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
-
Duplicate Page Content
Hello, After crawling our site Moz is detecting high priority duplicate page content for our product and article listing pages, For example http://store.bmiresearch.com/bangladesh/power and http://store.bmiresearch.com/newzealand/power are being listed as duplicate pages although they have seperate URLs, page titles and H1 tags. They have the same product listed but I would have thought the differentiation in other areas would be sufficient for these to not be deemed as duplicate pages. Is it likely this issue will be impacting on our search rankings? If so are there any recommendations as to how this issue can be overcome. Thanks
Technical SEO | | carlsutherland0 -
Duplicate Content Mystery
Hi Moz community! I have an ongoing duplicate mystery going on here and I'm hoping someone here can answer my question. We have an Ecommerce site that has a variety of product pages and category pages. There are Rel canonicals in place, along with parameters in GWT, and there are also URL rewrites. Here are some scenarios, maybe you can give insight as to what’s exactly going on and how to fix it. All the duplicates look to be coming from category pages specifically. For example:
Technical SEO | | Ecom-Team-Access
This link re-writes: http://www.incipio.com/cases/tablet-cases/amazon-kindle-cases-sleeves.html?cat=407&color=152&price=20- To: http://www.incipio.com/cases/tablet-cases/amazon-kindle-cases-sleeves.html The rel canonical tag looks like this: http://www.incipio.com/cases/tablet-cases/amazon-kindle-cases-sleeves.html" /> The CONTENT is different, but the URLs are the same. It thinks that the product category view is the same as the all products view, even though there is a canonical in there telling it which one is the original. Some of them don’t have anything to do with each other. Take a look: Link identified as duplicate: http://www.incipio.com/cases/smartphone-cases/htc-smartphone-cases/htc-windows-phone-8x-cases.html?color=27&price=20- Link this is a duplicate of: http://www.incipio.com/cases/macbook-cases/macbook-pro-13in-cases.html Any idea as to what could be happening here?0 -
Duplicate title tags being caused by upper case and lower case version of urls'
Hi GWT is reporting lots of duplicate titles for a clients new site. Mainly these are due to 2x different versions of the url, one with words starting with an upper case character and the other all lower case. Clients dev saying this has something to do with windows server and is ok! Is this correct or should i be telling them to delete and then 301 redirect all upper case versions to the lower case (since lower case better practice) and that will deal with the reported dupe titles ? All Best Dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Image Duplication
I'm feeling strong! Ok, so can Google penalise a website which has "duplicated images" - coming from a completely independent website?
Technical SEO | | GaryVictory0 -
Canonical URL
Hi there Our website www.snowbusiness.com has a non www version and this one has 398 backlinks. What is the best way of transfering this link value if i establish the www. address as the canonical URL? Thanks, Ben
Technical SEO | | SnowFX0 -
Find all links in the site and anchor text
Hi, Find all links in the site and anchor text and i need this done on my own website so i know if we dont have links that are anchored to numbers and punctuations that are not seen at all. Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Changing broken links and Anchor text be a problem?
Hi, Changing broken links and Anchor text be a problem? We have 80K pages which has about 40K links which has been created in the last few years and from last month we have been working on updating content on those pages that's old and links that are broken and changing the anchor text in those posts. Anchor text like Click me, Here,Download, link, etc is changed to meaningful words. its a total close to 10K link replacements and 10K anchor text. While doing this from last month have seen a slight decrease in daily traffic. is this something Google would consider as some kind of a wrong webmaster activity? or its just fine? Thanks
Technical SEO | | mtthompsons0 -
Drupal duplicate pages
Anyone else encountered massive numbers of duplicate pages being reported on SEO Moz crawls for Drupal based sites? I assumed it was b/c there was no redirect on the print format pages, so I fixed that with a cannonical tag. But still seeing 2 or 3 duplicate pages reported for many pages. Any experience fixing this would be awesome to hear about. Thanks, Kevin
Technical SEO | | kevgrand0