I have my site setup so that my brand pages are crawled. I have unique content (few paras about each brand) that appears on those pages. My problem is that:
www.mydomain.co.uk/brand/mybrand/
and
www.mydomain.co.uk/brand/mybrand/1.html
are identical and I seem to be struggling to rank the pages www.mydomain.co.uk/brand/mybrand/ even though they have relevant content on them etc.
Also webmaster tools shows I have duplicate meta titles and descriptions for all the brand pagination pages.
I hope that all makes sense! Any ideas how to best solve these duplicate issues?
Hi David,
Thanks for the reply. How would I go about merging that in with what I have now:
if ($parts[0]=="brand")
{
$header["title"] = "Great deals on ".$parts[1]." blah blah blah";
$header["meta"]["description"] = "Great deals on ".$parts[1]." blah blah blah";
$header["meta"]["keywords"] = "buy ".$parts[1].",compare prices,".$parts[1]." blah,".$parts[1]." blah,".$parts[1]." ,online,store";
}
else
{
$header["title"] = htmlentities($q,ENT_QUOTES,$config_charset);
}
Cheers,
Chris.
Hi Chris,
The code is generic and will simply append Page 2, Page 3 etc. to any subsequent page of results; however if you only wanted to incorporate it within your brand specific pages; you could instead merge the code with that you posted; as follows:
if ($parts[0]=="brand")
{
$header["title"] = "Great deals on ".$parts[1]." blah blah blah";
$header["meta"]["description"] = "Great deals on ".$parts[1]." blah blah blah";
$header["meta"]["keywords"] = "buy ".$parts[1].",compare prices,".$parts[1]." blah,".$parts[1]." blah,".$parts[1]." ,online,store";
if ($page > 1)
{
$header["title"] .= " Page ".$page;
$header["meta"]["description"] .= " Page ".$page;
}
}
else
{
$header["title"] = htmlentities($q,ENT_QUOTES,$config_charset);
}Cheers,
David.
--
PriceTapestry.com
Hi David,
Many thanks that works great however I still have the problem of:
www.mydomain.co.uk/brand/mybrand/
and
www.mydomain.co.uk/brand/mybrand/1.html
being the same. Can anything be done to stop this?
Cheers,
Chris.
Hi Chris,
Whilst /1.html will work, the script as it stands shouldn't be generating a link to that page; if the page is 1 it should always link to just /mybrand/ - so it would be best to check that there isn't a problem somewhere else that is linking to that page. Can you find the page contains a link to /1.html and let me know where abouts it is displayed...
Cheers,
David.
--
PriceTapestry.com
Hi David,
If you click any of the pages in the pagination the link from number 1 (in the pagination list) and previous goes to /1.html
Cheers,
Chris.
Hi Chris,
You're quite right - i'll correct this in the distribution; in the mean time if you could email me your latest html/navigation.php i'll merge the changes into the version that you are running (in case you have made any unrelated mods applicable to your theme)...
Cheers,
David.
--
PriceTapestry.com
Hi David,
I have more duplicate tag issues flagged up in webmaster tools eg:
/brand//brandname/16.html
/brand/brandname/16.html
I can't find any links to my brands with the two slashes anywhere on my site and wondered if you had any ideas where this could be occurring??
I'm stumped!
Cheers,
Chris.
Hi Chris,
That's strange - i've checked through everything, including the rewrite rules etc.
Was it a one off, i.e. just that page 16 link, or is that just an example of many?
Cheers,
David.
--
PriceTapestry.com
Hi David,
There's a few of them listed, some are pages within the brands some are the main brand pages.
Maybe it's a Google thing I'll keep an eye on it because, like you, I can't find any links with // in.
Weird.
Cheers,
Chris.
Hi David,
Just thought I'd let you know the duplicates with the two slashes have disappeared now from webmaster tools. They were there for about a month, wierd!
Cheers,
Chris.
Cheers - obviously just something transient!
Cheers,
David.
--
PriceTapestry.com
Hi,
The best thing to do (the canonical tag is not ideal as subsequent pages are genuinely different) is to add the page number to the title and meta description. This is easily done; in search.php, look for where the header is called in at line 296:
require("html/header.php");...and REPLACE that with;
if ($page > 1){
$header["title"] .= " Page ".$page;
$header["meta"]["description"] .= " Page ".$page;
}
require("html/header.php");
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
David.
--
PriceTapestry.com