How do I Address Low Quality/Duplicate Content Issue for a Job portal?
-
Hi,
I want to optimize my job portal for maximum search traffic.
Problems
- Duplicate content- The portal takes jobs from other portals/blogs and posts on our site. Sometimes employers provide the same job posting to multiple portals and we are not allowed to change it resulting in duplicate content
- Empty Content Pages- We have a lot of pages which can be reached via filtering for multiple options. Like IT jobs in New York. If there are no IT jobs posted in New York, then it's a blank page with little or no content
- Repeated Content- When we have job postings, we have about the company information on each job listing page. If a company has 1000 jobs listed with us, that means 1000 pages have the exact same about the company wording
Solutions Implemented
- Rel=prev and next. We have implemented this for pagination. We also have self referencing canonical tags on each page. Even if they are filtered with additional parameters, our system strips of the parameters and shows the correct URL all the time for both rel=prev and next as well as self canonical tags
- For duplicate content- Due to the volume of the job listings that come each day, it's impossible to create unique content for each. We try to make the initial paragraph (at least 130 characters) unique. However, we use a template system for each jobs. So a similar pattern can be detected after even 10 or 15 jobs. Sometimes we also take the wordy job descriptions and convert them into bullet points. If bullet points already available, we take only a few bullet points and try to re-shuffle them at times
Can anyone provide me additional pointers to improve my site in terms of on-page SEO/technical SEO?
Any help would be much appreciated.
We are also thinking of no-indexing or deleting old jobs once they cross X number of days. Do you think this would be a smart strategy? Should I No-index empty listing pages as well?
Thank you.
-
Unique Listing Copy
I would try to get that unique content to the top of the source order - it doesn't necessarily have to appear at the top of the page - it could be in a sidebar for instance, but it should be first in the source so that Googlebot gobbles it up before it reaches duplicate stuff or secondary nav / footer links etc.
No Results pages
Yes, you could certainly noindex your no-results pages with a robots meta tag - that would be a good idea.
Loading duplicate content with ajax
In terms of Google and ajax content, yes Googlebot can and does follow links it finds in javascript.
All I can tell you here is my own experience
On my product detail template, I have loaded up category descriptions with ajax that appear canonically (if that's the right way of putting it) on my listing pages. In the SERPs, the cat description content is indexed for the pages I want it to be indexed for (the listings in this case), and not for the product detail pages where I'm loading with ajax. And these product detail pages still perform well and get good organic landing traffic.
On the product detail page where I'm loading with ajax, I have the copy in an accordion, and it's loaded with an ajax request on document ready. It might be considered slightly more cochre to do this in response to a user action though - such as clicking on the accordion in my case. The theory being that you're making your site responsive to a user's needs, rather than loading up half the content one way and the other half another way, if you get what I mean.
Sometimes of course you just cannot avoid certain amounts of content duplication within your site.
-
Luke,
Thank you for your detailed reply.
I forgot to mention that for each of our important filter pages (like IT jobs in New York) we do have a unique paragraph text which is human readable and at the same time SEO optimized (They are around 200 words long and is not there for all filter pages due to the volume of such pages.) This unique block of text rests at the bottom of the page, just above the footer, after all the latest 20 job listings are shown.
"Filtering & Blank Results Pages Could this not be done with javascript / ajax, so that Google never finds an empty listing?"
I am afraid this cannot be done due to the structure of our system. No-Indexing them would be much more easier. Wouldn't it do?
"You could load this content from an ajax template, either as the page loads, or in response to a user action (eg. click on a button 'show company details')."
Sounds like a good idea. Are you sure Google will not consider this as cloaking and that Google cannot read Ajax content?
"Try not to load up the duplicate description by default."- Do you mean we should implement Ajax again for this part?
"You will want to, where possible, specify a view-all page for Google"- not sure if this will be possible from our side due to engineering limitations. I thought rel=next and prev would solve the issue. However, I still see intermediate pages indexed.
-
Hi, I've tried to address your issues point by point according to your post...
Duplicate Job Posting Content
You can try to offset this by having a couple hundred words of unique copy per listing page url exposed to Google. So, if your page lists all jobs in the catering industry in New Jersey for instance, write some copy on the topic, and try to make it readable and useful to the user as well. Add microdata to the template using schema.org, so that Google can understand what's there at the data level - there will likely be entities available there to describe your content in terms of location, the companies that are hiring, etc.
I'm inclined to say don't bother with reshuffling duplicate content and adding bullet points to it - Google is smart enough to recognise that this copy is the same, and will not give you any points - perhaps the opposite - for trying to disguise this.
Filtering & Blank Results Pages
Could this not be done with javascript / ajax, so that Google never finds an empty listing?
'About the Company' Duplicate Content
You could load this content from an ajax template, either as the page loads, or in response to a user action (eg. click on a button 'show company details'). I have solved this exact problem like this in the past - loading a tour category description that appears on a great many tour detail pages.
Perhaps you can do as I'm suggesting above for the job description duplication - where possible, and as long as it's done in a way that does not come across as cloaking. It's good that you have a unique paragaph above the duplicate description.Try not to load up the duplicate description by default. I'm not sure on your source order or site / template structure so difficult to get too detailed here and I don't want to risk suggesting something that could be interpreted as a violation of Google's guidelines.
Pagination
You will want to, where possible, specify a view-all page for Google - this is suggested by them as a best practice, and in my experience, Googlebot loves to find chunky listing content, PROVIDED that it loads quickly enough not to hamper the user experience.
You can make sure of this by lazyloading images and other media. Be sure to specify the correct image src attributes (not spacer.gif for instance) inside of noscript tags to make sure that image content is still indexed.
You could also load up the markup for all items in the listing, and then use javascript to chunk the content into 'pages', or load it asynchronously where javascript is available. If no javascript, then load all content. By using javascript pagination, you basically avert the need for a separate view all page, meaning only have one template to maintain and optimise.
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
-
Duplicate Content
I am trying to get a handle on how to fix and control a large amount of duplicate content I keep getting on my Moz Reports. The main area where this comes up is for duplicate page content and duplicate title tags ... thousands of them. I partially understand the source of the problem. My site mixes free content with content that requires a login. I think if I were to change my crawl settings to eliminate the login and index the paid content it would lower the quantity of duplicate pages and help me identify the true duplicate pages because a large number of duplicates occur at the site login. Unfortunately, it's not simple in my case because last year I encountered a problem when migrating my archives into a new CMS. The app in the CMS that migrated the data caused a large amount of data truncation Which means that I am piecing together my archives of approximately 5,000 articles. It also means that much of the piecing together process requires me to keep the former app that manages the articles to find where certain articles were truncated and to copy the text that followed the truncation and complete the articles. So far, I have restored about half of the archives which is time-consuming tedious work. My question is if anyone knows a more efficient way of identifying and editing duplicate pages and title tags?
Technical SEO | | Prop650 -
Simple duplicate content query
Hello Community, One of my clients runs a job board website. They are having some new framework installed which will lead to them having to delete all their jobs and re-add them. The same jobs will be re-posted but with a different reference number which in turn with change each URL. I believe this will cause significant duplicate content issues, I just thought I would get a second opinion on best practice for approaching a situation like this. Would a possible solution be to delete jobs gradually and 301 re-direct old URLs to new URLs? Many thanks in advance, Adam
Technical SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Duplicate content on job sites
Hi, I have a question regarding job boards. Many job advertisers will upload the same job description to multiple websites e.g. monster, gumtree, etc. This would therefore be viewed as duplicate content. What is the best way to handle this if we want to ensure our particular site ranks well? Thanks in advance for the help. H
Technical SEO | | HiteshP0 -
Duplicate Tag Content Mystery
Hello Moz Communtiy! i am also having error of Duplicate Tag Content Mystery like: http://www.earnmoneywithgoogleadsense.com/tag/blog-post/ http://www.earnmoneywithgoogleadsense.com/tag/effective-blog-post/ Pages are same. I have 100+ Error on website so how can i remove this error? DO you have any tutorial based on this? Can i change canonical url at once or i need to set it one by one? If you have any video basis on it, i will recommend.
Technical SEO | | navneetkumar7860 -
Filter Tag Duplicate Content E-Commerce Issue
Hello, I just launched a new site for a client but am seeing some duplicate content issues in the campaign crawl. It has to do with the drill-down, filter "tags" that helps users find the product they are looking for. You can see them in the sidebar here: http://www.ssmd.com/shop/ In my crawl report this is what is showing up as duplicate content (attached image). How do I keep these widgets from generating duplicate content on the site? Also, not sure if it's important or not, but I am using Wordpress, WooCommerce and Yoast's SEO Tool. Any suggestions are appreciated! Screen%20Shot%202012-10-23%20at%202.56.00%20PM.png
Technical SEO | | kylehungate0 -
Affiliate urls and duplicate content
Hi, What is the best way to get around having an affiliate program, and the affiliate links on your site showing as duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | Memoz0 -
How to fix duplicate page content error?
SEOmoz's Crawl Diagnostics is complaining about a duplicate page error. The example of links that has duplicate page content error are http://www.equipnet.com/misc-spare-motors-and-pumps_listid_348855 http://www.equipnet.com/misc-spare-motors-and-pumps_listid_348852 These are not duplicate pages. There are some values that are different on both pages like listing # , equipnet tag # , price. I am not sure how do highlight the different things the two page has like the "Equipment Tag # and listing #". Do they resolve if i use some style attribute to highlight such values on page? Please help me with this as i am not really sure why seo is thinking that both pages have same content. Thanks !!!
Technical SEO | | RGEQUIPNET0 -
Duplicate Content and Canonical use
We have a pagination issue, which the developers seem reluctant (or incapable) to fix whereby we have 3 of the same page (slightly differing URLs) coming up in different pages in the archived article index. The indexing convention was very poorly thought up by the developers and has left us with the same article on, for example, page 1, 2 and 3 of the article index, hence the duplications. Is this a clear cut case of using a canonical tag? Quite concerned this is going to have a negative impact on ranking, of course. Cheers Martin
Technical SEO | | Martin_S0