Resolving duplicate text issues with a duplicate image?
-
We are a listing site for programs overseas. Many of our listings are inherently the same content, because in many cases the same exact information applies. We have resolved duplicate content issues to some extent by making some of the content in these listings unique. However, for the rest of the content which is going to be the same for about 100 pages, we were wondering if its better to have an image in place instead of duplicate text content (this would basically be an image of the text in question). We know this is a problem, because this is inherently duplicate content as well (only its a duplicate image instead of duplicate text). However, what's the best solution to this problem, and is a duplicate image just asking for trouble, or might this actually be a good idea?
-
Google won't index image-embedded text on a webpage (currently only .pdf documents)
If you want a little more insurance, which you won't really need, use your handy robot.txt or rel="canonical"
As usual, keep your eyes forward:
"While search engines may not use OCR for indexing the content of web pages now, that doesn’t mean that they might not in the future, and there are some indications that the search engines are developing a much greater proficiency in the use of optical character recognition."
Here's that article, including some great references.
Good luck.
-
Could you point me to a valid reference on that OCR issue?
-
You should use rel=canonical tag on duplicate content pages. Google can read text embedded as an image through OCR algorithm. So duplicate image is not a good option. Moreover think how these images will increase the load time of the web pages.
-
To directly answer your question, there are a few ways you can present content in a manner that is not readily crawlable for search engines: flash, iframe and images.
As far as good ideas, I much prefer to offer real content which is unique to the given area. Let's say you are a US-based site offering programs for attending universities overseas. Add some content specific to each country's page to make it unique.
If you present Malaysia as a country, talk about their universities by name, awards they have won, landmarks and other items of interest such as their incredibly diverse forests. You can also provide testimonials from satisfied clients. Testimonials can help establish a lot of relevancy as clients will often mention specifics about where they are from "John from Miami, FL" and where they visited.
In short, you will achieve better results if you work within Google's system then by trying to work around it.
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
-
Duplicate product description on the same page
Hello, I've got a really simple a basic question : is it an issue to put an excerpt of a text at the begining of a page, with a "jump to full text" link at the end of the excerpt ? So the first part of the text will be duplicated. A solution would be to hide a part of the text and reveal it with a "read more" button, but we don't want to do that, we want users to be able to read the full text just by scrolling + we want to put an excerpt "above-the-fold" content It's a product page. A second question : we've got duplicate content between our brand category pages, and the related product page, because the presentation text of the brand is shown on the product page + on the brand category page (it's presentations of distilleries, so it's a valuable content for the customer, we want to show it directly on the product page). Do you think it's a big issue ? Or maybe we can think : "ok, there is plenty of other text on those pages, so it won't matter" ?
Content Development | | Colage1 -
Duplicate Content & Tags
I've recently added tags to my blog posts so that related blog posts are suggested to visitors. My understanding was that my robot.txt was handling duplicate content so thought it wouldn't be an issue but after Moz crawled by site this week is reported 56 issues of duplicate content in my blog. I'm using Shopify, so I can edit the robot.txt file but is my understanding correct that if there are 2 or more tags then they will be ignored? I've searched the Shopify documents and forum and can't find a straight answer. My understanding of SEO is fairly limited. Disallow: /blogs/+
Content Development | | Tangled
Disallow: /blogs/%2B
Disallow: /blogs/%2b0 -
Free Duplicate Content Checker Tools ?
Hi Moz, I am really looking for free tools which can carry my content duplication issue, as i visited http://moz.com/community/q/are-there-tools-to-discover-duplicate-content-issues-with-the-other-websites suggested copyscape which is paid. I want FREE to handle my duplication issue.' Thanks in Advance. Best,
Content Development | | Futura
Teginder1 -
Duplicate Content
I have a service based client that is interested in optimizing his website for all the services that he provides in all the locations that he provides them in. For example: Service 1, location 1 Service 1, location 2 Service 2, location 1 Service 2, location 2 He wants to essentially create an individual page for each of the above, but i'm concerned that he will be penalized for duplicate content. Each of the pages would have the keyword in the url, page title and within the main body of content. We would certainly alter the content somewhat, but not sure how much a difference this would make. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Content Development | | embracedarrenhughes1 -
Duplicate Page Content WordPress blog with categories?
Just got a crawl report back from SEOmoz and it gives me lots of errors for "duplicate page content". Upon investigating, I notice this is because my WP blog is setup into categories so the home page is almost identical to one of the category pages. None of my actually posts are the same but the category pages have some overlap since the same post could show up in two or more categories. Is this a problem or can I just ignore this error? Any thing I should be doing differently? Thanks!
Content Development | | frankthetank20 -
Issues with copying online forum reviews on own website
Apologies- I asked a similar question the other day but did not word it as clearly as possible. We are looking at having a text box of 'What customers say' on our product pages using reviews written about us online (to remain factual) and wanted to know if this created any issues relating to search engines finding matching content on two separate websites? Will this have any SEO implications as effectively we are 'plagiarising' the content in the eyes of the bots even though it is just customer opinion of our own products right? Thanks in advance.
Content Development | | jannkuzel0 -
Images for WordPress
I'd be grateful for any advice regarding sourcing, adding & attributing images/photos for my WordPress blog. Budget is tight so have to rule out paid stock libraries, but I heard that Flickr images can be used under Creative Commons providing they are correctly attributed. eg. http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/business-of-it/2011/04/07/mps-criticise-bbc-siemens-38m-contract-failure-40092428/ eg 2. http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/networking/2011/10/05/bt-lines-up-300mbps-broadband-launch-40094109/ Example 1 does not seem to link back but example 2 does. Are there any rules on this? I have looked at some plugins: Insights, iFlickr, WP Flickr Manager, Photo Dropper. Looking to save time by streamlining the process of adding images, resizing and attributing. Many thanks.
Content Development | | martyc0 -
Is it considered as duplicate content ?
Hello, I see a lot of errors on my webmaster tools because of this ajax code on my questions pages of the site (screen) : www.dismoicomment.fr The code : | / ADD ANSWER FORM |
Content Development | | elitepronostic
| | $("#answer-add-button").click(function () { |
| | $.ajax({ |
| | type: 'POST', |
| | url: '/answers/quelle-assurance-choisir-pour-un-scooter/', |
| | data: $("form#answer-add").serialize(), |
| | dataType: 'html', |
| | success: function(data) { |
| | |
| | if(data=="answer") { |
| | $('.answer-add-message').show().empty(); |
| | $(document).ready(function() { |
| | $(' Vous avez déjà répondu à cette question. ').appendTo('.answer-add-message'); |
| | }); | I have add a line on my robots.txt : http://www.dismoicomment.fr/robots.txt for remove all urls with /answers/. These urls with /answers/ aren't indexed in google. Do you think that it is dangerous and that can be considered as duplicate content ? 1129546035.png0