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
-
We have 2 versions of URLs. we have the mobile and the desktop. is that a duplicate content?
Hi, Our website has two version of URLs. dektop: www.myexample.com and mobile www.myexample.com/m If you go to our site from a mobile device you will land on our mobile URL, if you go to our site from desktop computer you will land on a regular URL. Both urls have the same content. Is that considered duplicate? If yes, then what can I do to fix it? Also, both URLs are indexed by google. We have two separate XML sitemaps- one for desktop and one for mobile. Is that a good SEO practice?
Technical SEO | | Armen-SEO0 -
Canonical sitemap URL different to website URL architecture
Hi, This may or may not be be an issue, but would like some SEO advice from someone who has a deeper understanding. I'm currently working on a clients site that has a bespoke CMS built by another development agency. The website currently has a sitemap with one link - EG: www.example.com/category/page. This is obviously the page that is indexed in search engines. However the website structure uses www.example.com/page, this isn't indexed in search engines as the links are canonical. The client is also using the second URL structure in all it's off and online advertising, internal links and it's also been picked up by referral sites. I suspect this is not good practice... however I'd like to understand whether there are any negative SEO effectives from this structure? Does Google look at both pages with regard to visits, pageviews, bounce rate, etc. and combine the data OR just use the indexed version? www.example.com/category/page - 63.5% of total pageviews
Technical SEO | | MikeSutcliffe
www.example.com/page - 34.31% of total pageviews Thanks
Mike0 -
Omitted results
Hello We are facing a loss in ranking and organic traffic from 3 months on our ecommerce website. Mostly we have lost our ranking on our product pages. These pages are gone in the "omitted results" of google. It all started 3 months ago, when we had to face a duplicate content issue due to a technical priblems with our servers: 2 other domains that we own have been pushed online on google, while they shouldn't have. They have created millions of links to our main domain in a few days, and duplicate version / redirection to our main website. We have fixed this a long time ago now. But in GWT we still see that these domains are bringing links to our main ecommerce. It has dowgraded from 36 millions links to 3 millions.... Even if today there is no link ! We have done a lot of optimizations on site like adding specific content to our most important page, rebuilding the navigation, adding microdatas, adding canonical urls on products pages that we found were very similar (we sell very technical products, and we have products that are very similar. Now we have choosen 1 product to put in canonical each time it was necessary) Bt still our products pages don't rank in google. They stay in the "omitted results". Before they were ranking very well on 1st page of google's results. And we have noticed that some adswe put on ads listing websites are now well ranked in the google's results!... Like if the ads were having more authority on the subject than our own webpages... We started to delete some of these ads. But it's not always possible. And 2-3 of them are still online. Any advice to get our most important webpages at the top on the google's results back? Regards
Technical SEO | | Poptafic0 -
Wordpress categories causing too many links/duplicate content?
I've just added categories to my wordpress site and some of the posts show in several of the categories. Will this cause me duplicate content problems as I want the category pages to be indexed? Also as I add more categories I'm creating more links on the page. They can't be seen to the user as I have a plugin that creates drop down categories. When I go to 'view source' though all the links are there so google will see lots of links. How can I fix the too many links problem? And should I worry about duplicate content issue?
Technical SEO | | SamCUK1 -
Why am I seeing %%name%% showing in the duplicate titles report when it shows the name correctly in the source code?
Crawl diagnostics is picking up all the Wordpress variable tags including and not limited to %%name%% instead of what is actually showing in the source code. Shouldn't it show what is rendered in the browser? I don't think these need to be fixed because they show in Google ok. Search Google for: site:blog.sandiego.org "About Aki"
Technical SEO | | SDConvis0 -
Duplicate Content
The crawl shows a lot of duplicate content on my site. Most of the urls its showing are categories and tags (wordpress). so what does this mean exactly? categories is too much like other categories? And how do i go about fixing this the best way. thanks
Technical SEO | | vansy0 -
Solving duplicate content with WP authors, tags, categories
I've been kind of neglecting wordpress installations on my websites and noticed many showing duplicate content for pages showing under author and tags, tags and single post, categories and single post. Should this be a concern? Whats the best way of fixing this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | cgman0 -
Blog URLs
I read somewhere - pretty sure is was in Art of SEO - that having dates in the blog permalink URLs was a bad idea. e.g. /blog/2011/3/my-blog-post/ However, looking at Wordpress best practice, it's also not a good idea to have a URL without a number - it's more resource hungry if you don't , apparently. e.g. /blog/my-blog-post/ Does anyone have any views on this? Thanks Ben
Technical SEO | | atticus70