How to Prevent Duplicate Post Titles in WordPress (The Easy Way)

Have you ever clicked ‘Publish’ on a WordPress blog post and then realized that you used the same title as another post?

It’s an easy mistake to make, especially if you’ve been blogging for a while or manage a large site. But duplicate post titles can confuse your readers and make it harder for your content to perform well in search results.

Thankfully, you don’t have to keep track of every title manually.

After a lot of research, we’ve found a great tool to automatically flag duplicate titles before you hit publish. In this guide, we’ll show you how to prevent duplicate post titles in WordPress, so your site stays reader-friendly and SEO-ready. 🙌

Why Prevent Duplicate Post Titles in WordPress?

Avoiding duplicate post titles helps keep your content clear and organized, which can also improve your search engine visibility.

Both your blog post title and its URL (or slug) play an important role in SEO.

By default, WordPress uses your title to create the post slug. If you create a post with the same title as an existing one, WordPress will add a number to the end of the slug to keep it unique.

While that prevents duplicate URLs, it doesn’t solve the bigger SEO issue.

Having multiple posts with the same or very similar titles can lead to keyword cannibalization, where different pages compete for the same search terms. This can make it harder for search engines and your readers to know which page to prioritize.

With that in mind, we’ll show you how to prevent duplicate post titles in WordPress.

Here’s a quick overview of all the things we’ll cover in this article:

• How to Prevent Duplicate Post Titles in WordPress
• Bonus Tip: How We Manage Post Titles at WPBeginner
• FAQs for How to Prevent Duplicate Post Titles in WordPress
• Additional Resources for WordPress Page and Post Management

Let’s get started.

How to Prevent Duplicate Post Titles in WordPress

If you discover a duplicate title on a single author’s website, then you can simply change one of the titles and remove the number from WordPress URLs.

That said, this might be a lot harder to keep track of when you’re running a multi-author WordPress site.

But don’t worry. The solution we’ll cover will help you prevent duplicate post titles and automatically advise your authors to change them.

The first thing you’ll need to do is install and activate the Unique Title Checker plugin. If you need help, you can 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 then check the title and confirm that it’s unique, so you are good to go.

You can now try again by creating a new post. This time, use a title that you have already used for another post.

The plugin will notify you that this title has 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.

Bonus Tip: How We Manage Post Titles at WPBeginner

The Unique Title Checker plugin is an excellent tool, especially if you want a simple solution. However, as WPBeginner grew, we needed a more powerful system to manage our content workflow.

At WPBeginner, our team uses the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin. It is our complete toolkit for everything related to on-page search optimization.

AIOSEO includes a built-in tool that automatically checks for unique titles. It also comes with a Headline Analyzer that scores our titles for SEO and readability right inside the editor.

This feature helps our writers craft the best possible headlines before they publish a post. It’s a key part of our editorial process that helps us maintain high content standards.

For more information about the plugin, you can check out our detailed AIOSEO review.

FAQs for How to Prevent Duplicate Post Titles in WordPress

In this section, we’ll answer some common questions and provide answers on preventing duplicate post titles.

How do I prevent duplicate post titles in WordPress?

To prevent duplicate post titles, you can use a plugin specifically designed for this purpose. Plugins such as Unique Title Checker will tell you if a new post title duplicates an existing one, allowing you to change it before publishing.

How do I fix duplicate title tags in WordPress?

To fix duplicate title tags, you can use an SEO plugin like AIOSEO. It will help you edit and control the title tags for each post, ensuring they are unique.

How do I stop WordPress from duplicating content?

To stop WordPress from duplicating content, you need to regularly audit your posts to check for duplicates. You can also use plugins like Delete Duplicate Post to scan your site and minimize repeated content.

Additional Resources for WordPress Page and Post Management

We hope this tutorial helped you learn how to prevent duplicate post titles in WordPress.

If you found this helpful, you may also want to learn:

• How to Quickly Generate 100+ Blog Post Ideas
• How to Write a Great Blog Post (Structure + Examples)
• How to Delay Posts From Appearing in WordPress RSS Feed
• How to Create a Private Post in WordPress
• How to Create a Custom Home Page in WordPress
• How to Optimize Your WordPress Category Pages
• How to Exclude Pages from WordPress Search Results
• Advanced Landing Page Tips to Skyrocket WordPress Conversions
• WordPress Post Analytics: How to Easily See Your Blog Stats

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