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I need a small suggestion about this article regarding my site:

http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content

I find that I have 2 pages with the same content and one is using a query string like: example.com/page=delhi and the other isn't: example.com/page/delhi/

I am thinking I should make all my URLs to be like example.com/page-delhi/, but the issue is I already have two duplicate pages as a result of these, so I need some suggestions on what to do.

If I redirect example.com/page=delhi using a 301 redirect to the new URL structure site.com/page-delhi/, would that be a good idea? Would I need to do anything else to avoid duplicate content?

dan
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Arman Malik
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3 Answers3

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You are correct, you use the 301 header for this. The amount of pages that end up redirected doesn't matter. If you have more than one identical pages, redirect-301 them all to one.

An .htaccess file would be something along these lines:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/page/.*
RewriteRule ^page/(.*) /page-$1 [L,R=301]

The reason everybody says you have to 301 it, is because it tells SE that the same contact is been permanently moved to the new location. They will drop the old URL(s), and index the new URL, but keep the gained SEO score.

.htaccess is the fastest way to use, PHP hasn't been init yet, but you can use PHP as well:

Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: /page-new-url" );

And another suggestion, use canonical in your HTML, this tells SE the preferred location used for the information:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.eaxmpl.com/page-something" />
Zistoloen
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Martijn
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  • i have many multiple pages using query strings so now i am using PHP or ASP 301 to redirect but anyhow i am redirecting using 301 only. but my question was different. i asked if i redirect 2 duplicate pages to 3rd new pages which url strucutre will be good then is it ok? If i redirect 2 pages to new 1 page then how google will distribute the SEO to new 3rd page? My one old page have PR 1 and second have PR 0. also how many days will take to recover my site – Arman Malik Sep 30 '14 at 10:33
  • Amount of pages doesnt matter. If you have 1000 301-redirects to 1 page, or 2 to 1, doesnt matter – Martijn Sep 30 '14 at 10:34
  • but how google will calculate the seo juice. my one page have 0 pr and another 1 then which one google will prefer. and also u think if i remove most of duplicate pages and fix url structure then it will make my seo strong and fix my traffic drooping issues – Arman Malik Sep 30 '14 at 10:44
  • I've bolded it in my answer, you keep gained to and point to to the location you redirect to. To answer the 2nd part of your comment: Yes, SEO will improve with proper urls, but there's no way I can tell if the trafficdrop comes from this. Go to webmastertools and fix all problem given to you :) – Martijn Sep 30 '14 at 11:27
  • Thanks buddy. it keep my mind in peace. i have done all old 2 pages to new 1 redirect with good url strucutre. i hope google will solve my issue soon – Arman Malik Sep 30 '14 at 12:55
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Using redirection (301) is a good solution. Another solution is setting a canonical link. You can redirect or use canonical links on as many pages to one page as you want. Search engines will pick up your changes.

Jérôme Verstrynge
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  • hey guys. at end what i did. i had multiple pages with duplicate content and i redirect to all them to one new url structure page. but now i notice my traffic is keep going down. What can be cause? This is few days i made all 301 old pages redirect to new 1 page. for example i have same content on page a b c d and i redirect all those a b c d to new page e. i did correct? – Arman Malik Oct 10 '14 at 15:14
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301 redirection of websites is a great idea to perform. It is suggested to do its asap because if Google bots crawls the both, they may penalize it. So, beware of them. canonicalization will also help.

Vinay Aggarwal
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    Out of curiousity: Why did you post this? There is no new info in this reply and your information about penalties is obsolete, his resource (and starting this topic) implies he's aware of that. – Martijn Oct 01 '14 at 14:35
  • how can you say the penalizing information is obsolete. Google bots will penalize if they found two website with same content – Vinay Aggarwal Oct 02 '14 at 10:38
  • Read the part of my comment after absolete, there's more ;) – Martijn Oct 02 '14 at 10:59
  • i have read that carefully before answering, he did knew about this but yes, was confused. I am just making him sure that yes, your sites will get penalized. :) – Vinay Aggarwal Oct 02 '14 at 11:04
  • hey guys. at end what i did. i had multiple pages with duplicate content and i redirect to all them to one new url structure page. but now i notice my traffic is keep going down. What can be cause? This is few days i made all 301 old pages redirect to new 1 page. for example i have same content on page a b c d and i redirect all those a b c d to new page e. i did correct? – Arman Malik Oct 10 '14 at 14:41
  • Google bots take time to crawl the site and getting 01 redirect and Google panda 4.1 has been rolled out. High ranking sites like eBay get down because of duplicate content or same content on different pages. So, your site may got hit. – Vinay Aggarwal Oct 13 '14 at 07:29