Duplicate pages

[fauxacademy]

This post is deleted!

[GPainter]

Howdy Heidi,

Thanks for comming to Moz! There are a few solutions for problems I'll try to give you mine for your problem.

You have two urls above:

http://www.mysite.com/classes/textures/?tab=register

http://www.mysite.com/classes/textures/?tab=homework

To me these look like two filters for one page (http://www.mysite.com/classes/textures/) so lets assume the content is the same for this page?

Now you have a canonical tag going here -https://www.mysite.com/courses/texture-classes"/>

This is a third url unrelated, this is fine if all these are duplicates and you want the canonical link to rank.

To make this all a little easier to under stand lets look at the canonical link:

its purpose is if you have duplicate content on pages (e.g. the same content but maybe its for different colours) you would use the canonical to point duplicate to one main page (say the original).

Now you can use this as an easier way to maange duplicate content especially for query base urls (a url with? in it like above).

Another option is to look at the pages (see 2 above) and ensure they are unique with content and meta tags etc.

There is a great tool called screaming frog which is very handy for helping find duplicate content as well as working out if its been fixed (you can recrawl as many times as you like) its free up to 500 urls

Lastly: if you fix something you have to wait as it can take a little while for it to appear as "fixed" in Google Webmaster tools (search console)

I hope that helps, and was what you were asking. I'm sure some other helpful Mozzers will also give some great ideas too!

[Toddfoster]

Hello Heidi,

Some additional information may be necessary here. From what I understand of what you are saying, however, it seems as if your site is showcasing the same content on multiple pages which is a problem if your website is not featuring canonical tags.

There are some concerns I would have with the way your correction is laid out. I don't know what your webmaster has given you in terms of advice, but you generally want to limit commercial keywords in your Title Tags (Page Titles). From what I am seeing, you might get slapped with a Panda penalty if Google crawls your site and sees something like:

Texture Classes - Timeless Creations - Wall Designs Ideas | mysite - Learn. Be Inspired

To break it down on a keyword level, your title is saying:

Texture Classes - Timeless Creations - Wall Designs Ideas | mysite - Learn. Be Inspired
Commercial Keyword - Confusion - Commercial Keyword | Brand - Slogan

Generally speaking, Google doesn't like to see commercial keyword-heavy Titles, instead opting for a more "natural" approach. If you asked me to optimize this Title, I would suggest:

Texture Classes | Brand
Wall Designs Ideas | Brand

OR

Brand | Texture Classes
Brand | Wall Designs Ideas

We made this adjustment to the afore-mentioned client, and their traffic shot skywards almost over night, once the penalty was removed. In addition to solving the technical ranking problem associated with keyword stuffing, it is also more approachable from a UX (User Experience) perspective, meaning that people are more likely to click a link that provides them with all the information they are seeking. If I am a potential customer and I see the original line, I will likely get confused over what the page is offering. The optimization I am suggesting is straight to the point and likely to bring in more attention.

To fix this problem overall, I think the coding may have to take a back seat to site architecture, and you may have to look into adjusting your sitemap and internal linking habits.

Could you please explain what you mean by "11 links point to the same page." ?

Happy to offer any assistance I can to help you out! Feel free to reach out and we can go over this in more depth.

Hope this helps and best of luck moving forward!

Rob

[MattRoney]

Hi Heidi!

Did Chris and Robert answer your question?