Duplicate content, is it ever ok?
-
I am building a large site for a client who sells physical products. I am using WordPress as my CMS (as a piece of background information). There are a few products that need to be listed in the sites hierarchy in multiple locations as such:
-
Parent A
-
Child 1
-
Parent B
-
Child 2
-
Child 3
-
Parent C
-
Child 1
I am concerned that having a product exist in multiple instances will cause indexing problems for that product. I can't be the only person to come across this issue, would love some feedback on the best practices for such an issue.
Thanks in advance
-
-
Hey Jeseph,
I'd concur with Chris and Peter here
I would either structure your site so that individual products aren't in folders: e.g. yoursite.com/product-name; or if that's not possible use rel-canonical to indicate your preferred URL.
Thanks
Hannah
-
We have a similar structure in our web-store. However we don't use WordPress, our company has the same concerns. To use your example we also have a "Child 1" problem, at least as far as our thoughts about duplicate content are concerned. Our experience is that Google has NEVER marked our "Child 1" as duplicate. However our "Parent A" through "Parent C" categories have been marked as duplicate. So we have made changes in or categories to try and stem the issue.
After doing some research on Google duplicate content, they specifically say they only consider duplicate content when the content is similar when the base URL's come from two different sources. What this means to me is that: www.site1.com\Parent-A\Child-1 is a duplicate content to www.site2.com\something-new\Child-1
Where www.site1.com\Parent-A\Child-1 and www.site1.com\Parent-C\Child-1 are not considered duplicate content.
-
Hi Jeseph
Yes, duplicate content can be an issue especially if your sites has lots of it, plus you will get the situation where Google will only index one instance of each page.
The best way around is in your situation though is to have one instance of each product, but to use that instance in multiple locations from a browsing point of view. If done correctly, each product will have a unique URL, but the page it is on can be referenced from a variety of locations/categories.
So, for example, a page about a shiny blue pen could be linked to from a pens category and also a gifts category, but the URL of the shiny blue pen page can be the same, e.g. yourdomain.com/blue-shiny-pen.html so one page and not a duplicate.
In terms of the facilities within Wordpress to make that happen I am not a Wordpress expert but I know there are many on this forum who are, so I am sure someone will give you some guidance on that.
Peter
-
rel=canonical was made for just such a thing so there is not really an excuse, sure you won't have all of them indexed but at the same time it wont bring your whole site down. As long as the user can find that product (even if its in one instance) via Google then I presume that's good for you,.rel="canonical" wouldn't affect their (user) site navigation.
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
-
Some Content The Same
Hello. I am about to publish some landing pages that target different industries that we are trying to market to. X for Accountants
On-Page Optimization | | smithandco
X for Financial Advisors
X for Fitness Trainers
X for X While a good portion of the content is unique on each page "the benefits of using X for accountants" some of the content on the page is duplicate which explains more about how our software works (the features), this will be the same content on every page. Is this considered duplicate content? What should I be aware of in term of Google rankings and penalties? Thanks,
David0 -
Does hover over content index well
i notice increasing cases of portfolio style boxes on site designs (especially wordpress templates) where you have an image and text appears after hover over (sorry for my basic terminology). does this text which appears after hover over have much search engine value or as it doesnt immediately appear on pageload does it carry slightly less weight like tabbed content? any advice appreciated thanks neil
On-Page Optimization | | neilhenderson0 -
Duplicated page titles
Dear friends, We have a problem which occurs on our page with duplicated page titles. Landlords are posting rooms on our page and most of them are giving the same name to the rooms and after that, we are getting more and more duplicated page titles. We are applying random whit this title tag: Accommodation for students in {city.name}: {name}. English title
On-Page Optimization | | Eurasmus.com
Certified student rooms in {city.name}: {name} English title
Erasmus room for students in {city.name} | {name} English title
Student room in {city.name}: {name} English title Also our title tag is sometimes to long but there is no possibility to make them shorter. I think. If anyone would have some idea be free to comment and help us. Kind regards Miško Macolić Tomičić0 -
Duplicate Content Re: Product listing body copy on Website, Amazon & Ebay - issues ?
Hi Is it ok to have identical product body copy on market/platform listings same as the websites product listings ? In this case the products are the websites/own brand products (all pages canonicalised), so i take it shouldn't cause any issues or are you supposed to differentiate the product body copy on marketplace listings ? Im asking re seo reasons All Best Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How to optimize WordPress Pages with Duplicate Page Content?
I found the non WWW ans WWW duplicate pages URL only, more than thousand pages.
On-Page Optimization | | eigital0 -
Best practice to solve this Unique duplicate page content issue?
I just got Seomoz Pro (it's awesome!), and when I did a campaign for my website I discovered that I have a big issue with duplicate page content (as well as titles). The Crawl Diagnostics Summary told me I have 196 Crawl Errors Found (I had a total of 362 pages crawled on my site), and as much as 160 of these was duplicate page content. Which to me sounds like a big problem, correct me if I'm wrong (I'm very new to SEO). So our website is an ecommerce that sells greeting cards. The unique part about our platform is that we offer the customer to make a customization of the cards.
On-Page Optimization | | danielpett
Let me walk you through each step a customer takes so you fully understand: They find a card they like and visit the product page of that card (just like on any ecommerce store.) They then decide they want to buy it. There is no "Add to cart" button, they will instead click on a "customize the card" button. 3) This takes them to a step by step process of customizing the card. They change the name on the front of the greeting card so it says for example: "Happy Birthday Katy!". And then adds a personal text on the inside of the card. They then add an delivery address and when it should be delivered. After that they proceed to checkout and it's all done. This is my website (it's in Swedish): loveday.se - it will take you to a product page so that you can click the green button and see what I mean with the customization pages. Hopefully it helps even though it's in Swedish. My issue starts at the customization part of the site (the bolded step above), as I can see the permalinks in the diagnostics I got.
This step-by-step process looks exactly the same with every card in the store. Same call-to-action headline, same descriptive text etc. The only difference is a JPEG-file with the unique greeting card design. So, what is your take on this? Let me know if I was unclear about something. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.0 -
How to fix duplicate page content and page titles?
Apologies in advance if this has already been answered (it probably has) - I'm just not seeing it. Is there a guide on here for how to fix the issues brought up by the crawler - specifically, things like duplicate page content, or duplicate page titles? A lot of these seem to have been created by wordpress.org combos that I didn't anticipate - i.e., category pages, author pages, etc. The crawler brings up the problems, but I don' t know where to start to go about fixing them. Also, any guide on best SEO practices or fixing optimization problems, specifically for wordpress.org blogs, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | prospects1 -
Best practice for franchise sites with duplicated content
I know that duplicated content is a touchy subject but I work with multiple franchise groups and each franchisee wants their own site, however, almost all of the sites use the same content. I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites and does not penalize them for the following issues. All sites are hosted on the same server therefor the same IP address All sites use generally the same content across their product pages (which are very very important pages) *templated content approved by corporate Almost all sites have the same design (A few of the groups we work with have multiple design options) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Again Aaron
On-Page Optimization | | Shipyard_Agency0