WordPress duplicate content is one repeated issue which is observed while hosting on WordPress websites. Falsely or accidentally, we may have some content on the website that is accessible through different URL’s. We keep on reading about WordPress SEO optimizing features everywhere. Although it is not wrong, WordPress has some serious issues with copied content which, in turn, affects SEO badly. Content duplicity is a serious issue for every blogger or developer working on WordPress.
Knowingly or unknowingly, we do have the same content that is accessible via 2 or different URL’s. The penalization due to duplicate content not only drops website ranking but also diminishes reputation on the web.
Listed below are some real ways that can be used to eliminate duplicate content issue in WordPress
1. Fix Duplicate Title and Meta Tags
In order to diagnose and fix duplicate title tags, all you need to do is, sign up for Google Webmaster Tool and browse Diagnostics> HTML Suggestions.
Here you will be able to detect if Google bot detected any problems with title tags.
This type of error occurs when you have a huge number of posts which might be exactly with the same title as the other.
Another way you can do is configuring Yoast’s WordPress SEO Plugin. For doing the same, go to WordPress Admin Dashboard and browse SEO>Titles &Metas and Click Post types Tab.
Now use %%title%% %%page%% for Title and %%excerpt%% %%page%% for Meta Description. Further, save the settings.
2. Finding Scraper sites for checking content piracy
To find out whether your content has been stolen by scrapers, you can opt CopyScape for posts and pages. This tool will detect matches to your content and will let you come across a website that has content similar to your own content.
The solution to the above problem is filing a DMCA complaint. Just go to DMCA page on Google and click on “Submit a legal request”.
DMCA tool can be easily accessed by opening the following link. On the next page, select “Web Search” as the product.
Once confirmed that you are a copyright owner, you will get a DMCA notice form from where you can report the links with copied content. Thereafter, you need to enter the URL of the original post and the URL’s of all violated materials. Once done with the submission, you need to wait for approx 10 days to get the copied content removed from Google’s top searches.
With successful removal, you will be able to acquire your rankings and traffic as soon as possible.
3. Author Archives
Date-based and author archives are two common archives built with WordPress. Custom archive pages can also be created with WordPress at any time.
Archive feature ensures delivering a good user experience but search engines will consider those archive pages as the different places where your content has been posted. Depending on the settings of theme, archive pages may include only a fragment of complete posts, which, in turn, leads to a duplicate content issue.
To avoid this, you can no-index your archives in the archive settings in Yoast SEO plugin.
4. Using Canonical URL’s
When you turn on Comment Pagination in WordPress, you might get multiple pages. All those pages look exactly the same as the first, except for different comments.
This could look like duplicate content. The way to fix this is the creation of Canonical URL’s. Canonical URL guides search engines towards the consideration of original/main page.
In general, WordPress is built-in with Canonical URL’s, however, they do the opposite of what you ask them to do for paginated comments.
Use of All in One SEO plugin can fix that for you. Just go to Settings and make sure that canonical URL’s box is marked as shown below.
Once done with this, refresh your second page of comments and check the header to make sure the Canonical URL is pointing back to the first page and not to itself.
Conclusion:
Duplicate content obstructs your SEO efforts and impacts the search engine rankings negatively.Additionally, it also hampers user experience, therefore, it is important to keep a check on duplicity issue by following the tips mentioned above. All these steps require technical know-how’s therefore, it is required to hire WordPress developer who will help you solve the issues rapidly.
Guest article written by: Bryan Lazaris is a proficient and skilled WordPress developer at HireWebDeveloper. His core job includes the development of custom WordPress websites. In addition to this, he also likes sharing knowledge on WordPress web development. This blog is one of his visionary and well-written compositions aimed at sharing knowledge to readers.
Oh! great, this is the answer to my challenge, I saw a message on my Google Console that my post are duplicate titles and I didn’t know how to resolve. This guide is quite useful for me.
Thanks