How to fix duplicate page content error?
-
SEOmoz's Crawl Diagnostics is complaining about a duplicate page error.
The example of links that has duplicate page content error are
http://www.equipnet.com/misc-spare-motors-and-pumps_listid_348855
http://www.equipnet.com/misc-spare-motors-and-pumps_listid_348852
These are not duplicate pages. There are some values that are different on both pages like listing # , equipnet tag # , price.
I am not sure how do highlight the different things the two page has like the "Equipment Tag # and listing #". Do they resolve if i use some style attribute to highlight such values on page?
Please help me with this as i am not really sure why seo is thinking that both pages have same content.
Thanks !!!
-
Thanks Justin.
I liked your way of targeting this.
Thanks.
-
It will almost definitely solve the issue.
If it is any use to you, the approach I would typically take is to concentrate on 10 products and make the content changes to those pages.
These can be top 10 sellers, top 10 products in terms of value, 10 random products etc, re-write the descriptions for each of these and make them live.
I would then run a test crawl to ensure the pages are no longer seen as duplicates, then wait for Google to pick up the changes and see what effect it has on rankings and indexing.
Assuming this experiment is successful start working thru the rest, I find that concentrating on 10-20 products at a time works better for me as its more actionable and easier to work on a smaller product subset.
I hope thats of some use to you
-
Thanks Justin.
I think we should add some description of the product.
Thanks.
-
Thank you Matthew.
Google is indexing one page not the other. If I search for "misc spare motors and pumps" it returns one result from EquipNet not the other. Our campaign has almost thousands of duplicate content error, and we need to get rid off them as we are loosing our index in google.
If i can i would definitely try to change the content if possible.
Thanks.
-
Hey,
Those two pages are not identical but they are nearly identical. I've seen SEOmoz's tool trigger these types of duplicate content before. For example, both page headers and titles are "Misc. Spare Motor and Pumps", both contain nearly the same equipment description, and the same links to the right of the buttons. That is normal on product sites, but that is probably why they are considered duplicated.
When I've seen this happen on my campaigns it almost always follows that Google has only indexed one of those pages and not the other. Is that happening to you as well? Or, has Google indexed both pages (and ranking both pages and sending traffic to both pages)?
If Google is performing okay with these pages (the pages rank for relevant terms and you get traffic), I wouldn't worry too much about the duplicate content errors in your campaign. However, if Google hasn't indexed either page (or one but not the other) you should find ways to differentiate these pages.
To make these pages unique, formatting changes won't do it because the content will still be the same. You would need to add content that is truly unique. For example, you could add a short paragraph about each product to each page. You could make the title tag and header more unique. Or, you could try adjusting your alt text (right now, the alt text on the main image is the same on both pages).
I hope that helps.
-
Hi Matthew
In Googles eyes these would be duplicate pages as 99% of the text on the page is almost identical.
Google takes a pretty tough line with this, so re-ordering a few words here and there wouldn't solve the issue, to solve the issue you really need to write unique content for each product.
You may want to consider including the product description in the area next to the picture as Google tends to put more significance on text which higher up the page.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Pages with Duplicate Content
When I crawl my site through moz, it shows lots of Pages with Duplicate Content. The thing is all that pages are pagination pages. How should I solve this issue?
Technical SEO | | 100offdeal0 -
Duplicate content on user queries
Our website supports a unique business industry where our users will come to us to look for something very specific (a very specific product name) to find out where they can get it. The problem that we're facing is that the products are constantly changing due to the industry. So, for example, one month, one product might be found on our website, and the next, it might be removed completely... and then might come back again a couple months later. All things that are completely out of our control - and we have no way of receiving any sort of warning when these things might happen. Because of this, we're seeing a lot of duplicate content issues arise... For Example... Product A is not active today... so www.mysite.com/search/productA will return no results... Product B is also not active today... so www.mysite.com/search/productB will also return no results. As per Moz Analytics, these are showing up as duplicate content because both pages indicate "No results were found for {your searched term}." Unfortunately, it's a bit difficult to return a 204 in these situations (which I don't know if a 204 would help anyway) or a 404, because, for a faster user experience, we simultaneously render different sections of the page... so in the very beginning of the page load - we start rendering the faster content (template type of content) that says "returning 200 code, we got the query successfully & we're loading the page".. the unique content results finish loading last since they take the longest. I'm still very new to the SEO world, so would greatly appreciate any ideas or suggestions that might help with this... I'm stuck. 😛 Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | SFMoz0 -
174 Duplicate Content Errors
How do I go about fixing these errors? There are all related to my tags. Thank you in advance for any help! Lisa
Technical SEO | | lisarein0 -
Would Google Call These Pages Duplicate Content?
Our Web store, http://www.audiobooksonline.com/index.html, has struggled with duplicate content issues for some time. One aspect of duplicate content is a page like this: http://www.audiobooksonline.com/out-of-publication-audio-books-book-audiobook-audiobooks.html. When an audio book title goes out-of-publication we keep the page at our store and display a http://www.audiobooksonline.com/out-of-publication-audio-books-book-audiobook-audiobooks.html whenever a visitor attempts to visit a specific title that is OOP. There are several thousand OOP pages. Would Google consider these OOP pages duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | lbohen0 -
What could be the cause of this duplicate content error?
I only have one index.htm and I'm seeing a duplicate content error. What could be causing this? IUJvfZE.png
Technical SEO | | ScottMcPherson1 -
How do I deal with Duplicate content?
Hi, I'm trying SEOMOZ and its saying that i've got loads of duplicate content. We provide phone numbers for cities all over the world, so have pages like this... https://www.keshercommunications.com/Romaniavoipnumbers.html https://www.keshercommunications.com/Icelandvoipnumbers.html etc etc. One for every country. The question is, how do I create pages for each one without it showing up as duplicate content? Each page is generated by the server, but Its impossible to write unique text for each one. Also, the competition seem to have done the same but google is listing all their pages when you search for 'DID Numbers. Look for DIDWW or MyDivert.
Technical SEO | | DanFromUK0 -
Error msg 'Duplicate Page Content', how to fix?
Hey guys, I'm new to SEO and have the following error msg 'Duplicate Page Content'. Of course I know what it means, but my question is how do you delete the old pages that has duplicate content? I use to run my website through Joomla! but have since moved to Shopify. I see that the duplicated site content is still from the old Joomla! site and I would like to learn how to delete this content (or best practice in this situation). Any advice would be very helpful! Cheers, Peter
Technical SEO | | pjuszczynski0 -
Question about content on ecommerce pages.
Long time ago we hired a seo company to do seo in our website and one of the things they did is that they wrote long text on the category pages of our products. Example here: http://www.theprinterdepo.com/refurbished-printers/wide-format-laser-refurbished-printers Now my marketing person is saying that if its possible to put the text below the items, technically I will find out how to do it, but from your seo experience, is it good or bad? What about if we short those texts to one paragraph only? Thanks
Technical SEO | | levalencia10