How get rid of duplicate content, titles, etc on php cartweaver site?
-
my website http://www.bartramgallery.com was created using php and cartweaver 2.0 about five years ago by a web developer. I was really happy with the results of the design was inspired to get into web development and have been studying ever since. My biggest problem at this time is that I am not knowledgable with php and the cartweaver product but am learning as I read more. The issue is that seomoz tools are reporting tons of duplicate content and duplicate title pages etc. This is likely from the dynamic urls and same pages with secondary results etc. I just made a new sitemap with auditmypc I think it was called in an attempt to get rid of all the duplicate page titles but is that going to solve anything or do I need to find another way to configure the site? There are many pages with the same content competing for page rank and it is a bit frustrating to say the least. If anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated even pointing me in the right direction.
Thank you,
Jesse
-
I am still researching a bunch of sites trying to figure out a way to get the product ID name at the end which would be great as that is the page title. I just thought I would mention that I am working on it and see if you thought that it was not possible as you mentioned due to Cartweaver's limitations. It's funny that I have spent so much time trying to get my urls to show up how they should... seems this could have been configured into the original product. Beggars can't be choosers.
-
Yes I am going to take a look at that when I get home perhaps I have to change how a few things are referenced as well as create the change of address right? because if you type in the normal dynamic nasty url it still goes to the nasty url but if I select the url and paste it.. it brings up the page as I mentioned above. Basically stripped of images and styling.
I am wondering if it is possible to include that number at the end as it is the actual image and could potentially populate the title of the image at the end which would be sweet. Of course then I would have a new problem of too long of an url as I have the titles pretty keyword rich on a lot of them to make a proper title for the page.
If this all works out I have to create a link to your site at cartweaver and from a couple of my sites as you have been a great help and from what I can tell have been able to properly diagnose a fairly complex issue with php and cartweaver and even if some web page that I have not seen something similar enough you have been a great help. Thank you
-
I'm guessing the paths used to reference the images & css files are relative to the the results.php file.. now that there are "/"s the best thing to do is to change the template to either hard code an absolute path or use forward slash at the start to always start at the root.. eg
Old code:
New code
or
-
I tried the test example you did above and it was pretty cool. With the web address http://www.bartramgallery.com/photographer/charles-cramer/10.php it rendered a page with I believe everything except for design and styles as well as any imagery. Not sure what causes that to occur perhaps it is missing something but that was a pretty quick stab at fixing my url issue. I am too tired now and need to go to bed haha. Thanks
-
No worries Look forward to seeing the site with the new URLs in place - a lot of great photos on that site that need to be shared with everyone
-
Yes it appears that this is a pretty good task to clean up this url issue but well worth it. I was surprised by the system moderators of Cartweaver discounting the url as if it were not important because they are very good developers however I think that the url is much more important than some realize as they are both keyword rich and more interesting to the customer. I am even less likely to click on some random url that has no meaning then if I saw one that clearly spelled out what the page was about.. Thanks Woj I am humbled and realize I have some studying to do.
-
There are 2 issues here:
-
Need to fix the URLs for better user experience & search engines and can do so by using rewrite rules in htaccess
The one suggested by the support forum (I've modified to better match your site but it's untested):
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^photographer/([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)/([0-9]+).php$ results.php?category=$2 The URLs would then be:
http://www.bartramgallery.com/photographer/charles-cramer/10.php (not ideal with "/10.php" at the end but may be best given the limitations of the cart)
rewrites to: http://www.bartramgallery.com/results.php?category=10 -
Clean up the Google index (remove old URLs & add new ones)
Since both URLs will render the same content we can fix by adding a
tag - attributing 1 source to the duplicate content - check if you can do this dynamically in the templates but be very careful not to canonical everything to the homepage or all your pages will be wiped out the index except the home page!)
-
-
when I read it it seems that the .htaccess was the way to go in that you can have the links appear to google as the old links but in presentation to the customer and keywords the new url would be used. The only thing I was confused about was that it seemed that it would not be good to do redirects but rewrites rather... or is it saying to do both?
-
Thanks
-
Great answer Woj!
-
My pleasure If you set up redirects, you shouldn't loose any traffic
This can also be controlled via htaccess
In google, search for this "site:bartramgallery.com" (without the double quotes) & you will see all the pages you need to redirect
I see the Charles Cramer page as the first photographers page that comes up & the redirect would be something as simple as:
Redirect 301 /results.php?category=10 http://www.bartramgallery.com/charles-cramer
-
Thank you Woj for taking the time to look at my site and I like that organization method. I was not aware of the possibility of being able to reorganize my site like that. I will definately have to research and study a bit to be able to approach this and for awhile I will probably lose traffic but in the end after the changes it should be a much better foot going forward.
-
I'm not familiar with Cartweaver but these are just guides..
First define an organised URL structure - on bartramgallery.com, at a quick glance, a good one could be:
-
bartramgallery.com/photographer (e.g. bartramgallery.com/gordon-michael)
-
bartramgallery.com/photographer/photo (e.g. bartramgallery.com/gordon-michael/juniper-study-joshua-tree)
OR
bartramgallery.com/landscape-photography/photo (e.g. bartramgallery.com/landscape-photography/juniper-study-joshua-tree)
Keep in mind that the shorter URLs the better (could even have bartramgallery.com/photography/juniper-study-joshua-tree)
Second, rewrite the URLs using Rewrite Rules in the htaccess file (see this post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/rewriterule-split-personality-explained)
I did a search on the Cartweaver support forums and found this:
http://forums.cartweaver.com/topic/google-analytics-identifying-products-and-categoriesOli, from the Cartweaver Support Team, seems to suggest the same "untested" approach as above
Let me know if you need any further help
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Will I be flagged for duplicate content by Google?
Hi Moz community, Had a question regarding duplicate content that I can't seem to find the answer to on Google. My agency is working on a large number of franchisee websites (over 40) for one client, a print franchise, that wants a refresh of new copy and SEO. Each print shop has their own 'microsite', though all services and products are the same, the only difference being the location. Each microsite has its own unique domain. To avoid writing the same content over and over in 40+ variations, would all the websites be flagged by Google for duplicate content if we were to use the same base copy, with the only changes being to the store locations (i.e. where we mention Toronto print shop on one site may change to Kelowna print shop on another)? Since the print franchise owns all the domains, I'm wondering if that would be a problem since the sites aren't really competing with one another. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks again!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdenPrez0 -
Internal Duplicate Content - Classifieds (Panda)
I've been wondering for a while now, how Google treats internal duplicate content within classified sites. It's quite a big issue, with customers creating their ads twice.. I'd guess to avoid the price of renewing, or perhaps to put themselves back to the top of the results. Out of 10,000 pages crawled and tested, 250 (2.5%) were duplicate adverts. Similarly, in terms of the search results pages, where the site structure allows the same advert(s) to appear under several unique URLs. A prime example would be in this example. Notice, on this page we have already filtered down to 1 result, but the left hand side filters all return that same 1 advert. Using tools like Siteliner and Moz Analytics just highlights these as urgent high priority issues, but I've always been sceptical. On a large scale, would this count as Panda food in your opinion, or does Google understand the nature of classifieds is different, and treat it as such? Appreciate thoughts. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sayers1 -
Do search engine consider this duplicate or thin content?
I operate an eCommerce site selling various equipment. We get product descriptions and various info from the manufacturer's websites offered to the dealers. Part of that info is in the form of User Guides and Operational Manuals downloaded in pdf format written by the manufacturer, then uploaded to our site. Also we embed and link to videos that are hosted on the manufacturer's respective YouTube or Vimeo channels. This is useful content for our customers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelFactor
My questions are: Does this type of content help our site by offering useful info, or does it hurt our SEO due to it being thin and or duplicate content? Or does the original content publishers get all the benefit? Is there any benefit to us publishing this stuff? What exactly is considered "thin content"?0 -
Duplicate content based on filters
Hi Community, There have probably been a few answers to this and I have more or less made up my mind about it but would like to pose the question or as that you post a link to the correct article for this please. I have a travel site with multiple accommodations (for example), obviously there are many filter to try find exactly what you want, youcan sort by region, city, rating, price, type of accommodation (hotel, guest house, etc.). This all leads to one invevitable conclusion, many of the results would be the same. My question is how would you handle this? Via a rel canonical to the main categories (such as region or town) thus making it the successor, or no follow all the sub-category pages, thereby not allowing any search to reach deeper in. Thanks for the time and effort.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ProsperoDigital0 -
Pages Titles in SERPs - Wordpress Site
In Google SERPs we have several websites (built in wordpress) who's pages are being displayed without using the page title - is this google ignoring the page title or is there a problem in our code - also if this is google is it still taking notice of the page title to determine what content is on the page?I have read several articles on this but wondered if someone can advise - I can provide the URL if required.Also I wanted to 100% that our robots.txt is behaving its self.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Magento Duplicate Content Recovery
Hi, we switched platforms to Magento last year. Since then our SERPS rankings have declined considerably (no sudden drop on any Panda/Penguin date lines). After investigating, it appeared we neglected to No index, follow all our filter pages and our total indexed pages rose sevenfold in a matter of weeks. We have since fixed the no index issue and the pages indexed are now below what we had pre switch to Magento. We've seen some positive results in the last week. Any ideas when/if our rankings will return? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonnygeeuk0 -
Finding Duplicate Content Spanning more than one Site?
Hi forum, SEOMoz's crawler identifies duplicate content within your own site, which is great. How can I compare my site to another site to see if they share "duplicate content?" Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Is SEOmoz.org creating duplicate content with their CDN subdomain?
Example URL: http://cdn.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions Canonical is a RELATIVE link, should be an absolute link pointing to main domain: http://www.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions <link href='[/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions)' rel='<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>' /> 13,400 pages indexed in Google under cdn subdomain go to google > site:http://cdn.seomoz.org https://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.seomoz.org%2F&oq=site:http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.seomoz.org%2F&gs_l=hp.2...986.6227.0.6258.28.14.0.0.0.5.344.3526.2-10j2.12.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.Uprw7ko7jnU&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=97577626a0fb6a97&biw=1920&bih=936
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irvingw1