How should we handle ecommerce section pages (flagged with duplication) containing the same products?
-
We've removed a ton of errors, duplication and other stuff since signing up to SEOmoz Pro, but we're getting to the point where what we have left isn't that easy to fix. On one of our (ecommerce) sites we have several sections where people buy products that are applicable to the area of the home. In one or two instances, a particular list of products is the same for two or more different areas - for instance the "Bedroom and Landings" and "Hallway and Stairs" sections may list the same 10 products. This is obviously flagging up as duplication in our reports.
What is the best way to handle this situation? Make the one with the highest authority canonical? Point both to another canonical page? Or, try and convince the product department that we should have a more generically name section that both link to?
Thanks for any advice!
-
Yes - to both you and @MagicDude4Eva - it seems this is about the thin content as opposed to the index of products listed there. Page titles and URLs are indeed unique, but the content can certainly be worked on. Thanks a lot for your help
-
Is your descriptive text very similar and thin?
I have had a similar situation and all I did was take some time to beef up the content of the page and make sure it was unique - this resolved the issue which I believe you have - even though the list of products was the same..
I know the areas are very similar but with some thought you should be able to produce some unique content for it, if your current content is similar and thin?
-
If you have multiple sections listing the same products and there is only one product URL (and the product page itself uses a canonical) there isn't an issue. (and I am not quite sure where the duplication problem comes in).
i.e. "Bedroom" would list "/lamp.html" and "/carpet.html" as unique product URLs. Your "Hallway"-section would also list "/lamp.html" and "/carpet.html" - although there is duplication of products on the listing pages, this is irrelevant from an indexing/SEO perspective.
Your category URLs (Bedroon and Landings) are also unique and not the actual cause of duplication (i.e. a category map with unique anchor texts but duplicate URLs and not canonical)?
-
The products only exist at one URL - but they can appear in multiple sections. The sections have different titles/descriptive text at the top, but list the same products.
-
If the products are exactly the same mark all products with the same canonical URL. If the duplication is not on URL level, but title suffix the title with the deparment/area.
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
-
Pagination for product page reviews
Hi, I am looking to add pagination on product pages (they have lots of reviews on the page). I am considering using rel="next/prev, to connect the series of review pages to the main product page. I unfortunately don't have a view-all page for these reviews or the option to get one - the reviews refresh on the same product page (by clicking whatever number page of reviews). This means each page has the exact same description content and everything else, but with different reviews. In this case is rel=next a good option? The format currently would be: On example.com/product link rel="next" href="http://example.com/product?review-p2" On example.com/product?review-p2 link rel="prev" href="http://example.com/product, link rel="next" href="http://example.com/product?review-p3 etc. Would this be a good format for product page reviews? I see rel=nextprev commonly used on ecommerce category/list pages but not really on the paginated reviews on product pages, so I thought I would see if anyone has advice on how best to solve this. I'm also wondering if it would be best to not combine this with a canonical tag on all the different review pages pointing to the product page, seeing as the reviews are actually different (despite the rest of the content being identical). I am hoping to pick up longer tail traffic from this, I figure by connecting the pages and not using canonicals that this way I could get more traffic from the phrases used in the reviews. By leaving out the canonicals, is it possible a user searching for phrases that might be deeper in the series, to land on, say, ?review-p4? Any thoughts if this would drive more traffic? Thanks!.
On-Page Optimization | | pikka0 -
How much SEO value does a fashion site get from bolting text onto the bottom of home page? Does the value compensate for cluttering up a page focused on an iconic image?
Getting ready to launch a completely redesigned site for a fashion designer. Since it is a fashion site, visitors do not need text to describe what the site is about., We are weighing three options: 1) clean design with no text (just images and navigational links), 2) bolting on a couple of sentences of text at the bottom of the page to signal keyword terms to the search engines, 3) following the lead of the top ranking site in the category and adding lots of text to the bottom of the page. Do the SEO benefits justify cluttering up the design by bolting text onto the bottom of the home page, and if so, how many characters of text seem to be the minimum to be effective?
On-Page Optimization | | RandyP0 -
Creating a product per size causing duplicate content problems?
I have an e-commerce site and in order to receive a listing for each size and color in Google Merchant, I've created a new product for each size and color. The problem is that since I did this, the canonical tags aren't correct and there isn't a way to change them manually with the platform I'm on. I feel like this is one of the main reasons I've been dropping in the rankings. Should I delete all duplicate products? The system will take care of canonical tags automatically when creating a new size/color within the system (how it's supposed to be created) but the canonical tags become messy when I duplicate a product and edit the size/color to create a "whole new product". Here is an example of what I'm referring to: http://www.carbonconnection.com/search.php?search_query=nalini+rigel&x=0&y=0 (this problem actually isn't mine, it's a friend's but for the sake of simplicity and gaining a second opinion to be sure before he redoes all of his products, I'm asking as though it were my issue)
On-Page Optimization | | EmdeS0 -
Duplicate Content for Spanish & English Product
Hi There, Our company provides training courses and I am looking to provide the Spanish version of a course that we already provide in English. As it is an e-commerce site, our landing page for the English version gives the full description of the course and all related details. Once the course is purchased, a flash based course launches within a player window and the student begins the course. For the Spanish version of the course, my target customers are English speaking supervisors purchasing the course for their Spanish speaking workers. So the landing page will still be in English (just like the English version of the course) with the same basic description, with the only content differences on that page being the inclusion of the fact that this course is in Spanish and a few details around that. The majority of the content on these two separate landing pages will be exactly the same, as the description for the overall course is the same, just that it's presented in a different language, so it needs to be 2 separate products. My fear is that Google will read this as duplicate content and I will be penalized for it. Is this a possibility or will Google know why I set it up this way and not penalize me? If that is a possibility, how should I go about doing this correctly? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | NiallTom0 -
Duplicate Page Title Elements
Hello Mozzers. My questions is below and I would like to thank everyone in advance for any feedback 😉 I own a dog supplies site (www.k9electronics.com). When I launched the site several years back I hired a guy for SEO and he optimized my home page for specific categories search terms such as "dog training collars", "dog shock collars:, ect instead of general search terms such as "dog supplies", "dog accessories", ect. I would like to start moving these home page title element terms (starting with "dog shock collars") over to the dog training collars category but have high rankings for this term on the home page. Current Home Page Title Element:
On-Page Optimization | | k9byron
dog training collars, dog shock collars, electric dog collar, dog supplies (recently added) Current Dog Training Collars Category Title Element:
dog training collars I was hoping to add "dog shock collars" to the dog training collars category page until I achieved higher ranking then delete if from the home page. ..or swap it out with "dog accessories". I am currently ranked #5 in Google for "dog shock collars" on the home page & dog training collars category page ...and I am a little concerned about changing these title elements. My question is; If I add 'dog shock collars" to the dog training collars category page title as well, how will it effect my ranking on both pages having this duplicate term in both page titles? Thank You,
Byron-0 -
Page title
So if we have a main category page on our site (mines an ecommerce site), do we go for more than that main keyword phrase for that category of products, or is it better to just keep it by itself, and not utilize the 65-70 characters available?
On-Page Optimization | | azguy0 -
Creating New Pages Versus Improving Existing Pages
What are some things to consider or things to evaluate when deciding whether you should focus resources on creating new pages (to cover more related topics) versus improving existing pages (adding more useful information, etc.)?
On-Page Optimization | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Why home page ranks higher than keyword-optimized page
We have a page that is optimized for the keyword "job scheduling". A search on the keyword "job scheduling" results in this page not ranking at all, while our home page (uc4.com) ranks third. Could you provide some ideas/suggestions as to why this would be the case and how to make our job scheduling page rank higher? Thanks, claudia
On-Page Optimization | | claudmar0