Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

      Turn SEO data into actionable content briefs

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Get found
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Best practice for duplicate website content: same root domain name but different extension

    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.

    Best practice for duplicate website content: same root domain name but different extension

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    4
    1218
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • turnbullholdingsltd
      turnbullholdingsltd last edited by

      Hi there

      I have a new client who has two websites:

      http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.co.nz
      http://www.bayofislandsteambuilding.org.nz

      They are the same in every regard apart from the domain extension (.co.nz & .org.nz) which is likely to be causing them issues with Google ranking given the huge amount of duplicate content.

      What is the best practice approach to fixing this? Normally, if I was starting from scratch, I would set one of the extensions as an alias which redirects to the main domain.

      Thanks in advance.

      Laurie

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • MoosaHemani
        MoosaHemani Banned @turnbullholdingsltd last edited by

        Two URLs containing the same content will be considered as duplicated content, do the domain level redirection so that every URL should redirect to the home page of the preferred domain.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • turnbullholdingsltd
          turnbullholdingsltd @jesse-landry last edited by

          Hi - thanks for the response.

          Do I still need to set up 301 redirects for every page or can I do it server-side for the entire domain? And is this approach better than using the rel=”canonical” link element in the http header tags?

          Thanks 🙂

          L

          MoosaHemani 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • jesse-landry
            jesse-landry last edited by

            301 Redirect one to the other. That's it that's all.

            turnbullholdingsltd 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • jayoliverwright

              Country Code Top Level Domains & Duplicate Content

              Hi looking to launch in a new market, currently we have a .com.au domain which is geo-targeted to Australia. We want to launch in New Zealand which is ends with .co.nz If i duplicate the Australian based site completely on the new .co.nz domain name, would i face duplicate content issues from a SEO standpoint?
              Even though it's on a completely separate country code. Or is it still advised tosetup hreflang tag across both of the domains? Cheers.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright
              0
            • nchlondon

              Directory with Duplicate content? what to do?

              Moz keeps finding loads of pages with duplicate content on my website. The problem is its a directory page to different locations. E.g if we were a clothes shop we would be listing our locations: www.sitename.com/locations/london www.sitename.com/locations/rome www.sitename.com/locations/germany The content on these pages is all the same, except for an embedded google map that shows the location of the place. The problem is that google thinks all these pages are duplicated content. Should i set a canonical link on every single page saying that www.sitename.com/locations/london is the main page? I don't know if i can use canonical links because the page content isn't identical because of the embedded map. Help would be appreciated. Thanks.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nchlondon
              0
            • mobic

              What is the difference between Multilingual and multiregional websites?

              Hi all, So, I have studied about multilingual and multiregional websites. As soon as possible, we will expand the website languages ​to english and spanish. The urls will be like this: http://example.com/pt-br
              http://example.com/en-us
              http://example.com/es-ar Thereby, the tags will be like this: Great! But my doubt is: To /es-ar/ The indexing will be only to spanish languages in Argentina? What about the other countries that speak the same language, like Spain, Mexico, etc.I don't know if it will be possible develop a Spanish languages especially for each region. Should I do an multiregional website or only multilingual? How Google sees this case? Thanks for any advice!!

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mobic
              1
            • lcourse

              What is best practice for "Sorting" URLs to prevent indexing and for best link juice ?

              We are now introducing 5 links in all our category pages for different sorting options of category listings.
              The site has about 100.000 pages and with this change the number of URLs may go up to over 350.000 pages.
              Until now google is indexing well our site but I would like to prevent the "sorting URLS" leading to less complete crawling of our core pages, especially since we are planning further huge expansion of pages soon. Apart from blocking the paramter in the search console (which did not really work well for me in the past to prevent indexing) what do you suggest to minimize indexing of these URLs also taking into consideration link juice optimization? On a technical level the sorting is implemented in a way that the whole page is reloaded, for which may be better options as well.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
              0
            • iQi

              Duplicate content on recruitment website

              Hi everyone, It seems that Panda 4.2 has hit some industries more than others. I just started working on a website, that has no manual action, but the organic traffic has dropped massively in the last few months. Their external linking profile seems to be fine, but I suspect usability issues, especially the duplication may be the reason. The website is a recruitment website in a specific industry only. However, they posts jobs for their clients, that can be very similar, and in the same time they can have 20 jobs with the same title and very similar job descriptions. The website currently have over 200 pages with potential duplicate content. Additionally, these jobs get posted on job portals, with the same content (Happens automatically through a feed). The questions here are: How bad would this be for the website usability, and would it be the reason the traffic went down? Is this the affect of Panda 4.2 that is still rolling What can be done to resolve these issues? Thank you in advance.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iQi
              0
            • TheaterMania

              Slug best practices?

              Hello, my team is trying to understand how to best construct slugs. We understand they need to be concise and easily understandable, but there seem to be vast differences between the three examples below. Are there reasons why one might be better than the others? http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/06/20/bad-boys-yum-yum-violent-criminal-or-not-this-mans-mugshot-is-heating-up-the-web/ http://hollywoodlife.com/2014/06/20/jeremy-meeks-sexy-mug-shot-felon-viral/ http://www.tmz.com/2014/06/19/mugshot-eyes-felon-sexy/

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania
              0
            • DarinPirkey

              Best Practices for Moving a Sub-Domain to a Sub-Folder

              One of my clients is moving their subdomain to a subfolder on their main domain.  (ie.  blog.example.com to example.com/blog) I just wanted to get everyone's thoughts on some best practices for things we should be doing/looking for when making this move.? ie WMT, .htaccess, 301s etc? Thanks.

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DarinPirkey
              0
            • joseph.chambers

              Duplicate Content | eBay

              My client is generating templates for his eBay template based on content he has on his eCommerce platform. I'm 100% sure this will cause duplicate content issues. My question is this.. and I'm not sure where eBay policy stands with this but adding the canonical tag to the template.. will this work if it's coming from a different page i.e. eBay? Update: I'm not finding any information regarding this on the eBay policy's: http://ocs.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&action=0&searchstring=canonical So it does look like I can have rel="canonical" tag in custom eBay templates but I'm concern this can be considered: "cheating" since rel="canonical is actually a 301 but as this says: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html it's legitimately duplicate content. The question is now: should I add it or not? UPDATE seems eBay templates are embedded in a iframe but the snap shot on google actually shows the template. This makes me wonder how they are handling iframes now. looking at http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/search-engine-simulator.shtml does shows the content inside the iframe. Interesting. Anyone else have feedback?

              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joseph.chambers
              1

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.