Canonical Tag Strategy and Duplicate Content Management
Audit and fix duplicate content issues using canonical tags, hreflang, and URL parameters.
Resolve all duplicate content issues on the site through proper canonical tag implementation, avoiding authority dilution and Googlebot confusion.
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Prompt objective
Resolve all duplicate content issues on the site through proper canonical tag implementation, avoiding authority dilution and Googlebot confusion.
Real use case
ViajarBrasil, an online travel agency with Spanish and Portuguese versions of the site, discovered in Screaming Frog that 4,200 of their 8,000 indexed URLs are duplicates — versions with/without www, with/without trailing slash, indexed UTM parameters, and filter pages with identical content to categories.
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Prompt
Conduct a complete duplicate content audit and implement a canonical tag strategy for [WEBSITE URL], which has [NUMBER] indexed pages. **Phase 1 — Duplicate Identification (Screaming Frog + Ahrefs):** **Technical duplication (same page, different URLs):** - http:// vs. https:// - www vs. non-www - Trailing slash vs. non-trailing slash - Session, tracking (UTM), sorting, and filter parameters - Uppercase vs. lowercase in URL - index.html version vs. / - AMP version vs. standard HTML **Content duplication:** - Pages with >85% content similarity (near-duplicates) - Filter pages that generate near-identical content to category pages - Pagination (page/2/, page/3/) indexing partial content - Product descriptions copied from manufacturers - Syndicated content from other sites For each type, list: number of affected URLs, example, and crawl budget impact. **Phase 2 — Canonicalization Strategy:** **Canonical tags (self-referencing and cross-domain):** - Rule: EVERY page must have a self-referencing canonical tag (even for non-duplicates) - Technical duplicates: canonical points to preferred version - Near-duplicates: canonical points to most complete version - Pagination: self-referencing canonical on each page (DO NOT point all to page 1) - Cross-domain: if content is republished on another domain **Hreflang (if multilingual/multi-region):** - Implementation via <link rel='alternate' hreflang='x'> - Complete mapping: Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, English (if applicable) - x-default for fallback - Reciprocity: page A points to B and B points to A **URL Parameters:** - List of parameters that do NOT change content (UTM, session, ref) - Configuration in Google Search Console (URL Parameters) - robots.txt: block crawl of URLs with irrelevant parameters **Phase 3 — Technical Implementation:** - HTML code for each canonical scenario - .htaccess / nginx rules for 301 redirects from duplicates - CMS/platform parameter configuration - Sitemap cleanup: remove non-canonical URLs **Phase 4 — Validation and Monitoring:** - Post-implementation Screaming Frog crawl: verify canonical chains and loops - Google Search Console: Coverage report — decrease in 'Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical' - Ahrefs: reduction in 'Duplicate pages' in Site Audit - Monthly monitoring for new duplicates - Goal: zero unintentional duplicates within [NUMBER] weeks Deliver the complete canonicalization map and implementation code.
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