Content Issues
Frequently Asked Questions
What's Covered?
This guide offers further information about the issues flagged in the Content Issues section of Site Crawl and resources for investigating how to fix them. For information about how to view affected pages associated with the Duplicate Content and Duplicate Title issue types, please see our View Affected Pages guide.
Quick Links
Overview of Content Issues in Moz Pro Site Crawl
These issues relate to your content and how Google views it. Duplicate, thin, and slow content, for example, can negatively impact rankings. Content issues vary in severity, but resolving them may improve your site's ability to rank.
Duplicate Content
When the code and content on a page looks too similar to the code and content on another page, it will be flagged as Duplicate Content. Our crawler will flag any pages with 90% or more overlapping content or code as having duplicate content.
Keep in mind that our crawler is comparing the source code of a page and not just what human visitors see in their browser. Sometimes two pages look very different in a browser but are coded the same way, causing them to be flagged as duplicate content of one another.
Find All Affected Pages
You can see what pages our crawler is identifying as duplicates by clicking the arrow in the Preview column and then clicking View all associated pages.
How to fix
There are a few different ways you can fix this issue when simply changing the content is not an option: consider adding 301 redirects to direct duplicate pages to the one you want people to visit, adding the rel=canonical tag to your canonical (most authoritative) page, or using the Parameter Handling Tool in Google Search Console.
Duplicate Content from Dynamic URLs
Moz Pro Site Crawl counts dynamic URLs as duplicate content. While we are pretty sure that search engines can figure this stuff out and know which URL to index, it's still considered best practice to canonicalize or otherwise direct crawlers to the original URL. Since some dynamic URL generators can cause problems for crawlers, we do try to be overly-inclusive of these issues rather than excluding these pages.
Duplicate content with a canonical tag in place
Canonical tags identify which page holds the original content. Without a canonical tag, each page is being considered the most important page with that content, but the content is so similar that the pages continue to compete against each other for rankings. All duplicate pages need to point to a single source.
If you have canonical tags in place but your pages are still being flagged as duplicates it could be because your canonical tags point to different URLs. Let's consider that Page 1, 2, 3, and 4 are duplicates:
- Page 1 www.mysite.com/amazing1/
- Page 2 www.mysite.com/amazing2/
- Page 3 www.mysite.com/amazing3/
- Page 4 www.mysite.com/amazing4/
To set up your canonical tags correctly, all 4 pages need to reference a single source. If Page 1 is the original, then all duplicate pages need to include this tag:
<pre><link href="http://www.mysite.com/amazing1/" rel="canonical"></pre>
The canonical tags are pointing to the wrong page or different pages
Things can get tricky when pages are set up with canonical tags that point to different pages. For example, if Page 1 references Page 3, and Page 2 references Page 4, Page 1 and Page 2 will still be considered duplicates. Since the canonical tags point to different pages, a canonical source of the content has not been established, and Pages 1 and 2 will still be considered duplicates.
Duplicate page canonicalized to itself
It's quite alright to add canonical tags to your pages that canonical themselves. However if you have duplicate content you'll need to choose an original, or canon, and point all duplicates to that page. If you have duplicate content and the canonical tags point to themselves as canonicals, that basically negates the canonicals themselves, and the pages will still be competing with one another for rankings.
Duplicate Titles
Multiple pages on your site contain the same title tag content. Title tags appear on the SERP as a preview of your page content. They help searchers understand whether or not your page is what they're looking for.
Find All Affected Pages
You can see what pages our crawler is identifying as having duplicate titles of one another by clicking the arrow in the Preview column and then clicking View all associated pages.
How to fix
It is okay for title tags to contain similar content, like brand names and keywords, but make sure they reflect what is unique to that page. Consider who your primary searcher is and how they might search for the content on your page, then build out your titles to match.
When our tool flags pages as having duplicate titles, this means the titles are exact matches. There won’t be pages flagged with only partial title matches.
Thin Content
Your page is considered to have Thin Content if it has fewer than 50 words (excluding navigation and ads).
How to fix
There's no one-size-fits-all fix for improving thin content. The best solution depends on what the page is intended to do. You may want to add more unique and helpful content that enhances the user experience, or consider adding a 301 redirect or a nofollow if there's a better page to point to.
How to fix
There are a number of things you can do to increase the speed of your page, including (but not limited to): file compression, reducing redirects, and optimizing code or images.
It is also worth noting that if a page takes more than 60 seconds to load, our tools will time out and cancel the request.
Missing or Invalid H1
If your page is missing a headline or H1 (header tag) or if the one found is formatted incorrectly, the page will be flagged by the tool. A common reason H1 tags are considered invalid is if you have paragraph text nested in your H1 tag. If the page has this issue but does have an existing H1, check for invalid conditions.
How to fix
Try to use a topically relevant H1 tag on every content page and be sure to verify you are using the correct format.
Tracking Issue Resolution Progress
As you work through issues flagged in your Campaign’s Site Crawl section you can track your progress by marking issues as fixed or by ignoring them.
Mark as fixed: Marking an issue as Fixed will indicate to our crawler that you have taken action on your site to resolve the issue. During the next crawl of your site, the issue will be removed from the interface if the crawler does not encounter the same issue again. If the issue is still found it will be marked as Not fixed in your Site Crawl data.
Ignore: Marking an issue as Ignore will indicate to our crawler that you are aware of the issue but are not planning to take action to resolve it. The crawler will not include the issue in upcoming crawls as a result. You can Unignore issues at any time from your Campaign Settings.
To mark issues as Fixed or Ignore, select them using the checkboxes on the left and then clicking Mark as fixed or Ignore from the top right.
For issues marked as Fixed, if our crawler does not encounter those issues in the next crawl they will be removed from your list of site crawl issues. If the issue is still found, it will be marked as Not fixed.
For issues marked as Ignore, our crawler will not report those issues in your next crawl. They will be removed from your list of site crawl issues. You can Unignore issues at any time.
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