replies. Although it is tough to tell without specifics, I suspect that you do need to canonicalize these somehow. Geo-pages that only differ by a keyword or two didn't fare well in the Panda updates, and Google is starting to see them as "thin" content. I do actually think the canonical tag is preferable to a 301 here (at least from my understanding of the problem). As Aran said, the 301 will remove the pages for visitors as well, and they may have some value.

While they're technically not 100% duplicates, Google is pretty liberal with their interpretation of the canonical tag in practice (in fact, I'd say they're actual interpretation is much more liberal than their stated interpretation). If the pages really have no search value, you could META NOINDEX them - it's unlikely that they're being linked to.