Similar category names result in similar urls and duplicate anchor texts
-
Hi all,
I'm working on an e-commerce website about car tuning and car parts.
There are main categories like ( Aerodynamics, Power tuning, Interior, Wheels, Tires, etc. ) and in the products are organized in sub-categories representing the product manufacturer, car manufacturer and car model + modification. Unfortunately this kind of structure creates duplicate sub-category names. For example we can have parts for Audi A4 8K in Aerodynamics and ABT, and the same time we can have Power tuning from the same manufacturer and for the same car, or Sport brakes for the same car by different manufacturers.
So here are how some links look-like:
/alfa-romeo-147-c1070-en
/alfa-romeo-147-c234-en
/alfa-romeo-147-c399-en
These are totally different categories, with the same anchor text and almost the same url addresses ( the only difference in the urls is the category id ).
Can this be affecting the site's indexation, and which can be the better way to create the internal link structure ?
-
Hi Aran,
thanks for the fast response.
Here's more detailed information about the sub-categories:
1st Category
Performance > Chip Tuning & Power Box > Power Box - Diesel Engines > Alfa Romeo 147
url - /alfa-romeo-147-c1070-en
2nd Category
Aerodynamics > Rieger Tuning > Alfa Romeo 147
url - /alfa-romeo-147-c234-en
3rd Category
Lighting > Tail Lights > Alfa Romeo 147
url - /alfa-romeo-147-c399-en
The url represents the name of the subcategory with it's category id and the language.
I was thinking of changing only the url, but the urls will become much much longer, and this will not help with the problem with the anchor texts and the keyword cannibalisation ...
-
You'll probably find that you'll get keyword cannibalisation with multiple pages all jockeying for the same Key Phrases.
Possibly a big and risky job, but could you not rewrite the URLs to include the category name rather than cat id?
/Alfa-romeo-147-sport-brakes-en
Without seeing the site and checking out the current structure its hard to say exactly I would structure it. Can you post a link?
Cheers
Aran
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
-
Site Crawl -> Duplicate Page Content -> Same pages showing up with duplicates that are not
These, for example: | https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php/?utm_campaign=july15&utm_medium=organic&utm_source=blog | 1 | 2 | 29 | 2 | 200 |
Technical SEO | | writezach
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?_ga=1.145821812.1573134750.1440742418 | 1 | 1 | 25 | 2 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=tapclicks&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=brightpod-article | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=tapclicks&utm_medium=marketplace&utm_campaign=homepage | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=first-3-must-watch-videos | 1 | 119 | 40 | 4 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php?_ga=1.159789566.2132270851.1418408142 | 1 | 5 | 31 | 2 | 200 |
| https://im.tapclicks.com/signup.php/?utm_source=vocus&utm_medium=PR&utm_campaign=52release | Any suggestions/directions for fixing or should I just disregard this "High Priority" moz issue? Thank you!0 -
Duplicate Content - Different URLs and Content on each
Seeing a lot of duplicate content instances of seemingly unrelated pages. For instance, http://www.rushimprint.com/custom-bluetooth-speakers.html?from=topnav3 is being tracked as a duplicate of http://www.rushimprint.com/custom-planners-diaries.html?resultsperpg=viewall. Does anyone else see this issue? Is there a solution anyone is aware of?
Technical SEO | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Duplicate Title tags vs. View All for search results
I run a directory and some search queries give almost 1000 unique results. My moz campaign tells me that I have around 1,300 duplicate title tags etc. I read online about canonical, rel=next/prev, also about having a 'view all' page just for google (page links, not search queries), but if I do this, wouldn't the slowness mean google won't index it? So the question is what is the best thing to do?
Technical SEO | | tguide0 -
Duplicate pages in Google index despite canonical tag and URL Parameter in GWMT
Good morning Moz... This is a weird one. It seems to be a "bug" with Google, honest... We migrated our site www.three-clearance.co.uk to a Drupal platform over the new year. The old site used URL-based tracking for heat map purposes, so for instance www.three-clearance.co.uk/apple-phones.html ..could be reached via www.three-clearance.co.uk/apple-phones.html?ref=menu or www.three-clearance.co.uk/apple-phones.html?ref=sidebar and so on. GWMT was told of the ref parameter and the canonical meta tag used to indicate our preference. As expected we encountered no duplicate content issues and everything was good. This is the chain of events: Site migrated to new platform following best practice, as far as I can attest to. Only known issue was that the verification for both google analytics (meta tag) and GWMT (HTML file) didn't transfer as expected so between relaunch on the 22nd Dec and the fix on 2nd Jan we have no GA data, and presumably there was a period where GWMT became unverified. URL structure and URIs were maintained 100% (which may be a problem, now) Yesterday I discovered 200-ish 'duplicate meta titles' and 'duplicate meta descriptions' in GWMT. Uh oh, thought I. Expand the report out and the duplicates are in fact ?ref= versions of the same root URL. Double uh oh, thought I. Run, not walk, to google and do some Fu: http://is.gd/yJ3U24 (9 versions of the same page, in the index, the only variation being the ?ref= URI) Checked BING and it has indexed each root URL once, as it should. Situation now: Site no longer uses ?ref= parameter, although of course there still exists some external backlinks that use it. This was intentional and happened when we migrated. I 'reset' the URL parameter in GWMT yesterday, given that there's no "delete" option. The "URLs monitored" count went from 900 to 0, but today is at over 1,000 (another wtf moment) I also resubmitted the XML sitemap and fetched 5 'hub' pages as Google, including the homepage and HTML site-map page. The ?ref= URls in the index have the disadvantage of actually working, given that we transferred the URL structure and of course the webserver just ignores the nonsense arguments and serves the page. So I assume Google assumes the pages still exist, and won't drop them from the index but will instead apply a dupe content penalty. Or maybe call us a spam farm. Who knows. Options that occurred to me (other than maybe making our canonical tags bold or locating a Google bug submission form 😄 ) include A) robots.txt-ing .?ref=. but to me this says "you can't see these pages", not "these pages don't exist", so isn't correct B) Hand-removing the URLs from the index through a page removal request per indexed URL C) Apply 301 to each indexed URL (hello BING dirty sitemap penalty) D) Post on SEOMoz because I genuinely can't understand this. Even if the gap in verification caused GWMT to forget that we had set ?ref= as a URL parameter, the parameter was no longer in use because the verification only went missing when we relaunched the site without this tracking. Google is seemingly 100% ignoring our canonical tags as well as the GWMT URL setting - I have no idea why and can't think of the best way to correct the situation. Do you? 🙂 Edited To Add: As of this morning the "edit/reset" buttons have disappeared from GWMT URL Parameters page, along with the option to add a new one. There's no messages explaining why and of course the Google help page doesn't mention disappearing buttons (it doesn't even explain what 'reset' does, or why there's no 'remove' option).
Technical SEO | | Tinhat0 -
URLs Case Sensitive Serving Duplications
At PakWheels.com we have URLs being generated in upper and lower cases. For example following URLs serve pages: http://www.pakwheels.com/used-cars/search/-/mk_Toyota/ http://www.pakwheels.com/used-cars/search/-/mk_toyota/ Both show same content. Similarly in following four cases: http://www.pakwheels.com/used-cars/search/-/mk_Toyota/md_corolla/ http://www.pakwheels.com/used-cars/search/-/mk_Toyota/md_Corolla/ http://www.pakwheels.com/used-cars/search/-/mk_toyota/md_Corolla/ http://www.pakwheels.com/used-cars/search/-/mk_toyota/md_corolla/ all of these 4 URLs serve page with same content. What is the best practice for this issue, is it generating duplication? Please advise
Technical SEO | | razasaeed0 -
Would you shorten this url, and if so how?
I designed the structure of my website way before I even thought about SEO. I run a website that requires me to categorize articles is somewhat deep nested categories so an example url would be as follows http://www.yakangler.com/articles/news/new-products/boats/item/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna Would you shorten the url to somethign like this? http://www.yakangler.com/a/n/np/b/item/1442-jackson-kayak-launches-the-big-tuna If so how would you manage the redirects I'm unsure how to add a 301 redirect in my .htaccess file that wouldn't require me to add one for every single article. Could I do it with a rule that recognizes only the middle part of the url and redirect it accordingly? Thanks for any advice you might have!
Technical SEO | | mr_w0 -
URL Folders and Naming Convention Changes?
1. We’re looking for some clarification in regards to our URL structure. Currently, at our product level we have http://www.ties.com/v/a/elite-solid-black-black-tie however the parent URL is http://www.ties.com/black-ties. a. So here are the question. How much is this hurting because semantically the naming convention of this URL and weird and doesn’t follow logical patterns. In other words. Should the product page for this be http://ties.com/black-ties/elite-solid-black-tie. How bad is this hurting us? b. If we were to change the ULR structure, should we do it in phases or all at once? We don’t want to get penalized. We have well over 3,000 product pages.
Technical SEO | | Ties.com0 -
Query string in url - duplicate content?
Hi everyone I would appreciate some advice on the following. I have a page which has some nice content on but it also has a search functionality. When a search is run a querystrong is run. So i will get something like mypage.php?id=20 etc. With many different url potentials, will each query string be seen as a different page? If so i don't want duplicate content. So am i best putting canonical tags in the head tags on mypage.php ? to avoid Google seeing potential duplicate content. Many thanks for all your advice.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0