How should we handle ecommerce section pages (flagged with duplication) containing the same products?
-
We've removed a ton of errors, duplication and other stuff since signing up to SEOmoz Pro, but we're getting to the point where what we have left isn't that easy to fix. On one of our (ecommerce) sites we have several sections where people buy products that are applicable to the area of the home. In one or two instances, a particular list of products is the same for two or more different areas - for instance the "Bedroom and Landings" and "Hallway and Stairs" sections may list the same 10 products. This is obviously flagging up as duplication in our reports.
What is the best way to handle this situation? Make the one with the highest authority canonical? Point both to another canonical page? Or, try and convince the product department that we should have a more generically name section that both link to?
Thanks for any advice!
-
Yes - to both you and @MagicDude4Eva - it seems this is about the thin content as opposed to the index of products listed there. Page titles and URLs are indeed unique, but the content can certainly be worked on. Thanks a lot for your help
-
Is your descriptive text very similar and thin?
I have had a similar situation and all I did was take some time to beef up the content of the page and make sure it was unique - this resolved the issue which I believe you have - even though the list of products was the same..
I know the areas are very similar but with some thought you should be able to produce some unique content for it, if your current content is similar and thin?
-
If you have multiple sections listing the same products and there is only one product URL (and the product page itself uses a canonical) there isn't an issue. (and I am not quite sure where the duplication problem comes in).
i.e. "Bedroom" would list "/lamp.html" and "/carpet.html" as unique product URLs. Your "Hallway"-section would also list "/lamp.html" and "/carpet.html" - although there is duplication of products on the listing pages, this is irrelevant from an indexing/SEO perspective.
Your category URLs (Bedroon and Landings) are also unique and not the actual cause of duplication (i.e. a category map with unique anchor texts but duplicate URLs and not canonical)?
-
The products only exist at one URL - but they can appear in multiple sections. The sections have different titles/descriptive text at the top, but list the same products.
-
If the products are exactly the same mark all products with the same canonical URL. If the duplication is not on URL level, but title suffix the title with the deparment/area.
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
-
Landing page separate from product page
Hello there, I have a wordpress website with a woocommerce plugin. I have 4 landing pages that describe my products and at the end of the pages, I have a CTA to my product page. is it bad for SEO? my website: https://relationadviser.ir
On-Page Optimization | | Aaron.be1 -
10 Mobile Pages. 5 Desktop Pages. Canonnical to where?
I have a mobile site with more pages than the desktop site. Normally I would just point the page equivalents to the desktop site using the rel canonnical tag. What about the 5 pages? Do I just leave them be? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Imajery0 -
Duplicate Page Titles and Duplicate Content
I've been a Pro Member for nearly a year and I am bound and determined to finally clean up all the crawl errors on our site PracticeRange.com. We have 180 errors for Duplicate Page Titles and Duplicate Content. I fixed many of the pages that were product pages with duplicate content. Those product descriptions were edited and now have unique content. However, there remain plenty of the errors that are puzzling. Many of the errors reference the same pages, for example, the Home Page, Login Page and the Search page (our catalog pages).
On-Page Optimization | | AlanWills
In the case of the Catalog Page errors, these type pages would have the same title every time "Search" and the results differ according to category. http://www.practicerange.com/Search.aspx?m=6
http://www.practicerange.com/Search.aspx?m=15 If this is rel=canonical issue, how do I fix it on a search result page? I want each of the different category type pages to be indexed. One of them is no more important than the other. So how would I incorporate the rel=canonical? In the case of the Home Page errors, I'm really confused. I don't know where to start to fix these. They are the result of a 404 error that leads to the home page. Is the content of the 404 page the culprit since it contains a link to the home page? Here are examples of the Home Page type of crawl errors. http://www.practicerange.com/404.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/Golf-Training-Aids/Golf-Nets/~/Assets/ProductImages/products/Golf-Training-Aids/Rubber-Wooden-Tee-Holder.aspx http://www.practicerange.com/404.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/Golf-Training-Aids/Golf-Nets/~/Assets/ProductImages/products/Golf-Training-Aid/Impact-Bag.aspx Thanks , Alan WillsPracticeRange.com0 -
A "show all" category for products resulting in to many on-page links
I've got reports from my seomoz pro campaign that I have more than 100 on-page links on a page of my ecommerce store. This page is a "show all" category displaying ALL products from ALL my categories on the site. So it is NOT a "show all" for displaying all products in a certain category on one page instead of having to click through page 1, page 2 etc. What I don't clearly understand is why I get this from the reports, as it does not display all products in one single page. What it does is gathering all products from all categories in one place, but instead of showing all products in one page it is divided into pages 1 - 13. What should I do to resolve this? Could it be the seomoz campaign giving me an incorrect result? Appreciate you taking the time to help! Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | danielpett0 -
Different pages for OS's vs 1 Page with Dynamic Content (user agent), what's the right approach?
We are creating a new homepage and the product are at different stages of development for different OS's. The value prop/messaging/some target keywords will be different for the various OS's for that reason. Question is, for SEO reasons, is it better to separate them into different pages or use 1 page and flip different content in based on the user agent?
On-Page Optimization | | JoeLin0 -
Page Analyzer & Page 1
I follow the recommended things from the Page Analyzer or Grader, and I am like position #40, so how do I get to page #1 as a minimum.
On-Page Optimization | | sansonj0 -
What is the best way to handle e-commerce Product title names?
Hello, I'm having a little bit of a conundrum, and I'm hoping someone will be able to help! We have an ecommerce site, and were trying to figure out what is the most SEO friendly way to handle product titles. With our ecommerce software, it currently sets the Product title as the H1 tag (which could be changed if needed). In addition, the product title is what is used as anchor text for any built in links that the ecommerce software builds from the category pages, etc (just like any other ecommerce site). Here's where I'm stuck. I'm trying to determine if it makes sense to use the specific keyword we are aiming for as the product title, or to put variations of the title that would be more descriptive. Here is an example: We have a Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girls Shoes. According to all accounts, the best keyword to attack for this would be "dorothy shoes". However, it loses the more accurate description of "Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girl Shoes". But, my thinking is that the H1 tag and anchor text would make more sense to use the term "Dorothy Shoes". The title tag could go something like this: "Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girls Shoes | Dorothy Shoes" In a situation like this, what do you think would be the "best" way to handle the title tag, product name, H1 tag, and anchor text? I'm sure there will be many different opinions, so I would like to hear what you think is best - and why.
On-Page Optimization | | clickshipcommerce0 -
Excessive Internal Linking...But it's a product page. What to do?
A few of our companies sites' product pages have the warning about excessive internal links. But these pages are product pages (for example). Should we be worried about this warning? Are there ways to avoid it? Or is it just the nature of the beast...? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | DevonIntl0
