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
-
Social engineering Content detected
Hi there I am Facing Social Engineering Content Detected on www.domain.com from long time, we have Removed All Bad Java script, unnecessary links, bad content. After removing we Did Review also in Google, But still again & again we are getting this Notification in webmaster, is This harmful for Our web traffic?? how do I permanently Clear This Notification ? please any body can help ? Thanx in advance
On-Page Optimization | | iepl20 -
Consolidating a Large Site with Duplicate Content
I will be restructuring a large website for an OEM. They provide products & services for multiple industries, and the product/service offering is identical across all industries. I was looking at the site structure and ran a crawl test, and learned they have a LOT of duplicate content out there because of the way they set up their website. They have a page in the navigation for “solution”, aka what industry you are in. Once that is selected, you are taken to a landing page, and from there, given many options to explore products, read blogs, learn about the business, and contact them. The main navigation is removed. The URL structure is set up with folders, so no matter what you select after you go to your industry, the URL will be “domain.com/industry/next-page”. The product offerings, blogs available, and contact us pages do not vary by industry, so the content that can be found on “domain.com/industry-1/product-1” is identical to the content found on “domain.com/industry-2/product-1” and so-on and so-forth. This is a large site with a fair amount of traffic because it’s a pretty substantial OEM. Most of their content, however, is competing with itself because most of the pages on their website have duplicate content. I won’t begin my work until I can dive in to their GA and have more in-depth conversations with them about what kind of activity they’re tracking and why they set up the website this way. However, I don’t know how strategic they were in this set up and I don’t think they were aware that they had duplicate content. My first thought would be to work towards consolidating the way their site is set up, so we don’t spread the link-equity of “product-1” content, and direct all industries to one page, and track conversion paths a different way. However, I’ve never dealt with a site structure of this magnitude and don’t want to risk messing up their domain authority, missing redirect or URL mapping opportunities, or ruin the fact that their site is still performing well, even though multiple pages have the same content (most of which have high page authority and search visibility). I was curious if anyone has dealt with this before and if they have any recommendations for tackling something like this?
On-Page Optimization | | cassy_rich0 -
What to do with repetitive content
Hi, I recently took over a site from another SEO firm. They created lots of articles targeting the same terms. The articles aren't bad but I fear they could dilute the site's ranking power for a given term. I don't want to give away the specific industry, but let's say they have eight pages targeting the term "______ billing software." I'd rather focus their resources on ranking one page for that term. Does that make sense? And if so, how do I do that? The company has a writer that can see if any of the content is good enough to add to their primary ______ billing software page. Would you 301 redirect all these pages to the one you want to rank, or would you canonicalize them? Or am I way off base in my thinking?
On-Page Optimization | | rich.owings0 -
How to explain to a client that duplicate content is bad...
Afternoon! An SEO client of ours has copied a load of landing/category page content from other sites. Lots of emails have been sent back and forth asking them to remove it, but they are adamant to keep it up there until we have time to amend it. We have explained to them: The Google penalty risks The copyright risks The short and long-term implications for their brand new business/website The money they are spending on our SEO package could be completely wasted if they're caught I think the above is pretty black and white, but the director of this company will not budge. Does anyone have any different approaches? The director said he's happy for us to amend the content but, in the meantime, the plagiarised content will not be removed. Cheers, Lewis
On-Page Optimization | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
How do I fix duplicate page issue on Shopify with duplicate products because of collections.
I'm working with a new client with a site built on Shopify. Most of their products appear in four collections. This is creating a duplicate content challenge for us. Can anyone suggest specific code to add to resolve this problem. I'm also interested in other ideas solutions, such as "don't use collections" if that's the best approach. I appreciate your insights. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | quiltedkoala0 -
Duplicate Content Daily Rates
Our finance information site want to publish daily rates each day of the main currency / share etc prices. We've created a template with the main headers e.g. Eurozone. GBP v EUR 1.1762. Australia. GBP v AUD 1.1494.... and list top 20 currencies. We want to roll this out daily Mon - Friday. The only content that will change would be the rates on a daily basis. It's v useful info to users but we're a little cautious about it being seen as duplicate content. What advice would you give re title tags too in this new product rollout.
On-Page Optimization | | stevanl0 -
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 -
Duplicate Content
Hi I have Duplicate content that i do sent understand 1 - www.example.dk 2- www.example.dk/ I thought i was the same page, whit and without the / Hope someone can help 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | seopeter290