How to manage duplicate content?
-
I have a real estate site that contains a large amount of duplicate content. The site contains listings that appear both on my clients website and on my competitors websites(who have better domain authority). It is critical that the content is there because buyers need to be able to find these listings to make enquiries.
The result is that I have a large number pages that contain duplicate content in some way, shape or form. My search results pages are really the most important ones because these are the ones targeting my keywords. I can differentiate these to some degree but the actual listings themselves are duplicate.
What strategies exist to ensure that I'm not suffereing as a result of this content?
Should I :
-
Make the duplicate content noindex. Yes my results pages will have some degree of duplicate content but each result only displays a 200 character summary of the advert text so not sure if that counts. Would reducing the amount of visible duplicate content improve my rankings as a whole?
-
Link back to the clients site to indicate that they are the original source
Any suggestions?
-
-
Some things to check:
If your search results are being indexed is there only one URL per keyword combination?
Avoid showing the same content on multiple URLs - or restrict the SE bots to just one of them per keyword.e.g. check you don't have a structure like this:
domain.name/search/location=xyz
domain.name/search/location=xyz&keyword=abc
domain.name/location/keywordThe same applies to the detail pages of your real estate listings. I.e. don't let the SEs see content on all of these URLs:
domain.name/location/listing_id
domain.name/keyword/listing_id
domain.name/listing_id
domain.name/listing_slugRather than making duplicate content noindex I would prefer to redirect it to a common URL if possible.
To reduce duplicate content issues with client material, add extra info to the pages. E.g. some things to try are:
- adding region/suburb info to search results pages
- pre-parse listings and extract key info on features/facilities/etc., then display that key info in a features box or something so that both the HTML and content differs a lot from client sites.
-
The results pages do have unique meta tags that are dynamically constructed(due to large amount) for onpage SEO and the results pages are rewritten to static urls for indexing.
My results pages actually don't do too badly considering but not sure if the dup content negatively impacts the whole site by way of some unique content vs. dup content sitewide ratio or something.
I encourage users to create a unique 200 character summary for the search results which does help but with over 10000 listings, I think it may be a challenge to get a copywriter to cover it all. Another downside is taking on new clients who may hav a portfolio of 100's of properties. To get them onboard we either create a crawler to retrieve from their site or use a XML document generated by them and distributed to our site and those of our competitors.
I'm hoping we won't be punished for the dup content we just won't rank for it which is fine, but that's just a guess.
We can write unique content though our copyrighter but would it not be better to create a few paragraphs of unique content for each results page. Granted it will take a long time to cover all the pages but the focus would be on improving the ration of unique content vs dup content.
-
Is there a way you can add some unique content? Perhaps employ a copywriter to write unique blurbs about the listings? Certainly there are details that will always be the same with you and your competitors as housing listings will always need to have certain details.
For your search results pages, have you optimized the title and meta descriptions on them? This may also help with crafting different pages from your competitors.
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
-
Trailing Slashes for Magento CMS pages - 2 URLS - Duplicate content
Hello, Can anyone help me find a solution to Fixing and Creating Magento CMS pages to only use one URL and not two URLS? www.domain.com/testpage www.domain.com/testpage/ I found a previous article that applies to my issue, which is using htaccess to redirect request for pages in magento 301 redirect to slash URL from the non-slash URL. I dont understand the syntax fully in htaccess , but I used this code below. This code below fixed the CMS page redirection but caused issues on other pages, like all my categories and products with this error: "This webpage has a redirect loop ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS" Assuming you're running at domain root. Change to working directory if needed. RewriteBase / # www check If you're running in a subdirectory, then you'll need to add that in to the redirected url (http://www.mydomain.com/subdirectory/$1 RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www. [NC]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iamgreenminded
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [R=301,L] Trailing slash check Don't fix direct file links RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.)/$
RewriteRule ^(.)$ $1/ [L,R=301] Finally, forward everything to your front-controller (index.php) RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule .* index.php [QSA,L]0 -
Removing duplicate content
Due to URL changes and parameters on our ecommerce sites, we have a massive amount of duplicate pages indexed by google, sometimes up to 5 duplicate pages with different URLs. 1. We've instituted canonical tags site wide. 2. We are using the parameters function in Webmaster Tools. 3. We are using 301 redirects on all of the obsolete URLs 4. I have had many of the pages fetched so that Google can see and index the 301s and canonicals. 5. I created HTML sitemaps with the duplicate URLs, and had Google fetch and index the sitemap so that the dupes would get crawled and deindexed. None of these seems to be terribly effective. Google is indexing pages with parameters in spite of the parameter (clicksource) being called out in GWT. Pages with obsolete URLs are indexed in spite of them having 301 redirects. Google also appears to be ignoring many of our canonical tags as well, despite the pages being identical. Any ideas on how to clean up the mess?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC0 -
Contextual FAQ and FAQ Page, is this duplicate content?
Hi Mozzers, On my website, I have a FAQ Page (with the questions-responses of all the themes (prices, products,...)of my website) and I would like to add some thematical faq on the pages of my website. For example : adding the faq about pricing on my pricing page,... Is this duplicate content? Thank you for your help, regards. Jonathan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JonathanLeplang0 -
How to handle duplicate content with Bible verses
Have a friend that does a site with bible verses and different peoples thoughts or feelings on them. Since I'm an SEO he came to me with questions and duplicate content red flag popped up in my head. My clients all generate their own content so not familiar with this world. Since Bible verses appear all over the place, is there a way to address this from an SEO standpoint to avoid duplicate content issues? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremyskillings0 -
Duplicate Page Content Issues Reported in Moz Crawl Report
Hi all, We have a lot of 'Duplicate Page Content' issues being reported on the Moz Crawl Report and I am trying to 'get to the bottom' of why they are deemed as errors... This page; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/about-us/job-opportunities/ has (admittedly) very little content and is duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/explorer-of-the-seas-2015/ This page is basically an image and has just a couple of lines of static content. Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-lines/costa-cruises/costa-voyager/ This page relates to a single cruise ship and again has minimal content... Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/faq/packing/ This is an FAQ page again with only a few lines of content... Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/exclusive-canada-&-alaska-cruisetour/ Another page that just features an image and NO content... Also duplicated with; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/cruise-line-deals/free-upgrades-on-cunard-2014-&-2015/?page_number=6 A cruise deals page that has a little bit of static content and a lot of dynamic content (which I suspect isn't crawled) So my question is, is the duplicate content issued caused by the fact that each page has 'thin' or no content? If that is the case then I assume the simple fix is to increase add \ increase the content? I realise that I may have answered my own question but my brain is 'pickled' at the moment and so I guess I am just seeking assurances! 🙂 Thanks Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Partial duplicate content and canonical tags
Hi - I am rebuilding a consumer website, and each product page will contain a unique product image, and a sentence or two about the product (and we tend to use a lot of the same words in different ways across products). I'd like to have a tabbed area below the product info that talks about the overall product line, and this content would be duplicate across all the product pages (a "Why use our products" type of thing). I'd have this duplicate content also living on its own URL's so they can be found alone in the SERP's. Question is, do I need to add the canonical tag to this page, since there's partial duplicate content on the product pages? And if I did that, would my product pages go un-indexed?? I understand how to handle completely duplicated content, it's the partial duplicate that I'm having difficulty figuring out.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jenny10 -
Duplicate page content query
Hi forum, For some reason I have recently received a large increase in my Duplicate Page Content issues. Currently it says I have over 7,000 duplicate page content errors! For example it says: Sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Content http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/gowns/news.html http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/news.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sterls
http://dikelli.com.au/gallery/dikelli/gowns/gowns/sale_gowns.html However there are no physical links to any of these page on my site and even when I look at my FTP files (I am using Dreamweaver) these directories and files do not exist. Can anyone please tell me why the SEOMOZ crawl is coming up with these errors and how to solve them?0 -
Syndicating duplicate content descriptions - Can these be canonicalised?
Hi there, I have a site that contains descriptions of accommodation and we also use this content to syndicate to our partner sites. They then use this content to fill their descriptions on the same accommodation locations. I have looked at copyscape and Google and this does appear as duplicate content across these partnered sites. I do understand as well that certain kinds of content will not impact Google's duplication issue such as locations, addresses, opening times those kind of things, but would actual descriptions of a location around 250 words long be seen and penalised as duplicate content? Also is there a possible way to canonicalise this content so that Google can see it relates back to our original site? The only other way I can think of getting round a duplicate content issue like this is ordering the external sites to use tags like blockquotes and cite tags around the content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MalcolmGibb0