404's and duplicate content.
-
I have real estate based websites that add new pages when new listings are added to the market and then deletes pages when the property is sold. My concern is that there are a significant amount of 404's created and the listing pages that are added are going to be the same as others in my market who use the same IDX provider.
I can go with a different IDX provider that uses IFrame which doesn't create new pages but I used a IFrame before and my time on site was 3min w/ 2.5 pgs per visit and now it's 7.5 pg/visit with 6+min on the site.
The new pages create new content daily so is fresh content and better on site metrics (with the 404's) better or less 404's, no dup content and shorter onsite metrics better?
Any thoughts on this issue? Any advice would be appreciated
-
Thanks for the reply.
-
Thank you for the reply, the problem is it's done automatically. There are 100's of new listings/pages added to the LV Real Estate Market weekly. The IDX program automatically adds properties when they come to market and deletes them when they go into sold status.
My site is www.mylvcondosales.com
I did notice that Realtor.com and Yahoo Real Estate have the same IDX page adding process.
-
I think what Aran has suggested is great. You don't want to 404 the sold property pages as if it has been a popular property page and has accumaled links and PA, then by 404'ing that page you would lose all that value.
By doing a 301 redirect to a category page you will pass most of that value on, however you wont pass on the anchor text value and by doing this it will also tell the search engines to disregard that page in future so it shouldn't appear in the search, this can take a while.
-
I would possibly look towards a different strategy.
Rather than deleting a page once a product is sold I would leave the page live for a while and put a sold sign on it and offer a selection of similar properties to view. After say 3 months then 301 the page back to a category page higher in the hierarchy. Or don't 301 it at all, perhaps Noindex the page after a given time frame?
I'd much rather present my visitors with a Sold sign and a list of similar properties than potentially lose them to a 404.
Don't think search engine, think visitor
Hope that helps
Aran
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
-
URL slash creating duplicate content
Hi All, I currently have an issue whereby by domain name (just homepage) has: mydomain.com and: mydomain.com/ Moz crawler flags this up as duplicate content - does anyone know of a way I can fix this? Thanks! Jack
Technical SEO | | Jack11660 -
Tricky Duplicate Content Issue
Hi MOZ community, I'm hoping you guys can help me with this. Recently our site switched our landing pages to include a 180 item and 60 item version of each category page. They are creating duplicate content problems with the two examples below showing up as the two duplicates of the original page. http://www.uncommongoods.com/fun/wine-dine/beer-gifts?view=all&n=180&p=1 http://www.uncommongoods.com/fun/wine-dine/beer-gifts?view=all&n=60&p=1 The original page is http://www.uncommongoods.com/fun/wine-dine/beer-gifts I was just going to do a rel=canonical for these two 180 item and 60 item pages to the original landing page but then I remembered that some of these landing pages have page 1, page 2, page 3 ect. I told our tech department to use rel=next and rel=prev for those pages. Is there anything else I need to be aware of when I apply the canonical tag for the two duplicate versions if they also have page 2 and page 3 with rel=next and rel=prev? Thanks
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
How to avoid duplicate content when blogging from a site
I have a wordpress plastic surgery website. I have a wordpress blog on the site. My concern is avoiding duplicate content penalties when I blog. I use my blog to add new information about procedures that have pages on the same topic on the main site. Invariably same keywords and phrases can appear in the blog-will this be considered Duplicate content? Also is it black hat to insert anchor text in a blog linking back to site content-ie internal link or is one now and then helpful
Technical SEO | | wianno1680 -
Dealing with duplicate content
Manufacturer product website (product.com) has an associated direct online store (buyproduct.com). the online store has much duplicate content such as product detail pages and key article pages such as technical/scientific data is duplicated on both sites. What are some ways to lessen the duplicate content here? product.com ranks #1 for several key keywords so penalties can't be too bad and buyproduct.com is moving its way up the SERPS for similar terms. Ideally I'd like to combine the sites into one, but not in the budget right away. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | Timmmmy0 -
Duplicate content with same URL?
SEOmoz is saying that I have duplicate content on: http://www.XXXX.com/content.asp?ID=ID http://www.XXXX.com/CONTENT.ASP?ID=ID The only difference I see in the URL is that the "content.asp" is capitalized in the second URL. Should I be worried about this or is this an issue with the SEOmoz crawl? Thanks for any help. Mike
Technical SEO | | Mike.Goracke0 -
SEOMoz is indicating I have 40 pages with duplicate content, yet it doesn't list the URL's of the pages???
When I look at the Errors and Warnings on my Campaign Overview, I have a lot of "duplicate content" errors. When I view the errors/warnings SEOMoz indicates the number of pages with duplicate content, yet when I go to view them the subsequent page says no pages were found... Any ideas are greatly welcomed! Thanks Marty K.
Technical SEO | | MartinKlausmeier0 -
Duplicate Content Resolution Suggestion?
SEOmoz tools is saying there is duplicate content for: www.mydomain.com www.mydomain.com/index.html What would be the best way to resolve this "error"?
Technical SEO | | PlasticCards0 -
Duplicate content?
I have a question regarding a warning that I got on one of my websites, it says Duplicate content. I'm canonical url:s and is also using blocking Google out from pages that you are warning me about. The pages are not indexed by Google, why do I get the warnings? Thanks for great seotools! 3M5AY.png
Technical SEO | | bnbjbbkb0