As most everyone knows, large and complex websites require a lot of hosting systems. Unfortunately, a problem occurs since many hosting systems create duplicate content issues. As Richard Chavez of iCrossing explains, hosting systems often display the subdomain or server number in the url, which produces duplicate content.

As a result, this creates problems for your website and the search engines. On the search engine side, the engines will have trouble indexing the content on your site. Also, it will penalize your site’s rankings and therefore hinder performance.

According to Chavez, the best solution to this problem is to do it right the first time with a lot of technical SEO implementation. He tells WebProNews that webmasters need to set it up so that it displays the same url, regardless of what server is hosting it.

However, if it is already set up incorrectly, he suggests doing a url proxy rewrite. He says both Google and Vanessa Fox agree that a 301 redirect is not a good option because redirecting to a preferred version defeats the purpose of load balancing.

The canonical tag is also an option, but Chavez does not believe it is as effective as doing it right the first time.