Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How do I handle duplicate content of the same product in Multiple product categories?
-
I am building a BigCommerce store for selling framed art. Many of the pieces of art will fall in more than one product category.
Let's say I have a framed print of a photograph of a western landscape. This piece of art would fit into these categories; "western", "landscape", and "photography". I would have three pages with duplicate content for just this one framed print.
Will google give me less page rank due to this? Can all the link juice be given to just one of the three categories by use of rel=canonical? If so, does anyone know how to do this for a bigcommerce site?
I would appreciate any feedback.
Thanks,
Kelly
-
Hey Kelly,
Awesome! I am so glad that relieved your worries. You are very welcome
Dana
-
Hello Dana,
It works perfectly! I entered one product under three different categories and the same URL showed for all three.
Thank You!
Kelly
-
Thanks for your help!
-
Hello Dana,
BigCommerce does allow a person to assign a product to multiple categories so it probably works the same way. I was under the impression that when one product was assigned to multiple categories that a different URL would be used for each category. If the same URL is used as with your store, my problem is solved. I will check that out.Thank you very much!
Kelly
-
Hi Kelly,
I am much more familiar with Volusion and 3Dcart, but I imagine that Big Commerce might work in a similar way. Inside the admin panel, when you are building products and categories, it is very easy to assign one product to multiple categories. As CleverPhd suggests, this is accomplished because the products aren't nested under category directories, they have their own.
Here is an example of one of the 3dcart stores I manage. This product: https://www.celebratecommunion.com/prefilled-communion-cups-with-wafers-box-of-500.html actually belongs to 3 different categories: "Prefilled Communion Cups" "Communion Supplies" "Home Page Specials" However, it retains the same URL across all categories. In both 3dcart and Volusion, when you are building a product you can customize the URL and then simply select with drop down boxes which categories you want that product to be applied to. I imagines Big Commerce would be quite similar, but having never used it I can't say for sure. As long as the URL for the product page doesn't change, you could put it in 100's of categories and it would never be considered duplicate content because it only has one unique URL.
I hope that helps a little. Let me know if my answer raises more questions than it answers
Dana
-
See the URL examples above. Basically dont nest product pages under sub categories or category folders.
-
Hello,
Thank you for responding to my question.
I'm not sure what you mean by this....."completely separate your product URLs from your category URLs". My level of knowledge isn't advanced.
-
You should separate your paginated product list pages from your product pages (as far as the URL structure) or only use main categories in the URLs for products.
Consider these example product list pages. You have your main list of products
Then you have pages 2-n that lets people browse products
domain.com/category1/sub1/page2-n
You could have other examples of this (your example would be)
domain.com/category1/sub2/page2-n
In your example, you have a product that can go in sub1 or sub2 and so you dont want
domain.com/category1/sub1/product-abc
domain.com/category1/sub2/product-abc
as yes - these would be duplicates and cause issues. Yes you could use the canonical to link to the main product, but what would work better is this
domain.com/category1/product-abc
If you get rid of the subcategory in the URLs you can take advantage of having the KW from the main category etc. Likewise, if you had a product that could sit in multiple main categories, then it may be you need to use a the approach of
domain.com/products/products-abc
and just completely separate your product URLs from your category URLs.
It would seem that with the use of photographs you will need to always have multiple categories and so this may be your best approach.
You need to sit down with a big whiteboard and map all of this out as it will get complicated real quick. Then run all your products through it and see if it makes sense.
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
-
Best way to handle Breadcrumbs for Blog Posts in multiple categories?
The site in question uses Wordpress. They have a Resources section that is broken into two categories (A or B). Underneath each of these categories is 5 or 6 subcategories. The structure looks like this: /p/main-category-a/subcategory/blog-post-name /p/main-category-b/subcategory/blog-post-name All posts have a main category, but other posts often have multiple subcategories while some posts also fall into both main categories. What would be the easiest or most effective way to auto-populate the breadcrumb based on from where the person reached the blog post? So for example, a way to set Home -> Main Category -> Subcategory 1 as the breadcrumb if they reach it from the Subcategory 1 landing page. Or is this not possible and we should just set the breadcrumb manually based on where we feel it best lives? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Alces0 -
Query Strings causing Duplicate Content
I am working with a client that has multiple locations across the nation, and they recently merged all of the location sites into one site. To allow the lead capture forms to pre-populate the locations, they are using the query string /?location=cityname on every page. EXAMPLE - www.example.com/product www.example.com/product/?location=nashville www.example.com/product/?location=chicago There are thirty locations across the nation, so, every page x 30 is being flagged as duplicate content... at least in the crawl through MOZ. Does using that query string actually cause a duplicate content problem?
Technical SEO | | Rooted1 -
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 -
.com and .co.uk duplicate content
hi mozzers I have a client that has just released a .com version of their .co.uk website. They have basically re-skinned the .co.uk version with some US amends so all the content and title tags are the same. What you do recommend? Canonical tag to the .co.uk version? rewrite titles?
Technical SEO | | KarlBantleman0 -
Is duplicate content ok if its on LinkedIn?
Hey everyone, I am doing a duplicate content check using copyscape, and realized we have used a ton of the same content on LinkedIn as our website. Should we change the LinkedIn company page to be original? Or does it matter? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Duplicate Content
We have a ton of duplicate content/title errors on our reports, many of them showing errors of: http://www.mysite.com/(page title) and http://mysite.com/(page title) Our site has been set up so that mysite.com 301 redirects to www.mysite.com (we did this a couple years ago). Is it possible that I set up my campaign the wrong way in SEOMoz? I'm thinking it must be a user error when I set up the campaign since we already have the 301 Redirect. Any advice is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Ditigal_Taylor0 -
How to resolve this Duplicate content?
Hi , There is page i get when i do proper menu navigation Caratlane.com>jewellery>rings>casualsrings> http://www.caratlane.com/jewellery/rings/casual-rings/leaves-dew-diamond-0-03-ct-peridot-1-ct-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html When i do a site search in my search box by my product code number "JR00219" The same page is appears with different url http://www.caratlane.com/leaves-dew-diamond-0-03-ct-peridot-1-ct-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html So there is a duplicate content. How can we resolve it. Regards, kathir caratlane.com
Technical SEO | | kathiravan0