Removing Duplicate Content Issues in an Ecommerce Store
-
Hi All
OK i have an ecommerce store and there is a load of duplicate content which is pretty much the norm with ecommerce store setups
e.g. this is my problem
http://www.mystoreexample.com/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/brandname/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/appliancetype/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/brandname/appliancetype/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/appliancetype/brandname/product1.htmlso all the above lead to the same product
I also want to keep the breadcrumb path to the productHere's my plan
Add a canonical URL to the product page
e.g. http://www.mystoreexample.com/product1.html
This way i have a short product URLNoindex all duplicate pages but do follow the internal links so the pages are spidered
What are the other options available and recommended?
Does that make sense?
Is this what most people are doing to remove duplicate content pages?thanks
-
Recently we had the same situation which was resolved nicely with rel canonical alone.
-
Happy to reply, it might be sad but I quite enjoy it.
If it was a smaller site I would say pick your best performing page and use that, but given how many pages I imagine you have that's going to be pretty much impossible. I would go with domain/brand/product (provided that the brand is a keyword and the total isn't too long) that way if people link using just the URL you get another keyword into the mix.
If appliance type makes better sense go with that, just don't make it too long.
EDIT: and yes if you provide a canonical link to the page you want credited you won't have to worry about the noindexing (sorry forgot that bit).
-
thanks Tompt i appreciate you taking time to reply
do you think its best i keep a short URL as the preferred option or follow a breadcrumb and use that option
e.g. URL.com/brand/appliancetype/product1.html
or have the canonical URL as URL.com/product1.html
if i dont noindex the pages but do provide a canonical link on the page will this remove my duplicate content headache?
-
That makes sense and it sounds like you're going about things the right way, but do you really need to noindex the items?
Could you not add the canonical URL to all of the pages? So add http://www.mystoreexample.com/brand/product1.html to any page that features the content? That way you preserve your links and keep your site more open to the spiders?
That would be my only suggestion.
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 -
Could duplicate (copied) content actually hurt a domain?
Hi 🙂 I run a small wordpress multisite network where the main site which is an informative portal about the Langhe region in Italy, and the subsites are websites of small local companies in the tourism and wine/food niche. As an additional service for those who build a website with us, I was thinking about giving them the possibility to use some ouf our portal's content (such as sights, events etc) on their website, in an automatic way. Not as an "SEO" plus, but more as a service for their current users/visitors base: so if you have a B&B you can have on your site an "events" section with curated content, or a section about thing to see (monuments, parks, museums, etc) in that area, so that your visitors can enjoy reading some content about the territory. I was wondering if, apart from NOT being benefical, it would be BAD from an SEO point of view... ie: if they could be actually penlized by google. Thanks 🙂 Best
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Enrico_Cassinelli0 -
Bigcommerce & Blog Tags causing Duplicate Content?
Curious why moz would pick up our blog tags as causing duplicate content, when each blog has a rel canonical tag pointing to either the blog post itself and on the tag pages points to the blog as a whole. Kinda want to get rid of the tags in general now, but also feel they can add some extra value to UX later on when we have many more blog posts. Curious if anyone knows a way around this or even a best solution practice when faced with such odd issues? I can see why the duplicate content would happen, but when grouping content into categories?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Deacyde0 -
What is considered duplicate content?
Hi, We are working on a product page for bespoke camper vans: http://www.broadlane.co.uk/campervans/vw-campers/bespoke-campers . At the moment there is only one page but we are planning add similar pages for other brands of camper vans. Each page will receive its specifically targeted content however the 'Model choice' cart at the bottom (giving you the choice to select the internal structure of the van) will remain the same across all pages. Will this be considered as duplicate content? And if this is a case, what would be the ideal solution to limit penalty risk: A rel canonical tag seems wrong for this, as there is no original item as such. Would an iFrame around the 'model choice' enable us to isolate the content from being indexed at the same time than the page? Thanks, Celine
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q0 -
Subcategories within "New Arrivals" section - duplicate content?
Hi there, My client runs an e-commerce store selling shoes that features a section called "New Arrivals" with subcategories, such as "shoes," "wedges," "boots," "sandals," etc. There are already main subcategories on the site that target these terms. These are specifically pages for "New Arrivals - Boots," etc. The shoes listed on each new arrivals subcategory page are also listed in the main subcategory page. Given that there is not really any search volume for "Brand + new arrivals in boots," but lots of search volume for "Brand + boots," what is the proper way to handle these new arrivals subcategory pages? Should each subcategory have a rel=canonical tag pointing to the main subcategory? Should they be de-indexed? Should I keep them all indexed but try to make the content as unique as possible? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FPD_NYC0 -
Duplicate content for hotel websites - the usual nightmare? is there any solution other than producing unique content?
Hiya Mozzers I often work for hotels. A common scenario is the hotel / resort has worked with their Property Management System to distribute their booking availability around the web... to third party booking sites - with the inventory goes duplicate page descriptions sent to these "partner" websites. I was just checking duplication on a room description - 20 loads of duplicate descriptions for that page alone - there are 200 rooms - so I'm probably looking at 4,000 loads of duplicate content that need rewriting to prevent duplicate content penalties, which will cost a huge amount of money. Is there any other solution? Perhaps ask booking sites to block relevant pages from search engines?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Duplicate Content For E-commerce
On our E-commerce site, we have multiple stores. Products are shown on our multiple stores which has created a duplicate content problem. Basically if we list a product say a shoe,that listing will show up on our multiple stores I assumed the solution would be to redirect the pages, use non follow tags or to use the rel=canonical tag. Are there any other options for me to use. I think my best bet is to use a mixture of 301 redirects and canonical tags. What do you recommend. I have 5000+ pages of duplicate content so the problem is big. Thanks in advance for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pinksgreens0 -
K3 duplicate page content and title tags
I'm running a Joomla site, have just installed k2 as our blogging platform. Our Crawl Report with SEOMOZ shows a good bit of duplicate content and duplicate title tags with our K2 blog. We've installed sh404SEF. Will I need to go into sh404SEF each time we generate a blog entry to point the titles to one URL? If there is something simpler please advise. Thank you, Don
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | donaldmoore0