How to fix the WordPress Duplicate Content Issue?

The content which is actually the same but accessed by two URL’s. This could be within your blog or could be on some copy-paste blog. For example an article of wordpress can  accessed by:

http://www.example.com/SEO-optimization

http://example.com/SEO-optimization

http://example.com/tag/SEO

http://www.example.com/tag/SEO

http://example.com/category/SEO

http://www.example.com/Category/SEO

http://example23.com/SEO-post (External website)

See, We are unknowingly created 6 copies of our own content and the google will get confused about our content to which they show for the results. Accurately they will pick anyone of them and rest will be hidden from Google search. At the same time, this will be an issue as Google will slowly start penalizing your blog for lots of duplicate content. Now, the most common question is what possible duplicate content in WordPress are and how to fix it. Let see some techniques to fix the above issues.

Search website with site:www.example.com

See and find all the links and browse till last page and see show results with omitted results. You will be able to find what all links Google have indexed from your blog and you can examine what links Google should not index. Some common parts which search engine bots should not index are: Tags, Categories, Author, Archive, Search and so on. When you find what exactly to do.. then proceed on making changes.

Noindex tag for Tags and Categories

This the important place where we have to start with. In case if you are showing complete post & not excerpt in Tags & categories page and keeping your tags and categories as doindex (By default), you are already creating duplicate content for your blog. Do you think your tags and categories pages are adding any kind of value to search engine? Its better to keep them noindex and dofollow. 

Author/Archives

The archives are useful for the visitors but for search engine again this is some duplicate content which was repeating. Because it will be having same content as your single post page.  Making this section as noindex surely will help you.

Fix your Image attachment URL in Wordpress

Adding image as attachment URL can lead the visitors to the following urls when the click the image.

www.example.com/1/

www.example.com/1/SEOImage

Again this causes to duplicate content issue. One quickest way is to use Robots meta WordPress plugin and under Permalink settings you will see an option which says “Redirect attachment URL’s to parent post URL”. Keep that option checked and that will take care of your this issue.

ReplytoCom issue

When you see links form replytocom, it’s time to set URL parameter from Google Webmaster tool as noindex.

You can check for your blog too by searching in Google with: Site: example.com replytocom and start fixing the issue.

Canonical URL

Canonical URL Tag is one of the important aspect of On-page SEO. A URL could be access using:

http://example.com/1

http://example.com/1/

http://www.example.com/1

http://www.example.com/1/

In WordPress 2.9+, this is a default feature of WordPress or else you can use plugin like All in one SEO, Thesis theme inbuilt feature, Robots meta plugin to quickly add canonical to your WordPress blog.

And also we can add manually with the following code:

<?php if ( is_singular() ) { ?>

<link rel="canonical" href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" />

<?php } ?>

</head>

We can use some duplicate content finder tools to check whether others have copied our article. And you can file DCMA complain using Google.