Monday, February 25, 2013

Duplicate Content with Google Web Master Tools

Do you ever get smashed in the face with SERPs rapidly dropping? Your index seemingly to infinitely grow? How about the lack of PR behind your website? Well if this is the case, then you probably have duplicate content issues.
duplicate titles

Things to watch for:

GET parameters in the ULR

  • session ids
  • filters
  • form fills
  • eCommerce properties
These all will create a URL with extra data that makes Google think that there are multiple unique page URLs with the same content which means duplicate content. GROSS. So make sure you take your time and resolve this issue using canonical URLS.

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.rolledalloys.com/"/>

Other solutions?

301 Redirects
URL rewriting
Meta Tags Robots.txt
Google Web Master Tools preferred Domain
Language Targeting


It’s possible that the US version will outperform the Canadian version (even on Google.ca) because it has more authority.
There’s a simple solution: the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” annotation.
If we use our previous example, we need to add the following code in the <head> section of the .us domain:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-CA" href="http://company.ca/page-example" />
On the .ca domain we need to place this code:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="http://company.com/page-example" />
In essence you’re telling Google that there’s an alternative version (or duplicate) in another language. 
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