How to Fix Duplicate Title Tags in WordPress 2024
Duplicate title tags are a common SEO issue that can negatively affect your site's ranking and performance. In this tutorial, I will show you the causes of duplicate title tags and how to them easily.
1. What are Duplicate Title Tags?
Title tags are HTML elements that define the title of a web page. They appear in the browser’s tab or window title bar, and as the clickable headline in search engine results.
Title tags are important for SEO because they provide a concise and accurate description of the content on a web page, helping search engines and users understand the relevance of the page to a particular search query.
Duplicate title tags are title tags that appear on multiple pages or sections of a website and contain the same or similar text.
For example, if you have multiple pages on your WordPress website that have the same title, such as “My Website - The Best Place to Shop Online”, then you have duplicate title tags.
2. Identify Sources of Duplicate Title Tags
By using online tools, you can easily identify duplicate title tags on your website, as well as improve your overall SEO performance.
Some of the online tools that you can use to remove duplicate title tags in WordPress are:
Semrush Site Audit
Using SEMRUSH Site Audit you can find errors in your website including duplicate title tags.
Open SEMRUSH Site Audit tool and enter your domain.
After completed click on Errors module.
Now you will get the report with issues founded. Now in the search bar type “duplicate title tags.”
Then you will find issues with duplicate title tags, copy them or export them. Now is time for fixing.
Google Search Console
By using Google Search Console, you can access various reports and tools that can help you identify duplicate title tags on your website, as well as other SEO issues and opportunities.
First click on the “Pages” tab under the “Indexing” section in the left-hand menu.
Scroll down to see the reasons why your pages weren’t indexed. Click on the “Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user” error if you have it.
Doing this will open a report that shows you a chart of how many affected pages you’ve had over time. And a list of pages with duplicate title tags.
3. Causes of Duplicate Title Tags
Duplicate title tags occur when two or more pages on your site have the same or very similar title tags. This can happen for various reasons, such as:
4. How to Fix Duplicate Title Tags in WordPress
It's important to understand the common causes of these duplicate title tags in order to effectively remove them and improve your SEO performance.
Here are a few common causes of duplicate title tags along with their solution:
1. How to Fix When Problem Caused by Theme or Plugin
Some WordPress themes or plugins automatically generate title tags based on predefined templates. If these templates are not properly configured or customized, it can result in duplicate title tags across your website.
How to Fix When Problem Caused by Theme or Plugin incomatiblity
- Temporarily switch to default Theme like Twenty Twenty Four.
- Disable all plugin and activate one after one.
If your theme is the root of issue then it will resolve the issue, then you might need to contact theme owner to fix it or completely switch to a new theme.
If the problem generates from any plugin, you can find it in this way, it can be happened from setting up an SEO plugin wrong way.
2. How to Fix When Problem Caused by Pagination, Category or Tag Archives
If your website has paginated content, such as blog posts or product listings, each page may have the same title tag. This can confuse search engines and dilute the relevance of your keywords.
Look at these URLs
- Page 1 (primary page): vitstore.com/beef
- Page 2: vitstore.com/beef/?page=2
- Page 3: vitstore.com/beef/?page=3
In this case you need to tell search engine which version need to prioritize. How search engine understands that? You need to add a canonical tag pointing to the main category page. This tells Google that the main page to be indexed is “https://vitstore.com/beef”.
3. How to Fix When Problem Caused by Putting Same Title
Mistakes can happen when manually inputting title tags. Copy-pasting, forgetting to update titles, or accidental duplication can all lead to duplicate title tags on your WordPress website.
To fix this update your title, as well the url.
4. Multiple URLs for the Same Content
Having your website be accessible through both HTTP and HTTPS protocols, or www. or non www. urls can also lead to duplicate content.
This is like having a regular door with the URL “http://example.com” for some visitors. And a super-secure, locked door with the URL “https://example.com” for others.
Search bots see these as doors to different houses if you don’t tell them which door is the main entrance.
To fix this you need to set 301 redirect all version of url to the main URL.
You can set up 301 redirects from your hosting account or cPanel by following these steps:
- Log into your cPanel account and look for the Redirects icon in the Domains section. Click to open it.
- Select a redirect type from the Type menu. Choose Permanent (301) if you want to notify the visitor’s browser to update its records, or Temporary (302) if you do not want to update the visitor’s bookmarks.
- Select a domain name from the menu, or select All Public Domains to redirect all of the domains that your cPanel account controls.
- In the next text box, enter the rest of the URL from which you wish for the server to redirect visitors. For example, if you wish to redirect example.com/directory/file.html to another URL, enter
directory/file.html
in this text box. - In the Redirects to text box, enter the URL to which you wish to redirect users. You must specify a protocol in this text box, such as
http://
,https://
, orftp://
. - Select one of the following settings:
- Only redirect with www. — This setting only redirects visitors who enter the
www.
prefix before the domain name part of the URL. - Redirect with or without www. — This setting redirects all users, regardless of whether the visitor enters the
www.
prefix before the domain name part of the URL. - Do Not Redirect www. — This setting does not redirect users who enter the
www.
prefix before the the domain name part of the URL.
- Only redirect with www. — This setting only redirects visitors who enter the
- Select the Wild Card Redirect setting if you wish to redirect all files within a directory to the same filename in the new directory. For example, if you enable the Wild Card Redirect setting and example1.com redirects to example.com, then a visitor who tries to access the example1.com/pic.jpg URL redirects to the example.com/pic.jpg URL.
- Click Add and confirm the redirect.
To test the redirect, click the link under Directory in the Current Redirects table. If you properly configured the redirect, the system directs you to the original domain.
4. How to Fix When Problem Caused by Misconfiguration of SEO Plugins
One of the possible causes of duplicate title tags is the misconfiguration of SEO plugins, such as Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, or Rank MathThis site use affiliate links to promote recommended product and services.
These plugins allow you to customize the title tags for different types of pages, such as posts, pages, categories, tags, etc.
However, if you use the same template or variable for different page types, you may end up with duplicate title tags.
To fix this issue, you need to check the settings of your SEO plugin and make sure that each page type has a unique and relevant title tag template.
Follow the next section to setting up your SEO plugin properly.
5. How to Prevent Duplicate Title Tags Using SEO Plugins.
Besides removing duplicate title tags in WordPress, you should also take preventive measurement before the problem happen.
How to fix duplicate title tags using Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is one of the most popular and comprehensive WordPress plugins for SEO. It allows you to optimize your site for various aspects of SEO, including title tags. To fix duplicate title tags using Yoast SEO, you need to:
How to fix duplicate title tags using Rank Math
Rank MathThis site use affiliate links to promote recommended product and services is another popular and powerful WordPress plugin for SEO. It offers similar features as Yoast SEO, but with some additional options and integrations. To fix duplicate title tags using Rank MathThis site use affiliate links to promote recommended product and services, you need to:
6. How to Avoid Duplicate Title Tags
When it comes to avoiding duplicate title tags in WordPress, there are a few best practices that I highly recommend. Implementing these practices will not only help you prevent duplicate title tags but also improve the overall SEO performance of your website.
7. Why Duplicate Title Tags are Bad for SEO?
Search engines like Google rely on unique title tags to understand and index your web pages. Each page should have a distinct title tag accurately reflecting its content. Duplicates create confusion, potentially harming your SEO:
Wrap Up
Duplicate title tags are a common SEO problem that can affect your WordPress website’s ranking and visibility in search engines. By removing duplicate title tags, you can improve your website’s SEO performance and user experience.
I hope this article helped you learn how to remove duplicate title tags in WordPress. If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to leave a comment below.