How to use the path suffix in the Metatag page title?

Question

My articles currently have a Metatag page title [node:title]. Sometimes this results in duplicate page titles (articles can have the same title), which isn't desirable from a SEO point of view. Therefore, I would like to add a number after [node:title] when there already exists an article with the same title.

I use the Pathauto module, which adds a suffix to duplicate paths, so this suffix would be perfect. Can I use the path suffix in the Metatag page title? Or is there another possible solution?

Answer 1

The only token Pathauto provides is [node:url:args:join-path], the generated alias for the node. The suffix originates from, pathauto_alias_uniquify(&$alias, $source, $langcode), which Pathauto doesn't expose in any way; it's generated as needed to ensure the output alias is unique.

Theoretically, you could provide your a custom token that tries to find the value, but it would be error prone; pathauto isn't storing the suffix independently so there's no guarantee that a matched value is actually the suffix generated from Pathauto.

This is more of an editorial problem then a technical one. So a better solution would be to enforce unique titles at an authoring level.

For example, utilizing the Unique Content Title module to verify that each node title is unique upon submission.