Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Duplicate page titles and hreflang tags
-
Moz is flagging a lot of pages on our site which have duplicate page titles. 99% of these are international pages which hreflang tags in the sitemap.
Do I need to worry about this? I assumed that it wasn't an issue given the use of hreflang. And if that's the case, why is Moz flagging them as an issue?
Thanks.
-
We're all students of the game. I hope I never stop learning about marketing.
I had read about the sitemap implementation but never tried it. Then I ran into an enterprise client who has over 40,000 indexed pages & 20 separate languages.
One of the languages didn't have a subfolder but all the rest did. Instead of coding it in, I figured my way through sitemaps & thought it was SO much easier in the end. I've used it a few times since and it's great.
-
I updated my first answer to point out my error - thanks again!
-
Hi everyone
Oh wow! I can't believe I missed that! I stand 100% corrected - thanks so much guys, I am sorry about that!
Looks like you should be all good then!
Thanks again for pointing this out - cheers everyone
-
No, you don't need to worry. If you've implemented hreflang into the sitemap properly, it will work and you don't have to worry about the Moz reading. Moz tries to cover off the main things that affect you and give you an indication of what Google may like & dislike on your site but by no means are the implementations of everything exactly the same. So yes, Google will understand your 'duplicate' page titles are not.
@Patrick - you can definitely implement hreflang in sitemap. I was surprised when I saw that the first time, too, but I've tried it for a few clients lately and it works well.
-
Hi,
I'm fairly sure you can put the tags in a sitemap rather than the header.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Placing the tags into the header is a much bigger technical issue for us at present.
Cheers
-
Hi there
Are you saying that your hreflang tags are in your sitemap? If that's the case, that's not the proper implementation. THIS IS IN FACT NOT CORRECT AS POINTED OUT BY ahyde & MattAntonino BELOW
These tags are supposed to live in the tag of the page(s) which are region and language targeted.
I would read into hreflang tags and make sure that you have the proper implementation. You should also look at language tags for Bing.
I would also take a look at this chart for guidance and make sure that your international pages have language/region specific content - if you're not changing the language, then the tag isn't really necessary. I would instead focus on canonical tags, setting up Webmaster Tools accounts for each region variation directory or subdomain, and country targeting those profiles to their separate regions in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools.
I would also take a look at the following resources as well:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)Let me know if this helps - I hope I am understanding - good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is it OK to include name of your town to the title tag or H1 tag on a blog to enhance local search results
I recently attended a webinar by ETNA Interactive on local search SEO. The presenter recommended including the name of your town in the title of the blog to increase local search SEO. Is this OK? Ive always been concerned that it is such an obvious attempt to rank locally that Google would consider it "spammy" ? black hat, "sketchy" or otherwise manipulative. Have the rules changed? Is it OK to do? Brooke
On-Page Optimization | | wianno1680 -
Should we add our company's name in page title tag or not?
We have been adding our company (Townscript) name in all the page titles. For example, in an event page of Lucknow Conclave: www.townscript.com/lucknowconclave the page title is Lucknow Conclave | Alexis Society | Townscript I read somewhere that it's not necessary to put your company's name in the title tag. Is it right? Please help!
On-Page Optimization | | sanchitmalik0 -
Category page canonical tag
I know this question has been asked a few times on here but I'm looking for very specific advice. Currently when you go to a category, say http://www.bronterose.co.uk/range.html, a canonical tag is added to the head of the page. There are plenty of "variant" pages which carry the same tag, for example: /range.html?p=2
On-Page Optimization | | crichardson9
/range.html?p=3
/range.html?dir=asc&order=price
/range.html?dir=asc&limit=all&order=price Is it wise to push the "link juice" for each of these variant pages to the top level page? Or should each variant page have its own unique canonical tag? After reading many blog posts, guides and papers I'm truly confused! Any general guidance or recommendations would be much appreciated. Chris.1 -
Punctuation at the Start of Page Titles
one of my clients appears to be using an exclamation mark (e.g. "! Graphic Prints By Mirrorin - Fun Childrens Graphic Prints") and to be completely honest, I have no idea if this is bad practice or if it wont have any affect from an SEO point of view? Any help would be appreciated because it is site wide, therefore if it is an issue I would like to be able to get it sorted asap! Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ZaddleMarketing0 -
Title tag length
Hi, I am fairly new to SEO and have just noticed the end of my title text has been cut off by Google in the serps results. Everything i have read tells me titles should be maximum of 70 characters, however, Google is only displaying 54. See below Security systems | wireless | battery powered | Police... Nobody else on the page is showing more than 54 characters. Am i missing something obvious? Any and all help gratefully appreciated. Thanks Si
On-Page Optimization | | DaddySmurf0 -
Alt tag matching product titles - e-commerce
Hey all, Just wondering if it is ok to match the alt tag to product titles. Imagine an e-commerce site that lists a whole lot of products on any one page for any one category. Each product listing has a thumbnail image beside it. The easiest way to implement this dynamically is to use the product title for the alt tag. Anyone had any experience with this? Is it overkill / spam of keywords - given that the product title is repeated. Our current situation is that our alt tags are simply blank or say 'photo' which is no good, and we have hundreds of thousands of pages. Cheers, Croozie
On-Page Optimization | | sichristie0 -
How to handle Meta Tags on Pagination... page 2,3,4....
Seems that SEOMoz reports are considering my paginated pages as duplicate Meta Tags. For example, I have a product catalog with 5 paginated pages. Obviously the content on each page is unique and the URL ends in =4, =5 for the page number, but the Title and Description are the same for all the pages. Any suggestions on how to handle this? The pages other than page 1 are not indexed, so it should not be a big deal. But wondering if I should programatically ad the page number to the additional pages to show a difference?
On-Page Optimization | | paddlej0 -
Hiding Page Titles By Display None
Hi. I am new to this community, and new to SEO as well. A friend asked me to give them suggestions on onsite optimization for their Drupal website. I know page titles are very important, and usually they should be set to H1. (At least I think) This particular website has all their page titles set to H2 and they are using display:none in their stylesheet to hide them for graphic design reasons. What would be the most practical work around for this? We don't want this to appear sketchy in the eyes of the SE's, but putting page titles at the top of their pages really would take away from their graphical design. The second issue is that they use a module called Quicktabs for tabbed product specs on each page. Each tab is actually pulled from a post (called a node in Drupal), so each tab has it's own title that is an H2. So not only are they hiding the main page title, but they are hiding 5 others within the tabs, and their are 6 H2 elements showing up on each product page all set to display:none. Any creative suggestions? Hope that makes sense.... Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | aprilm-1890400
