Would you like to make sure you don’t accidentally create duplicate post titles on your WordPress blog?
Having two posts with the same title can negatively affect the SEO performance of your site.
In this article, we’ll show you how to prevent duplicate post titles in WordPress.
Why Prevent Duplicate Post Titles in WordPress?
Your blog post title and URL play an important role in site engine optimization. Having a duplicate post title can negatively affect the SEO performance of your site.
When you save or publish a new post on your WordPress blog, the title will be automatically used when creating the URL post slug. In the case of a duplicate post title, WordPress will add a number to the end of the slug so the two posts won’t have the same URL.
However, since both post titles are still using the same keywords, this could confuse search engines when deciding which post should be ranked for the keywords used in the title.
With that being said, let’s take a look at how to prevent duplicate post titles in WordPress.
How to Prevent Duplicate Post Titles in WordPress
If you discover a duplicate title on a single author website, then you can simply change one of the titles and remove the number from WordPress URLs. However, this is a lot harder to keep track of when you are running a multi-author WordPress site.
But don’t worry, the solution we’re going to cover is going to help you prevent duplicate post titles and automatically advise your authors to change them.
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Unique Title Checker plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
The plugin works out of the box, and there are no settings for you to configure.
Simply go to Posts » Add New and enter a unique post title. The plugin will check the post title and notify you that it is unique, and you are good to go.
You can now try again by creating another new post. This time use a title that you have already used for another post.
The plugin will notify you that this title is already been used.
It will not stop you from editing the post, saving it, or even publishing it.
However, the warning will let you and other authors on your website know that they should use an alternate title.
We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to prevent duplicate post titles in WordPress. You may also want to learn how to speed up your WordPress website, or check out our list of common WordPress errors and how to fix them.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Anurodh Keshari says
Hey Author,
Thanks for providing this information but this plugin is outdated and it’s not working do you have any other suggestion or any other plugin for this problem. I really need this…
WPBeginner Support says
We do not have a recommendation at the moment but we will certainly take a look at the plugin and if there are any replacements we would recommend we will update our article.
Admin
Fredrik Hed says
Any good suggestions for a plugin to check for duplicate content and/or duplicate posts on a WP website?
Thanks
Dodecha says
But there are also problems where duplicate contents are developed from category and tags pages what to do about that ?
Comturkey says
What about Real Estate website, most of propeeties are same
Gaz says
last comment is over a year old, but WPB have relisted this in a post dated december 2016.
is this plugin still worthy of a mention when it is untested with the latest release of WP?
Gaz says
sorry, thought the last comment was the last post at the bottom,
Still curious to weather this plugin is being updated to be compatible with the new release of WP
Asween says
I know about duplicate keyword but I don’t know about duplicate title, it is very useful tips
Webperts says
In one of my website, I was not using SEO plugin but I was facing duplicate title, I just customized wp_title() function in header and its done.
kozmikcharlie says
for my wordpress 4.0 installation doesn’t go…
when I write the duplicated title I need to save it to get the message (as in last pic). It seems to ignore it…
Hasan Movahed says
thanks for share this post . im developer this plugin .
WPBeginner Staff says
Thanks for writing this useful plugin
Hieu Luong says
Thanks Hasan! your tool is very useful!
KonaGirl says
This is good to know. I had created a duplicate-2 page on purpose not realizing the detriment it would cause. I changed it and installed the plugin so that I don’t do it again unwittingly. Thanks for the info.