Best Way to Remove Duplicate Title Tags in WordPress-2024
If you’re serious about SEO, you know that optimising title tags is essential. Title tags, the clickable text that appears above your page URL, tell both visitors and search engines what your content is all about.
Having duplicate title tags can be a problem. Search engines might get confused about which page to show in the results, and they might end up displaying an empty or irrelevant page. This means your content might not get seen, despite your best efforts to improve SEO.
In this post, we’ll show you how to fix duplicate title tags in WordPress and why it’s so important for your website’s success.
What is a Duplicate Title Tag?
A duplicate title tag happens when two or more pages on your website have the same title tag or meta title. Think of the meta title as the clickable headline you see in search results. It’s different from the meta description, which is the short summary you see under the title in search results.
What Causes Duplicate Title Tags?
Duplicate title tags usually happen for two main reasons:
- Using Multiple SEO Plugins: If you have more than one SEO plugin active on your site, both might be adding title tags to your pages, causing duplicates. To avoid this, make sure you stick to one SEO plugin.
- SEO Features in Your Theme: Some WordPress themes come with built-in SEO functions. These can create duplicate metadata when combined with an SEO plugin. If your theme includes SEO options, it’s a good idea to turn off any conflicting plugins or theme SEO settings.
Why Do Duplicate Title Tags Matter?
Duplicate title tags are more than just a technical issue—they can affect how your website is indexed by search engines. Search engines use crawlers to scan your content and rank your site based on relevance and quality. When these crawlers encounter duplicate title tags, they might display the wrong page, or worse, show an empty page in the search results.
Accurate and unique title tags help search engines understand what each page is about, ensuring that your content is displayed correctly in search results. Duplicate title tags can confuse crawlers, leading to lower rankings and missed opportunities to attract visitors.
How to Remove Duplicate Title Tags in WordPress
Follow these steps to fix duplicate title tags on your WordPress site:
- Review Your SEO Plugins
- Go through your installed SEO plugins and make sure only one is active. Having multiple plugins can cause conflicts that lead to duplicate title tags. Stick with the one that works best for you.
- Turn Off Theme SEO Features
- If your theme has built-in SEO features, you should disable them. These can clash with your SEO plugin and create duplicate metadata. Turning off theme SEO functions can prevent this issue.
- Set Up a Canonical URL
- For pages with similar content, create a canonical URL to tell search engines which page should be indexed. This helps search engines understand which page is the primary one and reduces the risk of duplicate content being indexed.
Conclusion
If you notice duplicate title tags on your WordPress site, don’t ignore them. Even top-ranking websites can suffer when duplicate title tags are left unchecked, which can lead to a drop in search rankings. Fixing this issue as soon as possible will help keep your website’s SEO on track.
For ongoing problems with duplicate content, it may be worth getting help from a WordPress SEO expert. They can ensure that your site is optimized for search engines and that any duplicate title tags are properly managed.