Duplicate index.php/webpage pages on website. Help needed!

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Guys,

Having a really frustrating problem with our website. It is a Joomla 1.7 site and we have some duplicate page issues.

What is happening is that we have a webpage, lets say domain.com/webpage1 and then we also have domain.com/index.php/webpage1.

Google is seeing these as duplicate pages and is causing me some real SEO problems. I have tried setting up a 301 redirect but it wn't let me redirect /index.php/webpage1 to /webpage1.

Anyone have any ideas or plugins that can be used to sort this out?

Any help will be really appreciated!

Matt.

[JustinTaylor88]

Hi Matthew,

Have you tried using a rel="canonical" link? Have not tried these using Joomla, but a search on google has brought up this article that talks about using it.

http://www.joomlablogger.net/seo/joomla-seo/how-to-use-canonical-links-with-joomla-to-avoid-duplicate-content/

You can also find out information about what a canonical link is and when to use it here:-

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/canonicalization

hope this helps

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Justin,

Thanks for that. I have been trying to find a plugin that will work to do the canonical URLs for Joomla 1.7 and having real problems. Ideally, I want a free plugin as well. The one in the blog post you sent is a paid one, and that is just for SEF URLs and doesn't do the canonical tag.

Thanks all the same though.

Matt.

[MatthewBarby]

I have now solved the problem. Thank God!

Just in case anyone is aving the same probllem, I used the following Joomla! plugin to generate the canonical links:

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/site-management/seo-a-metadata/meta-data/11038?qh=YToyOntpOjA7czo5OiJjYW5vbmljYWwiO2k6MTtzOjExOiInY2Fub25pY2FsJyI7fQ%3D%3D