Is it worth De-duplicating a large e-commerce website?
-
Hi all,
Most e-commerce websites use the same product description as the manufacturers. We know duplicate content is a huge negative for SEO. We are thinking about de-duplicating ours but our website is so big - it has tens of thousands of products. To de-duplicate it would require a ton of resources. Do you think it's worth it to go ahead de-duplicate our website? Do you have a website where de-duplication was done and did you see any positive result? (if so, did you see a certain percentage increase?)
Thank you in advance
-
Hi Marie,
Thank you for responding. I'd be happy to share it with you if we do see a positive result.
-
Hi Matthew,
Thank you for your suggestion.
From what I can see on our analytics, the product detail page, which is the page with the duplicate description, isn't getting any organic traffic. The page is indexed but it's just not ranking. Other websites including manufacturer is out ranking it.
Good suggestion, we are planning on doing the top 250 SKUs and hopefully we'll get some positive result.
On the websites that you've worked on, did you see an increase after you de-duplicate it? The reason why I'm asking is because I'm being asked by higher ups of what kind of percentage increase should we expect from this. I have no answer for it but they want a ball park answer, e.g., 10% or 20% increase.
-
Ok mate. You are in trouble and there is no shortcut. Sorry I am going to disagree. You must have unique content in your page and there is no two ways about it. If you are still getting visitors even after harbouring duplicate content, you should thank your lucky star.
_Now, why not start generating unique content rather than wasting your time looking at the size of the complexity. _
-
I was going to respond to this however Mathew and Marie are spot on. First order of business is to check positioning for your products to see if you are being marginalized behind other pages with the same descriptions. (While youre in there check the pages Page Authority and backlinks to compare to yours as well). Check to see how many of your product pages are indexed. You can also do a litmus test on a few products by adding unique descriptions and waiting to see if there is improvement.
-
Matthew's got good advice for you. I have a few thoughts to add.
How well are you ranking for these products right now? Anywhere near the top? If not, it's worth a try. And I really like the idea of trying it with a small sample first and seeing if your rankings improve.
I wanted to share with you about a real estate site I work with. In real estate almost every realtor uses the MLS listing description for each listing. This means there is a lot of duplication going on. For our listings we create a unique description and title for each listing and we usually end up ranking #1 for address searches for these listings.
If you do de-duplicate and see an improvement I would love to write about your site on my blog as it would probably be considered a Panda recovery of sorts. Let me know!
-
I agree with Mathhew. completely. Test it on a small scale, there are so many other metrics that influence the rankings that it's best to test it and if it works, do it on a larger scale. Quoted from Mathhew's response "Another way to approach this would be to take a sample of ~50 products that get some traffic from search right now. Take unique pictures and write unique content for those products. Then, measure the results. Did organic traffic increase after 30, 60, 90 days? If so, you know that you've got a problem with duplicate content worth correcting."
-
How much traffic do you get to those duplicated pages right now from Google/Bing? Are all of those pages indexed? Can you tell if you are losing out to the manufacturer websites? If the pages are indexed, you are getting traffic, and seem to be "beating" the manufacturer's website, I wouldn't worry too much. On sites I've worked on, I've seen duplicated pages get no traffic (or only one page gets traffic, but not all pages) or they get some traffic but the manufacturer's website ranks considerably higher. That is when you know you have a problem worth correcting. Another way to approach this would be to take a sample of ~50 products that get some traffic from search right now. Take unique pictures and write unique content for those products. Then, measure the results. Did organic traffic increase after 30, 60, 90 days? If so, you know that you've got a problem with duplicate content worth correcting. I hope that 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
-
Disadvantages of Migrating Website to New URL
Hi There, I am currently struggling with the ranking of my website. No matter how many initiatives I try (backlinking, blog commenting, social posting, etc.) I can't seem to make any progression in Google Search. I've done competitive metrics through Open Site Explorer and can't seem to really find the reason why my site is not ranking as well as my competitors. The only one possible glaring element I've thought about is my website URL. This company is in the heating and cooling industry and majority of my competitors have either "heating" or "cooling" or both in their website URL's but mine does not. Does anyone have any thoughts or recommendations on if changing my URL and then redirecting my current URL would be a step in the right direction help me to climb the rankings in Google Search? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Duplicate Page Content - default.html
I am showing a duplicate content error in moz. I have site.com and site.com/default.html How can I fix that? Should I use a canonical tag? If so, how would i do that?
On-Page Optimization | | bhsiao0 -
My website ranking recently dropping - why?
Hi all, I am a photographer and do my own website and links etc. Website is: http://www.mckayphotography.com.au I have enjoyed good google rankings for my main keyword 'wedding photography sydney' for many years, and even recovered after taking a hit from the penguin (may 2012) update. But the last month has seen a steady drop from around 2nd - 4th down to now 10th. I have analyzed my site using all the moz tools and on most counts eg moz rank and moz trust I am ahead of my competitor sites....but still rank under them on google. So I would greatly appreciate on advice people could give on getting my ranking back up again! Thanks in advance Darryn
On-Page Optimization | | dmck0 -
Duplicate content on domains we own
Hello! We are new to SEO and have a problem we have caused ourselves. We own two domains GoCentrix.com (old domain) and CallRingTalk.com (new domain that we want to SEO). The content was updated on both domains at about the same time. Both are identical with a few exceptions. Now that we are getting into SEO we now understand this to be a big issue. Is this a resolvable matter? At this point what is the best approach to handle this? So far we have considered a couple of options. 1. Change the copy, but on which site? Is one flagged as the original and the other duplicate? 2. Robots.txt noindex, nofollow on the old one. Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | CallRingTalk0 -
Copyscape Duplicate Content Ownership Question
We have a site that has had its content copied verbatim to numerous other sites and articles. We were advised to change our content but the content is originally ours. Does google take that into account before they apply duplicate penalties? And shouldn't copyscape be able to show this information in their reports? It just doesnt seem right that the originating author would have to change content because everyone else is stealing it. Any clarification on this?
On-Page Optimization | | anthonytjm0 -
Duplicate eCommerce Product Descriptions
I know that creating original product descriptions is best practices. What I don't understand is how other sites are able to generate significant traffic while still using duplicate product descriptions on all product pages. How are they not being penalized by Google?
On-Page Optimization | | mj7750 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Title
When you are in Error status for Duplicate Page Titles - but it is because of the root domain: Example.com and Example.com/index How to you go about changing the title of the same page without looking un-natural. My client has built his site with the - index file pulling to the root - but the crawlers are seeing TWO separate pages - when in reality they are the same. Riddle me this batman?
On-Page Optimization | | Chenzo0 -
Mobile vs Website Duplicate Data / Meta
SeoMoz is reporting duplicate content, title tags, and other meta information and seems to be showing that my mobile site (located on m.website.com) is a duplicate of website.com I was figuring I could add "Mobile SiteName" to the title to avoid the duplicate title but am a little confused as to how to approach the duplicate content side of it
On-Page Optimization | | Check_City0