Duplicate content throughout multiple URLs dilemma
-
We have a website with lots of categories and there are problems that some subcategories have identical content on them.
So, is it enough to just add different text on those problematic subcategories or we need to use "canonical" tag to main category.
Same dilemma is with our search system and duplicate content. For example, "/category/sports" URL would have similar to identical content with "/search/sports" and "/search/sports-fitness/" URLs.
Ranking factors is important for all different categories and subcategories. Ranking factors is also important for search individual keywords. So, the question is, how to make them somehow unique/different to rank on all those pages well?
Would love to hear advices how it can be solved using different methods and how it would affect our rankings. When we actually need to use "canonical" tag and when 301 redirect is better. Thanks!
-
Commonly on large ecommerce websites duplication between categories and sub categories is an issue. The views of search results can also be a factor IE: grid, list, etc-
Association the sub categories with the main top level categories by using the canonical tag. It is also a possibility to block the /search/ results by using the robots.txt- search results aren't the most beneficial to the user and this is a ranking factor.
The canonical tags are exceptionally effective for ecommerce structures.
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
-
Are backlinks within duplicate content ignored or devalued?
From what I understand, Googles no longer has a "Duplicate Content Penalty" instead duplicate content simply isn't show in the search results. Does that mean that any links in the duplicate content are completely ignored, or devalued as far as the backlink profile of the site they are linking to? An example would be an article that might be published on two or three major industry websites. Are only the links from the first website GoogleBot discovers the article on counted or are all the links counted and you just won't see the article itself come up in search results for the second and third website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Consult19010 -
How to solve this issue and avoid duplicated content?
My marketing team would like to serve up 3 pages of similar content; www.example.com/one, www.example.com/two and www.example.com/three; however the challenge here is, they'd like to have only one page whith three different titles and images based on the user's entry point (one, two, or three). To avoid duplicated pages, how would suggest this best be handled?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoelHer0 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content (with and without www)
How can we resolve pages with duplicate page content? With and without www?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | directiq
Thanks in advance.0 -
Duplicate Multi-site Content, Duplicate URLs
We have 2 ecommerce sites that are 95% identical. Both sites carry the same 2000 products, and for the most part, have the identical product descriptions. They both have a lot of branded search, and a considerable amount of domain authority. We are in the process of changing out product descriptions so that they are unique. Certain categories of products rank better on one site than another. When we've deployed unique product descriptions on both sites, we've been able to get some double listings on Page 1 of the SERPs. The categories on the sites have different names, and our URL structure is www.domain.com/category-name/sub-category-name/product-name.cfm. So even though the product names are the same, the URLs are different including the category names. We are in the process of flattening our URL structures, eliminating the category and subcategory names from the product URLs: www.domain.com/product-name.cfm. The upshot is that the product URLs will be the same. Is that going to cause us any ranking issues?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Best method for blocking a subdomain with duplicated content
Hello Moz Community Hoping somebody can assist. We have a subdomain, used by our CMS, which is being indexed by Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KateWaite
http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/
https://admin.naturalworldsafaris.com/ The page is the same so we can't add a no-index or no-follow.
I have both set up as separate properties in webmaster tools I understand the best method would be to update the robots.txt with a user disallow for the subdomain - but the robots text is only accessible on the main domain. http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/robots.txt Will this work if we add the subdomain exclusion to this file? It means it won't be accessible on https://admin.naturalworldsafaris.com/robots.txt (where we can't create a file). Therefore won't be seen within that specific webmaster tools property. I've also asked the developer to add a password protection to the subdomain but this does not look possible. What approach would you recommend?0 -
What's the best SEO practice for having dynamic content on the same URL?
Let's use this example... www.miniclip.com and there's a function to log in... If you're logged in and a cookie checks that you're logged in and you're on page, let's say, www.miniclip.com/racing-games however the banners being displayed would have more call to action and offers on the page when a user is not logged in to entice them to sign up but the URL would still be www.miniclip.com/racing-games if and if not logged in, what would be the best URL practice for this? just do it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdiRste0 -
Duplicate content, website authority and affiliates
We've got a dilemma at the moment with the content we supply to an affiliate. We currently supply the affiliate with our product database which includes everything about a product including the price, title, description and images. The affiliate then lists the products on their website and provides a Commission Junction link back to our ecommerce store which tracks any purchases with the affiliate getting a commission based on any sales via a cookie. This has been very successful for us in terms of sales but we've noticed a significant dip over the past year in ranking whilst the affiliate has achieved a peak...all eyes are pointing towards the Panda update. Whenever I type one of our 'uniquely written' product descriptions into Google, the affiliate website appears higher than ours suggesting Google has ranked them the authority. My question is, without writing unique content for the affiliate and changing the commission junction link. What would be the best option to be recognised as the authority of the content which we wrote in the first place? It always appears on our website first but Google seems to position the affiliate higher than us in the SERPS after a few weeks. The commission junction link is written like this: http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1428744-10475505?sid=shopp&url=http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/vango-calisto-600xl-tent.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gavinhoman0 -
I'm not sure why SEOMoz is reporting duplicate content
I have thousands of duplicate page content errors on my site, but I'm not exactly sure why. For example, the crawl is reporting this page - http://www.fantasytoyland.com/2011-glee-costumes.html is a duplicate of this page - http://www.fantasytoyland.com/2011-jersey-shore-costumes.html . All of these products are unique to the page - what is causing it to flag as duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FutureMemoriesInc0