Duplicate content / joomla

[polyniki]

This post is deleted!

[RyanKent]

For your duplicate content issue, your crawl report has revealed a legitimate issue which needs to be fixed. You need to make a decision as to how you wish your site to be presented. Choose either www.mysite.com or mysite.com. Once you make your choice the next step is to adjust your site to enforce your decision.

1. If you have cpanel access there is a redirect tool which will allow you to make this change. If you have apache hosting you can modify your .htaccess file. If either of these are not familiar to you, the easiest thing is to contact your web host and let them know your decision. If you have managed hosting (most people do) your host will make this change for you at no charge.

2. Some people will advise you to go to Google WMT to set a preferred domain but it is not necessary at all if you properly take care of the issue as described above. If you did wish to make the change in Google WMT, you should make it in Bing WMT as well.

3. Review your site. Every link you have should use the same format. If you decided you prefer the www version of the URL ensure every signature, anchor text, navigation link, etc. always use the www form of the URL.

With respect to your URL issue, you need to be careful here. If you make errors then you can break links so when users try to reach a web page they will receive a 404 error (page not found). Ideally you should have a single URL for each web page. When I first worked with Joomla, I found the process to be confusing as well. It is important you work with someone who understands Joomla URLs to establish a single URL for each page, and then 301 redirect any old URLs to the proper page.

My recommendation is to fix all the issues with your site, then install AceSEF or SH404SEF. Both are SEO extensions which will help resolve many SEO issues.

[gfiorelli1]

If you don't specify expressly what canonical version of your site you want to show online (www. or not www.), then both will be online, indexable and seen as two different sites.

In fact, what we usually consider as a domain (www.domain.com) really it is not domain but a sub-domain (as blog.domain.com), while domain.com is a root domain.

To make it easier: two different sites with identical content.

If you can access the .htaccess file (or you have a dev with you who can do it), add this line in the .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^freegamesonline.gr [NC]

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.freegamesonline.gr/$1 [L,R=301]

Remind to follow these steps in you do the change by yourself:

1. download the .htaccess file to your pc

2. rename the file as htaccess.txt

3. open it with a text editor (notepad for instance)

4. add the lines shown above

5. upload the file to your ftp

6. save the old .htaccess file

7. rename the htaccess.txt you upload as .htaccess

8. test in your browser if the freegamesonline.gr is redirected to www.freegamesonline.gr

9. if you see an error 500 page, that mean that something has gone wrong, therefore restore the old .htaccess file

The tools suggested by Ryan are great, especially for 301 old page to new ones (and to solve the problem you have with your exerimental URLs)

[polyniki]

Thanks a lot, can you repost the htaccess text? I dont see all of it on my browser. I think I should keep the www because all of the links I posted about my page use it.

[polyniki]

Thanks a lot, i am really surprised to learn that. I think I will modify the htaccess file.

[gfiorelli1]

Ok, rewrote it using the Create Code Block here.

They are just two lines that you have to add to your existing .htaccess

[polyniki]

Thanks, i now read it - but because i do not unserstand the script, will this keep the www version or disregard it? I think I should keep the www version.

[gfiorelli1]

The code I wrote will redirect the domain.com version to the the www.domain.com one.