Do you have duplicate content? How do you fix them with regard to SEO best practices?
Duplicate pages
Why does the error occur?
There are pages considered to be identical or duplicate because they contain the exact same source code.
How does it impact SEO?
Low – High importance: ★★☆
Having duplicated content does not create a penalty, but it can influence search engine rankings. The primary problem is the incorrect directing of link equity. Link juice that should be delivered to one single page is divided. Therefore, having multiple duplicate pages can lead to a drop in ranking. Search engines may exclude part of the URLs, or they may display different URLs in the search results that we do not want to show to visitors. Another problem is, that if you have lots of duplicate pages, the robots have to crawl many more pages, and that can be a problem with the crawl budget for large websites.
For example, duplicate content is a common issue in the e-shop segment when using filters.
How to fix it
- At Dashboard, open issue Duplicate pages.
- After clicking, you will land on Explorer sections, where you can filter and group your data as needed.
- The most common and recommended solution is use of redirect. Every duplicate page redirects to the primary URL with status code 301. After that, edit internal linking so you do not link to duplicate pages anymore. If you need to keep the duplicate URL, use canonical.
On a WordPress website, the easiest way for setting up canonical URL is by using Yoast SEO plugin.
Note: If you have only a few duplicate pages on your site, it’s not a big deal, and you don’t need to pay too much attention to that.
Advanced tip:
Before you start exporting and working with such URLs, first check whether there are canonicals already:
- Change Columns and add Canonical.
- See if canonicals were used properly.
More technical SEO tutorials: