URLs with duplicate title and meta descriptions
This means that the URL in question has the exact same page title and meta description as at least one other indexable URL.
Why is this important?
The title tag is considered one of the most important on-page SEO factors, and can help both users and search engines to quickly understand what content they can expect to find on the page.
If multiple pages have the same title, this can make it difficult for search engines to differentiate the 'best' page for a given search query, which can result in keyword cannibalization (multiple pages on your own site competing for the same search terms, and hurting each others' rankings).
While the meta description does not have any direct SEO impact, if a page has both a duplicate title AND a duplicate meta description, this may indicate a more systemic issue at play (than simply a copy/paste human error).
Furthermore, if there are large scale duplicate content issues on the site, you could trip quality algorithms like Google's Panda, which can depress organic search traffic to the site as a whole.
What does the Hint check?
This Hint will trigger for any internal, indexable URL which has the exact same page title and meta description as at least one other internal, indexable URL.
Note: since the duplicate content check is only for indexable URLs, URLs which are canonicalized are not included in the analysis - as the canonical tag 'handles' the duplicate issue.
How do you resolve this issue?
Typically, duplicate titles/descriptions are the result of either human error or a script error. The seriousness of the issue largely depends on the scale - in general, if only a few pages are affected, it is probably not affecting the site to any meaningful degree. If there are thousands of duplicates, however, the scale might be large enough to trigger a quality algorithm like Panda.
Depending on how page titles are configured, you may be able to easily fix them manually, or you may need the help of a developer in order to set unique page titles and descriptions.
When BOTH the title and the meta description are duplicate, this is often the result of a more systemic issue - such as a script error or a poorly configured CMS rule.
How do you get more data from Sitebulb?
Within Sitebulb you can either dig in to a specific URL and look at the duplicate content that way, or you can export all the duplicate content and sort in Excel.
To find details of the URLs with duplicate page titles and meta descriptions for a specific URL, click on the blue URL Details button from the URL List.
The URL Details tab will slide across, and you then need to navigate to Duplicate Content -> Titles and Meta Descriptions, and you'll see all the duplicate URLs underneath.
To export ALL the duplicate title and description data, click on the green Export Hint Data button in the top right hand corner.
This will give you a nicely formatted Excel sheet showing you all the URLs with duplicate titles and descriptions, allowing you to easily sort and pick through the data.
