I have a question about on page links or duplicate contant
-
Ok help me out here friends.
I’m working with the warnings and errors for my site.
I have two problems that relate to each other and I want to know if you had to choose what problem what would you choose.
I’m running into some duplicate content and title errors because under categories for my products there are so many products that it creates more than one page and with each new page it has the same title or same content on the page.
I tried to make this less in some cases by showing more products per page like 100 items and in most cases per category it will only show one page now.
Now some times there’s still more than one page and also this creates too many links now on that category page.
So I think I can get rid of all the to many on page links but it will make more pages and duplicate content and title tag.
What would you guys do?
-
Thanks Cyrus I will take a look at these articles .
-
Ken, this is a really common problem with lots of eCommerce sites today. The problem is lots and lots of category pages with duplicate content/title tags.
First of all, consider what is best for your user. Is 100 products per page the best solution? You might need to test different scenarios to find out.
Second, how best to structure your category pages for maximum SEO benefit? The typical problems are:
- Pagination. Category - Page 2 often looks the same as Category Page 1.
- If the same products are in multiple categories, the categories themselves become near duplication.
The first solution is to make sure your products are properly categorized. If the same product is in 16 different categories, you might want to revisit that.
The second important step is to manage pagination. Adam Audette wrote a great article on Search Engine Land which covers the major pagination issues. It's well worth a read:
http://searchengineland.com/the-latest-greatest-on-seo-pagination-114284
Also, you may want to study how SEOmoz handles it's category pages. For example, consider Page 2 of the "Search Engine Trends" Category. Notice the title tag, meta robots tag, and use (or not) of the canonical tag.
Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
Hi Ken,
I'd actually worry less about the number of links on the page and try to address the duplicate content/title tag issues.
In reality, it's very common and sometimes necessary for websites, especially eCommerce websites, to have more than 100/links per page. See this post from Dr. Pete.
-
Thank for the reply.
So far I’m thinking its best to make the changes to get the links down fewer than 100 even if it creates more category pages and duplicate content.
My site is not word press it’s a shopping cart ecommerce web site.
It does have some chooses for seo urls and such. I will look at that to see if there’s a way to have the extra pages created by to many products be different from each other.
Just to be clear if category A has 100 products and I list 20 per page it makes a page 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and each page it makes has the same description and title tag. So that makes the duplicate content.
If I add more products per page it makes less pages sometimes only one but then I have more than 100 links per page.
So what’s better duplicate content or to many links?
Thanks Ken
-
Hi Ken,
This is an overarching issue with lots of sites which sell several products in each catagory.
Expertlaunch has some good ideas for you to run with.
You may also give some thought into using:
<meta < span="">name="robots" content="noindex, follow" /> on the duplicate content pages . It will help the remaining pages in the SERPS. </meta <>
I read this tip in a thread a while back and it worked! Here is the thread below EGOL mentioned it. He seems to provide high quality feedback which has helped me in the past.
-
Ken,
Please allow me to address each item separately.
Number of links on each page - from my general studies and experience seo, I refrain from using more than 100 links on each page. This is done because Google may view your linking as spammy and may hurt your overall search rankings.
Categories - Make sure that you avoid over-using the same keyword in your categories as this can cause serious issues with Google where it can view such method as keyword stuffing. This can also cause problems down the road with diluting the value of your targeted keywords.
With CRM software like Wordpress, you are able to change your permalink structure via the Permalinks tab. Check your CRM software to see if you are able to customize the link structures to avoid running into this issue.
One important note, when working with a new site it's always a best practice to analyze your keywords and to plan out a map of your site with all pages and urls planned out. This will help you to avoid problems down the road.
I am working on a site right now that had poor categorization and now it is quite a challenge to restructure the links into new categories as this will most often break links which can set you back in terms of seo effort.
Whenever forwarding links always keep in mind that you must always use a proper 301 permanent redirect whenever changing links.
Also you may wish update your sitemap file and submit your site to Google Webmaster.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Is it better to create more pages of content or expand on current pages of content?
I am assuming that one way of improving the rankings of current pages will be to create more content on the keywords used... should this be an expansion of the content on current pages I am optimising for a keyword or is it better to keep creating new pages and if we are creating new pages is it best to use an extension of the keyword on the new page – for example if we are optimising one page for ‘does voltage optimisation work’ would it then be worth creating a page optimised for ‘does voltage optimisation work in hotels’ for example and so on? I am guessing maybe both might help, this is just a question I have had from one of my clients.
On-Page Optimization | | TWSI1 -
Duplicate Page Title issues
Hello, I have a duplicate page title problem: Crawl Diagnostics Reported that my website got **sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Title **between:
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs.html and these URLs below:http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-2
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-3
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-4
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-5 I don't know why, because I have already implemented rel=”next” and rel=”prev” to canonical pages. Please give me an advice!0 -
How can I reduce Too Many On-Page Links? I am looking for best method through which I can reduce by on page link.
Hello, As I have the Pro Account in SEOMOZ . I have created the campaign for my website and I have seen the warring for on page analysis for Too Many On-Page Links. As per my knowledge in past it's matter that you can put maximum 100 links per page but now is it still matter or harm if pages has Too Many On-Page Links? And if yest then please let me know the best method to reduce my On-Page Links with out doing any major changes in website
On-Page Optimization | | jemindesai0 -
"City page" links in footer of home page: Spammy?
Is listing a bunch of links to city pages in the footer of a home page considered "spammy" to Google? (ie- Chicago Alarms, Illinois Alarms, Naperville Alarms, etc.) What are the negative affects this might have on ranking, if any?
On-Page Optimization | | MChi0 -
Too many links on page -- how to fix
We are getting reports that there are too many links on most of the pages in one of the sites we manage. Not just a few too many... 275 (versus <100 that is the target). The entire site is built with a very heavy global navigation, which contains a lot of links -- so while the users don't see all of that, Google does. Short of re-architecting the site, can you suggest ways to provide site navigation that don't violate this rule?
On-Page Optimization | | novellseo2 -
Duplicate Page Content Issue
For one of our campaigns, we have 164 errors for Duplicate Page Content. We have a website where much of the same content lives in two different places on their website. The information needs to be accessible from both areas. What is the best way to tackle this problem? Is there anything that can be done so these pages are not competing against one another? If the only solution is to edit the content on one of the pages, how much of the content has to be different? Is there a certain percentage to go by? Here is an example of what I am referring to: 1.) http://www.valleyorthopedicassociates.com/services/foot-center/preventing-sprains-and-strains 2.) http://www.valleyorthopedicassociates.com/patient-resources/service/foot-and-ankle-center/preventing-sprains-and-strains
On-Page Optimization | | cmaseattle1 -
E-Commerce product pages that have multiple skus with unique pages.
Hey Guys, With the recent farm/panda update from google i'm at a cross roads as to how I should optimize product pages for a project i'm working on for a client. My client sells tires and one particular tire brand can have up to 15 models and each model can have up to 30 sizes. IE: 'Michelin Pilot Sport Cup' comes in 15 different sizes. Each size will have it's unique product page and description bringing me to my question. Should I use the same description on every size? I do plan on writting unique content for each tire model however i'm not sure if I should do it for every size. After all the tire model description is the same for every size, each size doesn't carry any unique characteristics that I can describe. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | MikeDelaCruz770 -
Too many on-page links
I manualy counted the links on my website http://www.commensus.com which came to around 50, but SEO moz says I have over 100 and google isn't seeing them all.
On-Page Optimization | | jawl44630