Duplicate Content... Really?
-
Hi all,
My site is www.actronics.eu
Moz reports virtually every product page as duplicate content, flagged as HIGH PRIORITY!.
I know why.
Moz classes a page as duplicate if >95% content/code similar.
There's very little I can do about this as although our products are different, the content is very similar, albeit a few part numbers and vehicle make/model.
Here's an example:
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/audi-a4-8d-b5-1994-2000-abs-ecu-en/bosch-5-3
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/bmw-3-series-e36-1990-1998-abs-ecu-en/ate-34-51Now, multiply this by ~2,000 products X 7 different languages and you'll see we have a big dupe content issue (according to Moz's Crawl Diagnostics report).
I say "according to Moz..." as I do not know if this is actually an issue for Google? 90% of our products pages rank, albeit some much better than others?
So what is the solution? We're not trying to deceive Google in any way so it would seem unfair to be hit with a dupe content penalty, this is a legit dilemma where our product differ by as little as a part number.
One ugly solution would be to remove header / sidebar / footer on our product pages as I've demonstrated here - http://woodberry.me.uk/test-page2-minimal-v2.html since this removes A LOT of page bloat (code) and would bring the page difference down to 80% duplicate.
(This is the tool I'm using for checking http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php)Other "prettier" solutions would greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thanks,
Woody -
Hey David
Thanks for reply.
3. Use a plugin to apply rich snippet markup to the individual product pages, adding another layer of "uniqueness"
I had thought about this already and was looking into the MPN (Manufacturer Part Number) attribute for products (https://schema.org/mpn) however, it's not clear if, like SKU, the MPN needs to be unique to ProductModel (https://schema.org/ProductModel)?
If that were the case, I'd have a problem as there are multiple MPN's per ProductModel.
I see https://schema.org/isVariantOf too, which could be useful?
Anyone with experience of Schema?
-
First, why were you looking at the reports? Have you seen some type of ranking loss that you are trying to remedy?
Second, the moz tools are just tools to provide you with an oversight on where you are at, and potential areas your site can be improved. They work, but are not dedicated to any one type of website i.e. e-commerce vs static or content-based.
To get the unique pages you seek, it may be possible to use javascript to load content for variables of part numbers. As stated before, your site is getting seen as duplicate due to only a few things changing out per page.
Possible fixes:
1. Use dynamic coding to load part number variables, such as drop down menus for alternate versions or parts or models. This will allow you fewer pages to direct your backlinks to as well.2. Have more top level pages based around the category, and focus on getting the category pages ranking rather than the individual part pages. Again, focus your backlinking efforts on these pages.
3. Use a plugin to apply rich snippet markup to the individual product pages, adding another layer of "uniqueness"
-
The pages were not intended strictly for SEO value, they were mainly built for user value, i.e. returning a 100% focused page on the part number they searched for. Remember, many people use Google as a navigational tool and they also consider the product to the the part no. they searched for, not the main manufacturer of the product (ATE).
I understand what you are saying though and think building stronger product pages is the way to go, although I will try on a subset of pages and monitor results.
Now to decide which approach to take to yield the best results:
a.) SEO focus on ATE MK70 (list all the vehicle makes/models/years this product work on, including list of part numbers)
or...
b.) SEO focus on vehicle makes/model (then list all the manufacturers of suitable products, with corresponding part numbers)Thanks,
Woody -
This is one of the things Panda was trying to discourage (creating pages strictly for SEO value as opposed to user value that have thin content).
Consolidating and building out a single page is the way to go. Google will still crawl the product numbers, and they will be on a much stronger page. Even if they're not in the URL and title, a more valuable page nearly always wins out.
Not only that, you're playing with fire right now. If you haven't been hit by Panda yet, your odds are much higher with the numerous little pages.
-
Thanks guys
William
What's the thought process of creating a bunch of new pages, even though it's the same product, just referred to differently by different companies? Just for the unique URLs and titles?
Samuel
Would you want to create a separate page for "red Honda Civic," "green Honda civic," and countless other colors? Of course not.
To hopefully address both questions with one answer; the reason for building separate pages was to give SEO focus to the unique part numbers and the product type by vehicle make / model / year.
Very few people in the industry search for the product by name, it's always by part number. In fact, I'd go as far as to say there's few who would actually know the brand of "the product", that being ATE MK70 in our example above.
I understand the logic of building a strong single product page with all these part numbers listed, but would this page really rank well for searches on part number? Bear in mind, unlike the red, green, blue Honda Civic example, where there's perhaps a dozen different colours, we're talking literally 100's of part numbers per product and variations of it's formatting.
I welcome further conversation and ideas on this
Thanks so far guys! -
Thanks for the question. I'm not able to go through your site at the moment, but I would ask: Do you really need a separate page for every single make, model, and part number? Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be what you're doing. If so, you're just asking for a Panda penalty.
Here's a basic example: Say that you sell Honda Civics. Would you want to create a separate page for "red Honda Civic," "green Honda civic," and countless other colors? Of course not. All of the content would be entirely the same except for the listed color throughout each title and page's text.
I'd take a look at Amazon as an example. Say that I go to a page for a certain T-shirt. The same page for that individual product will include all of the color variations w_ithin that single product page_. Each color variation is not a new page and URL (or if it is, it has a rel=canonical tag back to the main product page -- I don't remember). I'd look to this example as a way that you can vastly cut down the number of product pages so that each one is truly unique, valuable, and useful to both search engines and customers.
I hope that helps -- good luck!
-
I think you're already in Panda territory. The content can't get much thinner. It seems like all those sub-pages that are linked to on the page you just shared are unnecessary, no? Couldn't you just have the one page, build it out with the cars it works in, maybe a diagram or instruction on how to put it in, and make a really valuable page?
What's the thought process of creating a bunch of new pages, even though it's the same product, just referred to differently by different companies? Just for the unique URLs and titles?
Consolidating all of that would eliminate thin content and likely strengthen your landing page exponentially.
-
Thank you for your answer William and taking the time to respond,
I understand what you are saying but I am a little skeptical as that being a logical/achievable solution?
Let's say we did write some content for each product, the content would be "thin" to say the least.
As an example, we have over 700 products (per language), this being on of them - http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/product/ate-mk70
This product alone works in over 43 different vehicle marques, illustrated in the list of on the page.
The only thing different about them is the part number, i.e. what the manufacturer refers to this part as (Audi A3 refer to it as 10097003153, Peugeot 206 refer to it as 9659136980). There really is nothing more to say about the product, without creating more dupe content and getting into Panda territory, so I don't see this being a viable solution?
We have the pages in place as mechanics/garages search by manufactures number, not product type.
Any more thoughts/ideas?
-
This issue isn't duplicate content, Moz is just flagging it as that because of the severe lack of content, making the footer, sidebar, etc. the majority of the content on the page. This is not good, and the best way to remedy it would be to build out more content.
I realize with roughly 14k pages, this isn't realistic to do for every single page, but you could prioritize. What are your most popular products? Start with those and build out content to make sure they rank and perform as well as possible, and then continue to go down the list as you have time to do so, manually optimizing and building out the most profitable/popular pages first.
When it comes to unique content, there is no automated solution. Either you write stuff, hire someone else to write stuff, or do what a lot of places do: implements a review system for customers to use and crowd-source the unique content that way.
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
-
Http vs. https - duplicate content
Hi I have recently come across a new issue on our site, where https & http titles are showing as duplicate. I read https://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-and-http-and-https however, am wondering as https is now a ranking factor, blocked this can't be a good thing? We aren't in a position to roll out https everywhere, so what would be the best thing to do next? I thought about implementing canonicals? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Do search engine consider this duplicate or thin content?
I operate an eCommerce site selling various equipment. We get product descriptions and various info from the manufacturer's websites offered to the dealers. Part of that info is in the form of User Guides and Operational Manuals downloaded in pdf format written by the manufacturer, then uploaded to our site. Also we embed and link to videos that are hosted on the manufacturer's respective YouTube or Vimeo channels. This is useful content for our customers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelFactor
My questions are: Does this type of content help our site by offering useful info, or does it hurt our SEO due to it being thin and or duplicate content? Or does the original content publishers get all the benefit? Is there any benefit to us publishing this stuff? What exactly is considered "thin content"?0 -
What is best practise for markup in a nav bar, avoid duplicate content.
I'm wondering what's best practise for markup in the nav bar. So if we have <nav> Can we have headers in there, does it help? If we do, would a H1 confuse google as to wether that is the H1 of importance of the one in thein the </nav>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TrueluxGroup0 -
Product descriptions & Duplicate Content: between fears and reality
Hello everybody, I've been reading quite a lot recently about this topic and I would like to have your opinion about the following conclusion: ecommerce websites should have their own product descriptions if they can manage it (it will be beneficial for their SERPs rankings) but the ones who cannot won't be penalized by having the same product descriptions (or part of the same descriptions) IF it is only a "small" part of their content (user reviews, similar products, etc). What I mean is that among the signals that Google uses to guess which sites should be penalized or not, there is the ratio "quantity of duplicate content VS quantity of content in the page" : having 5-10 % of a page text corresponding to duplicate content might not be harmed while a page which has 50-75 % of a content page duplicated from an other site... what do you think? Can the "internal" duplicated content (for example 3 pages about the same product which is having 3 diferent colors -> 1 page per product color) be considered as "bad" as the "external" duplicated content (same product description on diferent sites) ? Thanks in advance for your opinions!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kuantokusta0 -
Magento Duplicate Content Recovery
Hi, we switched platforms to Magento last year. Since then our SERPS rankings have declined considerably (no sudden drop on any Panda/Penguin date lines). After investigating, it appeared we neglected to No index, follow all our filter pages and our total indexed pages rose sevenfold in a matter of weeks. We have since fixed the no index issue and the pages indexed are now below what we had pre switch to Magento. We've seen some positive results in the last week. Any ideas when/if our rankings will return? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonnygeeuk0 -
Dynamic 301's causing duplicate content
Hi, wonder if anyone can help? We have just changed our site which was hosted on IIS and the page url's were like this ( example.co.uk/Default.aspx?pagename=About-Us ). The new page url is example.co.uk/About-Us/ and is using Apache. The 301's our developer told us to use was in this format: RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/Default.aspx$
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GoGroup51
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^pagename=About-Us$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.co.uk/About-Us/ [R=301,L] This seemed to work from a 301 point of view; however it also seemed to allow both of the below URL's to give the same page! example.co.uk/About-Us/?pagename=About-Us example.co.uk/About-Us/ Webmaster Tools has now picked up on this and is seeing it a duplicate content. Can anyone help why it would be doing this please. I'm not totally clued up and our host/ developer cant understand it too. Many Thanks0 -
Duplicate Content - Panda Question
Question: Will duplicate informational content at the bottom of indexed pages violate the panda update? **Total Page Ratio: ** 1/50 of total pages will have duplicate content at the bottom off the page. For example...on 20 pages in 50 different instances there would be common information on the bottom of a page. (On a total of 1000 pages). Basically I just wanted to add informational data to help clients get a broader perspective on making a decision regarding "specific and unique" information that will be at the top of the page. Content ratio per page? : What percentage of duplicate content is allowed per page before you are dinged or penalized. Thank you, Utah Tiger
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
Is this will post Duplicated Content
I have domain let say abcshoesonlinestore.com and inside pages of this abcshoesonlinestore.com is ranking very well such as affiliate page, knowledgebase page and other pages, HOWEVER i would like to change my home page and product page to shorter url which abcshoes.com and keep those inside page like www.abashoesonlinestore.com/affiliate or www.abcshoesonlinestore.com/knowledgebase as it is - will this pose duplicate content? This is my plan to do it: the home page and product page will be www.abcshoes.com and when people click www.abcshoes.com/affiliate it will redirect 301 to abcshoesonlinestore.com/affiliate HOWEVER if someone type abcshoesonlinestore.com or abcshoesonlinestore.com/product it will redirect to abcshoes.com or its product page itself (i want to use 302 instead 301 (ASSUMING if the homapage or product page have manual penalization or anything bad we want to leave it behind and start fresh JUST assume because i read some post that 301 will carry any bad thing to new site too) The reason i do not want to 301 from abcshoesonlinestore.com to abcshoes.com is because those many pages is ranking top 3 in GOOGLE ( i worry will lose this ranking since this bringing traffic for us) Is this good idea or bad idea or any better idea or should i try to see the outcome 🙂 - the only concern is from abcshoesonlinestore.com to abcshoes.com will pose as duplicate content if i do not use 301 - or can i use google webmaster tools to remove the home page and product page for abcshoesonlinestore.com can we tell google that? PS: (home page and product page will have new revise content and minor design change) but inside page will stay the same design Please give me some advise
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | owen20110