Support » Fixing WordPress » 'Meta description and title duplicate' HTML suggestion by google webmaster tool

  • Dear all

    please help me:

    I did few changes in my site yourstoryclub.com and after these changes google webmaster tool is giving html meta description and meta title duplication suggestions. Changes I did:

    I already had All in One SEO enabled before these changes and is still there

    (1) Moved my wp installation to root i.e. from yourstoryclub.com/wpstoryblog/ to yourstoryclub.com/

    (2) added following code in .htaccess at yourstoryclub.com/

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    rewriterule ^wpstoryblog(/.*)? $1 [L,R=301]

    (3) enable permalink to /%category%/%postname%/

    (4) Install hypercache plugin

    now my .htaccess at yourstoryclub.com/ looks like:

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    rewriterule ^wpstoryblog(/.*)? $1 [L,R=301]
    
    # BEGIN WordPress
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
    </IfModule>
    
    # END WordPress

    And google suggest meta duplication for all posts (3x each) – one example:

    http://yourstoryclub.com/?p=609
    http://yourstoryclub.com/short-stories-love/love-note-after-twelve-years/
    http://yourstoryclub.com/wpstoryblog/?p=609

    if I go to all the above 3 links, it takes me to same page:
    http://yourstoryclub.com/short-stories-love/love-note-after-twelve-years/

    thank you all in advance for helping me out

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Thread Starter ShortStory Publisher

    (@chief-editor)

    Dear experts, pls help me

    1) I would try this in your robots txt file to disallow random crawling by google

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /cgi-bin
    Disallow: /wp-admin
    Disallow: /wp-includes
    Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
    Disallow: /wp-content/cache
    Disallow: /wp-content/themes
    Disallow: /trackback
    Disallow: /feed
    Disallow: /comments
    Disallow: /category/*/*
    Disallow: */trackback
    Disallow: */feed
    Disallow: */comments
    Disallow: /*?*
    Disallow: /*?
    Disallow: */author/*

    2) it looks like your permalinks might be shagged it would be worth reseting them back to default, and then changing them back to /%category%/%postname%/ this should rewrite the settings in the htaccess file.

    3) Have you checked out yoast SEO plugin IMO way slicker than All in one hope this helps

    Cheers
    Nick

    Thread Starter ShortStory Publisher

    (@chief-editor)

    Thanks Nick – I added a robots.txt with text above with small changes Disallow: /category/*/* to Disallow: /story-category/*/* (I am using story-category as category base). Additionally I added

    Disallow: /wpstoryblog
    Disallow: /wpstoryblog/*
    Sitemap: http://yourstoryclub.com/sitemap.xml.gz

    to block my previous directory for wordpress that no more exist. I moved WP to root.
    Now waiting finger crossed… typically how much time google take to reflect changes in robots.txt

    Hi Chief

    Really depends on the crawl rate of your site you should see it drop off little bit by little bit each day.

    Alternately in web master tools under diagnostics there is fetch as google bot where you can ask google to re index parts of your site, this will speed things up a little.

    Cheers
    Nick

    Thread Starter ShortStory Publisher

    (@chief-editor)

    Nick, thanks and Merry Christmas on behalf of yourstoryclub.com

    it works now. Duplicate meta description drastically reduced from 300 pages to 6 pages.

    Additionally, as you recommended, now I am using yoast SEO plugin. Hope it would get better.

    btw there is a feature in yoast SEO –> site map. That I disabled because I am using google xml sitemap. What do you suggest?

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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