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Duplicate Title tags even with rel=canonical
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Hello,
We were having duplicate content in our blog (a replica of each post automatically was done by the CMS), until we recently implemented a rel=canonical tag to all the duplicate posts (some 5 weeks ago).
So far, no duplicate content were been found, but we are still getting duplicate title tags, though the rel=canonical is present.
Any idea why is this the case and what can we do to solve it?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Tej Luchmun
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Has this ever been done? Would be very handy.
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Hi Sean,
Thanks a lot for your reply.
Indeed having the rel=canonical pointing to the wrong page would be another issue. What David Lee suggested me is using the rel=canonical on both the original post and the duplicate post. This can be set programmatically instead of the ignore button.
But surely, the ignore button would be much more easier, in some situations. Please keep us update once this ignore feature has been implement.
Thanks again for your help.
Tej Luchmun
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Hi Sheena,
Yes, Moz Crawl Diagnostics Report is showing duplicate title tag for the content that already have a rel=canonical tag.
I contacted them, and they suggested that i should include the canonical tag on the duplicate and original post, where both tags are pointing to the original post.
I have not yet tested it out, but hopefully, this should solve the issue.
Thanks again for your help.
Tej Luchmun
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Thanks a lot Karl, indeed with the canonical tag, neither the title nor the content becomes a duplicate.
It's just the MOZ crawl issue that raised the alarm.
Thanks again.
Tej Luchmun
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Hi Tej,
Thanks for writing us on this! So Sheena and Karl are both correct. Although, an REL Canonical may solve the issue with Google it is still technically a duplicate title tag. When designing the tool we found that having the crawler pick up the REL Canonicals can be problematic for a coding and SEO standpoint. It is often possible that an REL Canonical will be directed to an incorrect page and since our crawler is so literal it would have issues recognizing the canonical was bad.
Our product staff is aware of this and they hope to get to a place where we provide an ignore feature, so if you feel that the tag was implemented correctly you can select ignore and we will no longer report that issue for that page.
I know that this is not ideal for many customers, but hopefully our solution will be comprehensive enough to encapsulate many of the solutions SEO's have found for these issues.
Hopefully this helps and if you have any other questions or concerns let me know.
Have a great day!
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Do you mean that your Moz Analytics Crawl Diagnostics Report is showing duplicate titles for pages that have rel=canonical? If so, this is something I noticed a few months ago & brought up to the Moz team. I believe it's something they're working to implement/somehow allow us to 'check off' pages in the report that we've already implemented a solution for. Also, if this is your situation, I think you should add your experience / request to Moz's feature request forum.
I hope this helps!
Founder & CEO at Schleicher Marketing
Technical SEO, eCommerce, CRO/UX Design, Migrations, Shopify+, Digital Strategy
Entrepreneur In Residence at StartupSD.org -
Technically it is still a duplicate title tag, you just won't be getting penalised for it that's all.
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