Category pages are treated as duplicate content - is that a problem?
-
Hi there
I have analyzing a webshop where we sell products for pets, gardening and the like. I am getting a lot of "Duplicate Content" alerts from Moz when doing a site crawl and I am told that the pages for e.g. cat products and gardening tools show duplicate content. Those two pages contain no identical products, so I am guessing that it is just the "set up" of the page (they look almost identical, except for the products). My question is: Is this really a problem? Does it affect my ranking in a negative way, and if so, how can I counter it?
Best regards
Frederik
-
It was a big help!
-
Thank you.
/Frederik
-
If possible, I'd ensure that there's enough unique content on the category page in the form of a category description before and/or after the product listings. This can be done without looking like a hideous wall of text, if that's what you're thinking. It shouldn't be a long article.
I think this would help.
Consider running your site through http://siteliner.com too for a duplicate content analysis. It's free.
-
I see.
Is it a problem that the content is considered duplicate then, or can I just leave it the way it is?
Thank you, again.
Frederik
-
If the pages are HTML-heavy with not much text content on the category pages, this could be why. Otherwise it's hard to tell without seeing the actual pages.
-
Thank you.
The former is the case. I have a page that is all cat products and a different page that is all garden products. Neither have snippets or anything other in common than the structure (and the header, search box, contact info etc.) But Moz tells me that the cat page has several duplicates, including the garden page.
-
Just to clarify, do you mean that Moz is showing the cat category to be duplicate of the garden category?
Or that both the cat category and garden category are pages with duplicate content issues?
If the latter is correct, do your category pages have product description snippets? It could be that all that product content being pulled into the category content is causing the duplicate content. If this is the case, then you may want to bulk out your product pages a bit more to not be quite so thin.
I've also seen some ecommerce websites that list the entire category of products on each product page, in a Related section. So effectively, all the product pages within the category have duplicate content of the category page.
A similar thing happens with Wordpress blog posts if you don't noindex the right pages and have a very thin/flat structure. e.g. The main blog index will almost completely duplicate the most popular or main category archive page. Or the /2017/ archive, etc.
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
-
What Should We Do to Fix Crawled but Not Indexed Pages for Multi-location Service Pages?
Hey guys! I work as a content creator for Zavza Seal, a contractor out of New York, and we're targeting 36+ cities in the Brooklyn and Queens areas with several services for home improvement. We got about 340 pages into our multi-location strategy targeting our target cities with each service we offer, when we noticed that 200+ of our pages were "Crawled but not indexed" in Google Search Console. Here's what I think we may have done wrong. Let me know what you think... We used the same page template for all pages. (we changed the content and sections, formatting, targeted keywords, and entire page strategy for areas with unique problems trying to keep the user experience as unique as possible to avoid duplicate content or looking like we didn't care about our visitors.) We used the same featured image for all pages. (I know this is bad and wouldn't have done it myself, but hey, I'm not the publisher.) We didn't use rel canonicals to tell search engines that these pages were special made for the areas. We didn't use alt tags until about halfway through. A lot of the urls don't use the target keyword exactly. The NAP info and Google Maps embed is in the footer, so we didn't use it on the pages. We didn't use any content about the history or the city or anything like that. (some pages we did use content about historic buildings, low water table, flood prone areas, etc if they were known for that) We were thinking of redoing the pages, starting from scratch and building unique experiences around each city, with testimonials, case studies, and content about problems that are common for property owners in the area, but I think they may be able to be fixed with a rel canonical, the city specific content added, and unique featured images on each page. What do you think is causing the problem? What would be the easiest way to fix it? I knew the pages had to be unique for each page, so I switched up the page strategy every 5-10 pages out of fear that duplicate content would start happening, because you can only say so much about for example, "basement crack repair". Please let me know your thoughts. Here is one of the pages that are indexed as an example: https://zavzaseal.com/cp-v1/premier-spray-foam-insulation-contractors-in-jamaica-ny/ Here is one like it that is crawled but not indexed: https://zavzaseal.com/cp-v1/premier-spray-foam-insulation-contractors-in-jamaica-ny/ I appreciate your time and concern. Have a great weekend!
Local SEO | | everysecond0 -
How to go about SEO when the content on all the pages is in a regional language (with its own script which is non-roman) but majority of searches are in the same language but roman script?
For example, the entire content is in an Indian language called Gujarati and the script is also Gujarati. However, when I did a keyword research, I found that majority of the searches are in Gujarati langugage by roman script e.g. "gujarati sahitya" meaning Gujarati literature. Any ideas would be appreciated.
Local SEO | | Tumul0 -
Location based landing pages best practices
Hello, I am looking for the communities thoughts on location-based landing pages. That is, writing out dozens, sometimes hundreds of landing pages in the format of domain.com/[keyword]-[location] and recycling the same content over and over to localize organic search engine results. i have done it with multiple websites and seen tremendous success, however, i am considering getting rid of these pages and having all of the spammy location based pages 301 redirect to my main page domain.com/[keyword] I am considering this because the above practice seems to be a bit black-hat / spammy and those pages do not offer any unique or valuable content. While i have seen great results from this practice, i feel like Google will eventually penalize this or may already be penalizing me without me knowing it. At the same time, i am hesitant to because these pages are ranking. i.e. domain.com/[keyword-houston] is ranking but domain.com/[keyword] is not ranking Thoughts?
Local SEO | | RyanMeighan0 -
Should I use LocalBusiness schema on my home page or Contact Us page?
I know I should only use Organization schema on one page of my site, but I'm not sure if I should use it on the Home page or use LocalBusiness schema on the home page. I was thinking of adding LocalBusiness schema to home page, Organization schema to About Us page and Corporate Contact Schema to Contact us page. Thoughts? Is there a best practice? I can't seem to find much information on what's best to use where.
Local SEO | | RoxBrock1 -
Do not understand why a page will not rank- AT ALL!
I have a business that provides on-site services out of a central location. For instance in Denver, we have a warehouse location where we can perform repairs but the majority of business is performed within a 50 mile radius of the city center- on-site, a homes, businesses, etc. Our Google local page is set up to reflect this (mobile service as well as physical location). In order to capture business organically within this 50 mile veil, we have set up city specific service pages on our site to reflect the more than 30 municipalities that fit within the 50 mile veil. This strategy seems to work pretty well in Colorado but in Minnesota we are not having the same outcome. The following city page is created specifically for the term "iPhone repair Minneapolis" and has been live for over a year. It is not even in the top 50. Is this a regional issue or a specific page issue? Our domain actually ranks 15th for this term. http://www.shatterbuggy.com/service-areas/minneapolis/iphone-repair/ Thoughts?
Local SEO | | BenjaminH0 -
Sub domain page or brand new domain
I run a business that provides entertainment services for parties, inc weddings and business functions, but I wanted to take advantage of the visitors that I have and work with other businesses to offer other services for parties, I started with a caterer, and created a catering page on my website. Thinking that my domain authority of 28, which is better than some of the local catering businesses, would be an advantage. I'm just getting going on that so I am only on page 2 in the new niche, 2 days since I launched, but I am creating quality off page content, and watching the results, but I just thought that I would ask the question: Which is better a page on the website of the same wider niche, eg party suppliers, with some DA already built up Or a brand new domain for each partner that I work with, having to build up DA and PA as I go. And having to create on page content for the new niche Or even one new website for party services with new content for each services, starting at no DA or PA One issue seems to be that when I add my sitemap, google does not seem to be indexing the page (and about 20 others, even though I now have a clean robots.txt file) according to webmaster tools, and yet it shows up on page 2 of Google for the keyword. Answers appreciated Mike Collins
Local SEO | | singingtelegramsuk0 -
Content Rewriting and Page ranking
Lets say that a prior writer did a horrible job with more then a few pages on your site and you wanted to rewrite the content for each landing page. A few of these landing pages are actually ranking pretty decently would it be ok to rewrite them as long as you kept the keywords and the density some what equal?
Local SEO | | Spartan222 -
Local Pages for National (Service) Companies
Hi there, I was wanting to know the value of local pages for a service company that operates nationally. They do not have a phone number or address, but they do maintain employees in each of the locations and are thus, keen to emphasize this fact with location pages. The location pages merely explain that they have staff in each of the locations and experience working there, alongside a variety of information that is relevant to the industry/market in that location. None of the location pages are currently ranking well at all - in fact, all of the ones I've looked at so far have had a page authority of 1. Most of the major towns, cities and counties for the entire UK have been covered which means the location pages constitute a significant proportion of all of the pages for the entire site. My questions are: Is a national service company likely to benefit from having location pages? And could it even be something they could be penalised for at some point down the line? Thanks very much, in advance, for your time. Kind Regards, Tom
Local SEO | | National-Homebuyers0