Fixing my sites problem with duplicate page content

[JoshMaxAmps]

My site has a problem with duplicate page content. SEO MOZ is telling me 725 pages worth. I have looked a lot into the 301 Re direct and the Rel=canonical Tag and I have a few questions:

First of all, I'm not sure which on I should use in this case. I have read that the 301 Redirect is the most popular path to take. If I take this path do I need to go in and change the URL of each of these pages or does it automatically change with in the redirect when I plug in the old URL and the new one? Also, do I need to just go to each page that SEO MOZ is telling me is a duplicate and make a redirect of that page?

One thing that I am very confused about is the fact that some of these duplicates listed out are actually different pages on my site. So does this just mean the URL's are too similar to each other, and there fore need the redirect to fix them? Then on the other hand I have a log in page that says it has 50 duplicates. Would this be a case in which I would use the Canonical Tag and would put it into each duplicate so that the SE knew to go to the original file?

Sorry for all of the questions in this. Thank you for any responses.

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

What you should do depends on what the issue is. 301's are useful if your duplicate issues are due to both www and non www urls being available to the search engines. The canonical tag is useful if you have url parameters that are causing duplicate content or if you have a multi capitalisation issue with your urls. There are  other possibilities for the root cause, so first thing to do is properly identify what is causing the duplicate content issue for each case (there might be various reasons). What kind of duplicates they are will then guide you as to the best way to approach the solution. You can check out this moz guide for a good rundown on potential issues and solutions.

Without knowing your site it is tough to tell the exact issue, but:

Duplicate content is related to the page content itself, not the url - so if you are seeing different pages all flagged as duplicate it likely means the actual content on them is very similar. If you 301 redirect these pages then only the final page the 301 redirects to will still be available to users and search engines - so be sure this is what you intend to do. If for example these are pages for different (but similar) products then you would likely not want to do this.

The login page - depending on the issue (perhaps url parameters?) this is likely a good candidate for a rel canonical - in this case you put the canonical tag in each page version - most CMS's will do this automatically for all versions of the page if you set it up properly.

Hope that helps a bit!

[JoshMaxAmps]

Hi there! Thank you for your response!

Here is an example of pages that are very similar (But ARE different pages) but the URLS are different: (20 duplicates)

http://www.maxamps.com/categories.php?cat=90

http://www.maxamps.com/categories.php?cat=86

Here is an example of the login page which has 50 duplicates but all lead to the same place; the login page:

http://www.maxamps.com/cart.php?mode=login&refurl=%2Fproducts.php%3Fcat%3D408

http://www.maxamps.com/cart.php?mode=login&refurl=%2Fproducts.php%3Fcat%3D259

http://www.maxamps.com/cart.php?mode=login&refurl=%2Fproducts.php%3Fcat%3D252

I assume this would be because of costumer ID numbers possibly? However, it is before signing in.

I obviously have pages that are very similar with their products and this must be the issue. However, as you said, I don't want to lose all of the other content by redirecting everything to this one page. The canonical does not seem correct either because they are not the same page over and over so I am really lost as to how I fix this, especially because I did think that this was mostly a URL issue.

[LynnPatchett]

HI,

For the category pages that is more an issue of thin content - there is so little unique content on the pages that they are being flagged as duplicate. I would think your best bet in this case would be to get some more text in there describing the advantages/qualities etc of the relevant manufacturer - make the pages more unique in other words.

For the cart page, that is indeed a duplicate content issue due to url parameters. Is that a custom coded site or a CMS? I dont know what if anything those parameters do in real life (the refurl is for internal tracking?) but in this case a 301 is not what you want. A canonical to 'cart.php' is a possibilty, or maybe just meta tag NOINDEX the entire cart page if it has no seo value anyway.

There are quite a few variables to take into consideration, I would recommend reading up a bit on it, particularly this post on thin/duplicate content and this video on common ecommerce seo pitfalls (it is a great video, watch it all!).

[JoshMaxAmps]

Thank you very much for the informative post and video. I have watched the video especially several times.

I have yet another question. One of my duplicate pages is the home page. This is a www no-www problem it looks like:

http://killbillet.com

http://www.killbillet.com/forum.php?s=9b0841ea53f918d77f12ba32487df7cahttp://www.killbillet.comHowever, when I go to the /cpanel of my site and try to put in a rel=canonical in the index.php file i find this:

/* Tell forum.php to redirect
to the default url as defined
in the navigation manager */
define('VB_REDIRECT', true);

Doesn't this already mean it is supposed to be redirected and shouldn't have a duplicate?

On top of that I am unsure of how to find each duplicate page. Yes, I understand that index.php is my homepage but if I find index.php in the includes is this the duplicate of the homepage even though the file size is different? And is this where the canonical is meant to go?

[LynnPatchett]

HI,

So this is a different site and I don't think a rel canonical in the index.php is what you want, especially for a www/non www duplicate issue which is best solved with an htaccess 301 redirect. I am not familiar with that forum software but I would be very careful about putting canonical tags in if you are unsure what a particular file is or where it will be displayed - you might end up with the same tag for the entire site which would not be good at all!

Its best to try to take it one thing at a time, do a correction you are sure will fix one of your duplicate issues and then maybe wait for the next moz crawl which will have less issues and make it easier to focus on the remaining ones and investigate on the best way to solve them.

For the www or non www redirects you would usually put a couple of lines in your .htaccess file in your root directory, you can check out this link for the exact code and how to do it through cpanel. I would suggest taking a backup of the existing file in case you need to restore it quickly (typos can take a site down easily). If you have a developer who is familiar with this kind of thing it might be worth asking them to assist.

[JoshMaxAmps]

The link was very helpful. With the code that it shows you to use and my site having more than one duplicate would I need to add on to it for the "examples"?

So: (my writing is all in caps in this code)

#Force non-www:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.KILLBILLET.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://KILLBILLET.com/$1 [L,R=301]

is this really all I need? I do not need to enter in all of the URLs that lead to this homepage? Or am I thinking far too simply with this?
I greatly appreciate how much help you have given me. I will be looking into all the other things and if they are beyond me then I will get further help.

[LynnPatchett]

That code should automatically 301 redirect all urls with www in them to non www versions - you can check if this is working properly with this tool (for the moment I do not see the redirect working though).

So for any duplicates you are seeing because of that specific issue this will fix them.

You should then wait for the next moz crawl to happen and should see less duplicates (since these ones will be removed) - this will show you what duplicate issues are still apparent (as mentioned there are a number of reasons that duplicate content can occur) and then you can focus on what kind of duplicates they are and what fix(es) may be needed to address them.

It is best to fix one thing at a time and not pile a whole bunch of changes you are not sure about on top of each other - it keeps it easier to bug track if something goes wrong!