Avoid Duplicate Pages for SEO Success

Avoid Duplicate Pages

Most bloggers and website owners are aware that Google dings site rankings for duplicate content – that is having the same content on multiple pages. But with WordPress, many of us are guilty of creating duplicate pages without even knowing it. The good news is, there’s an easy fix.

The Causes of Duplicate Pages

The issue stems from the ways WordPress allows the reader to access posts, particularly in an archive setting. Let’s say we innocently publish a simple post titled “Innocent Simple Post.” In doing so, we’ve likely created several different possible URLs:
http://www.yoursite.com/archive/innocent-simple-post
http://www.yoursite.com/tag/innocent-simple-post
http://www.yoursite.com/category/innocent-simple-post
(Of course, this depends on how your WordPress permalinks are configured, but you get the idea.)

Google and other search engines will see several distinct URLs to what it thinks are several distinct posts, but each with the exact same content. Google will spread the power of one page over several pages. Better to have one strong page, then several weak pages. Essentially, all we need to do is tell Google and the other search engines to chill and only index one page.

How Do You Fix Duplicate Pages?

We are going to use a concept known as a Canonical Link to solve this. Essentially what this does is give a post a “true URL.” Meaning that no matter which URL is used to load the post, consider “this URL” to be the one true URL to refer to this post.

To use Canonical Links, make sure you are using the Yoast SEO plugin. If you are not already running the Yoast SEO plug-in on your site, get it and install it directly. (This is one of those core plug-ins no blogger should be without.) Once Yoast SEO is running you are now using Canonical Links by default. Well done! Yoast SEO will use a post’s permalink as the Canonical Link for all posts.

If you’d like to take it a bit further and customize your Canonical Links for each post, Yoast SEO gives you that option. On the post admin screen, in the Yoast SEO metabox, click on the cog icon to access the advanced features. In the Advanced features you can specify a custom URL to use for the Canonical Link if you’d like to use something different from the default permalink URL.

Easy, right? If you’re still having problems, let us know and we can help.

Written by the Team at Pixel Jar

We hope you got something useful out of that post. If you'd like to read more we have an active blog with topics across the spectrum of website development. If you're researching information for a project we'd love to talk to you about it.

Development Tools

Development Tools – How We Get the Job Done

Whenever we are at a gathering of nerd, invariably the conversation will turn to what development tools we use. We’ll exchange ideas, tips, new applications we’ve tested and so on. Ultimately we are always looking for things that will make us work faster and things that make working easier. So with that, here’s what we…
Read More
The Importance of HTTPS

The Importance of HTTPS

There is a big push for making sure that your website is being served securely. The shift from HTTP to HTTPS is occurring at record rates and is being shepherded by Google. But better SEO isn’t the only reason to be paying attention to HTTPS. What was once only a requirement for sites that engage…
Read More
how-to-perform-a-website-audit_sidebar

Maximize your website's appeal and keep everything working for the best conversions.

How Can We Help You?

We want to build your next project.

Connect with Pixel Jar

Our Community

Subscribe to learn more about the goings on at Pixel Jar.

  • Note: Your email will be added to our CRM and be used to receive emails from Pixel Jar. You can unsubscribe at any time.

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.