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
-
Product Page on Eccomerce Site ranking very poorly - Unique Product description but duplicate content on other tabs.
Hi All, I have a query regarding my Product pages on my eCommerce site. I have unique Product descriptions but some of the other page content on the other tabs i.e Hire Terms , Delivery , About the Hire Company - Are duplicated across ALL my products. Is that okay or how should I deal with them ? See example url of one of my products below below - http://goo.gl/aSFPqP My products currently rank very badly... 200 + so Any advice would be greatly appreciated thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Noindexing Duplicate (non-unique) Content
When "noindex" is added to a page, does this ensure Google does not count page as part of their analysis of unique vs duplicate content ratio on a website? Example: I have a real estate business and I have noindex on MLS pages. However, is there a chance that even though Google does not index these pages, Google will still see those pages and think "ah, these are duplicate MLS pages, we are going to let those pages drag down value of entire site and lower ranking of even the unique pages". I like to just use "noindex, follow" on those MLS pages, but would it be safer to add pages to robots.txt as well and that should - in theory - increase likelihood Google will not see such MLS pages as duplicate content on my website? On another note: I had these MLS pages indexed and 3-4 weeks ago added "noindex, follow". However, still all indexed and no signs Google is noindexing yet.....
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Penalized for Similar, But Not Duplicate, Content?
I have multiple product landing pages that feature very similar, but not duplicate, content and am wondering if this would affect my rankings in a negative way. The main reason for the similar content is three-fold: Continuity of site structure across different products Similar, or the same, product add-ons or support options (resulting in exactly the same additional tabs of content) The product itself is very similar with 3-4 key differences. Three examples of these similar pages are here - although I do have different meta-data and keyword optimization through the pages. http://www.1099pro.com/prod1099pro.asp http://www.1099pro.com/prod1099proEnt.asp http://www.1099pro.com/prodW2pro.asp
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew2220 -
Dynamic 301's causing duplicate content
Hi, wonder if anyone can help? We have just changed our site which was hosted on IIS and the page url's were like this ( example.co.uk/Default.aspx?pagename=About-Us ). The new page url is example.co.uk/About-Us/ and is using Apache. The 301's our developer told us to use was in this format: RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/Default.aspx$
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GoGroup51
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^pagename=About-Us$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.co.uk/About-Us/ [R=301,L] This seemed to work from a 301 point of view; however it also seemed to allow both of the below URL's to give the same page! example.co.uk/About-Us/?pagename=About-Us example.co.uk/About-Us/ Webmaster Tools has now picked up on this and is seeing it a duplicate content. Can anyone help why it would be doing this please. I'm not totally clued up and our host/ developer cant understand it too. Many Thanks0 -
Can literally any site get 'burned'?
Just curious what people think. The SEOMOZ trust on my site has gone up, all while Google is dropping us in rankings for lots of keywords. Just curious if this can happen to anyone or once you are 100% 'trusted' you're good. We went from 120,000 page views down to about 50,000. All while doubling content, improving the design(at least from a user perspective), and getting more natural links. Seems counter intuitive to Google's mantra of ranking quality. I would guess 'authority' sites never get hit by these updates right? So when you make it you've made it.(at least from a dropping like a rock perspective, obviously you have to keep working). I'm guessing we just need a bunch more quality links but would hate to work on building links, quality content, trust etc for it to be something so finicky long term.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | astahl110 -
Duplicate page content and Duplicate page title errors
Hi, I'm new to SeoMoz and to this forum. I've started a new campaign on my site and got back loads of error. Most of them are Duplicate page content and Duplicate page title errors. I know I have some duplicate titles but I don't have any duplicate content. I'm not a web developer and not so expert but I have the impression that the crawler is following all my internal links (Infact I have also plenty of warnings saying "Too many on-page links". Do you think this is the cause of my errors? Should I implement the nofollow on all internal links? I'm working with Joomla. Thanks a lot for your help Marco
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcodublin0 -
Cross-Domain Canonical and duplicate content
Hi Mozfans! I'm working on seo for one of my new clients and it's a job site (i call the site: Site A).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
The thing is that the client has about 3 sites with the same Jobs on it. I'm pointing a duplicate content problem, only the thing is the jobs on the other sites must stay there. So the client doesn't want to remove them. There is a other (non ranking) reason why. Can i solve the duplicate content problem with a cross-domain canonical?
The client wants to rank well with the site i'm working on (Site A). Thanks! Rand did a whiteboard friday about Cross-Domain Canonical
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday0 -
Do sites with a small number of content pages get penalized by Google?
If my site has just five content pages, instead of 25 or 50, then will it get penalized by Google for a given moderately competitive keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RightDirection0