Dealing with close content - duplicate issue for closed products
-
Hello
I'm dealing with some issues. Moz analyses is telling me that I have duplicate on some of my products pages.
My issue is that:
- Concern very similar products
- IT products are from the same range
- Just the name and pdf are different
Do you think I should use canonical url ? Or it will be better to rewrite about 80 descriptions (but description will be almost the same) ?
Best regards.
-
Hello
Actually we though about it when we released the website. The current heading, Title and PDF files are driving some traffic.
As we have thousands of references it's not so easy to get different, and quality content.
I think for now how gonna manually change the 80 duplicate content. But you're definitely right it would be better to get some more options as feedback and reviews.
I gonna think about a way to do this.
Tks a lot !
-
Thanks for the example. It seems that for a server there would be more information about it that that paragraph. Processor information, RAM, disk space, ports etc. I just did a search and found this info
https://www.avantidataproducts.com/product/ibm/7379c2u
I think the bigger problem is not differentiating these pages from each other on your own site, but differentiating from other sites.
This is just good old content development. You need to see if there is a way to tap into people rating and leaving comments. Do you have any case studies on this product etc. Can you find any other media on it, can you create it. Go to Zappos.com they produce a ton of videos that just describe a pair of shoes. Do you have someone who could be your video representative and you shoot a bunch of videos on your top products and embed them.
I think otherwise, you are just going to be similar to everyone else with the same product.
-
Hello !
In this case it would be
- http://www.ibremarketing.com/item/ibm-7379c2u-x3400-m3.html
- http://www.ibremarketing.com/item/ibm-7379f2u-x3400-m3.html
I do not like the canonical neither are people are finding those references on Google.
As it's a catalog managed in bulk important with many references it's hard to create 1 page as I need also to get the reference on the title ...
So except rewriting the content, do you think there is another option ?
Tks anyway for such a quick answer
-
Hard to say without seeing the products and so you may not get much response here more than "it depends". Sit down and be creative, you may be able see if the differences can be highlighted enough that they are different from the others and so you can use them.
Here is what I would do. If you have 4 versions of a widget, create 1 page with information on all four of them. Then you can talk about all of them at once and optimize around the 4 versions. Lets say you have a red, blue and green widget - those are the only differences and everything else is the same. The page should talk about how great the widget is, talk about the 4 colors, have pictures of the widget in all 4 colors, let people vote on what color they like the best, have links to PDFs on each of the 4 widgets etc. This may be the better approach.
I am just not sure about using of the canonical as people probably need to be able to find the different versions of the widget and so you need to make sure that the information is out there. If you setup a page for the 4 versions and then canonical 3 of the versions to the 1, you are still "de-emphasizing" the other 3 versions that people may be searching for.
I really try to only use canonicals if there is an exact duplicate (say a printer friendly version of the original) or I use it for business purpose. Example: I have one site that has city and zip search options for locations - I canonical all my zip result pages to the parent city page - I do this as I know 1) for this area people do not search in the SERPs by zip code so no use optimizing around zips, and 2) the zip pages are pretty much dups of the city page anyway. I only leave the zip pages on my site as an option from a usability for people once they hit my site if they want to search that way.
Good luck!
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 content on URL trailing slash
Hello, Some time ago, we accidentally made changes to our site which modified the way urls in links are generated. At once, trailing slashes were added to many urls (only in links). Links that used to send to
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yacpro13
example.com/webpage.html Were now linking to
example.com/webpage.html/ Urls in the xml sitemap remained unchanged (no trailing slash). We started noticing duplicate content (because our site renders the same page with or without the trailing shash). We corrected the problematic php url function so that now, all links on the site link to a url without trailing slash. However, Google had time to index these pages. Is implementing 301 redirects required in this case?1 -
What is considered duplicate content?
Hi, We are working on a product page for bespoke camper vans: http://www.broadlane.co.uk/campervans/vw-campers/bespoke-campers . At the moment there is only one page but we are planning add similar pages for other brands of camper vans. Each page will receive its specifically targeted content however the 'Model choice' cart at the bottom (giving you the choice to select the internal structure of the van) will remain the same across all pages. Will this be considered as duplicate content? And if this is a case, what would be the ideal solution to limit penalty risk: A rel canonical tag seems wrong for this, as there is no original item as such. Would an iFrame around the 'model choice' enable us to isolate the content from being indexed at the same time than the page? Thanks, Celine
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Brief question - SEOMOZ is teling me that i have duplicate content on the following two pages http://www.passportsandvisas.com/visas/ and http://www.passportsandvisas.com/visas/index.asp The default page for the /visas/ directory is index.asp - so it effectively the same page - but apparently SEOMOZ and more importantly Google, etc treat these as two different pages. I read about 301 redirects etc, but in this case there aren't two physical HTML pages - so how do I fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | santiago230 -
Can videos be considered duplicate content?
I have a page that ranks 5 and to get a rich snippet I'm thinking of adding a relevant video to the page. Thing is, the video is already on another page which ranks for this keyword... but only at position 20. As it happens the page the video is on is the more important page for other keywords, so I won't remove it. Will having the same video on two pages be considered a duplicate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brocberry0 -
How to prevent duplicate content within this complex website?
I have a complex SEO issue I've been wrestling with and I'd appreciate your views on this very much. I have a sports website and most visitors are looking for the games that are played in the current week (I've studied this - it's true). We're creating a new website from scratch and I want to do this is as best as possible. We want to use the most elegant and best way to do this. We do not want to use work-arounds such as iframes, hiding text using AJAX etc. We need a solid solution for both users and search engines. Therefor I have written down three options: Using a canonical URL; Using 301-redirects; Using 302-redirects. Introduction The page 'website.com/competition/season/week-8' shows the soccer games that are played in game week 8 of the season. The next week users are interested in the games that are played in that week (game week 9). So the content a visitor is interested in, is constantly shifting because of the way competitions and tournaments are organized. After a season the same goes for the season of course. The website we're building has the following structure: Competition (e.g. 'premier league') Season (e.g. '2011-2012') Playweek (e.g. 'week 8') Game (e.g. 'Manchester United - Arsenal') This is the most logical structure one can think of. This is what users expect. Now we're facing the following challenge: when a user goes to http://website.com/premier-league he expects to see a) the games that are played in the current week and b) the current standings. When someone goes to http://website.com/premier-league/2011-2012/ he expects to see the same: the games that are played in the current week and the current standings. When someone goes to http://website.com/premier-league/2011-2012/week-8/ he expects to the same: the games that are played in the current week and the current standings. So essentially there's three places, within every active season within a competition, within the website where logically the same information has to be shown. To deal with this from a UX and SEO perspective, we have the following options: Option A - Use a canonical URL Using a canonical URL could solve this problem. You could use a canonical URL from the current week page and the Season page to the competition page: So: the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season/playweek-8' would have a canonical tag that points to 'website.com/$competition/' the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season/' would have a canonical tag that points to 'website.com/$competition/' The next week however, you want to have the canonical tag on 'website.com/$competition/$season/playweek-9' and the canonical tag from 'website.com/$competition/$season/playweek-8' should be removed. So then you have: the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season/playweek-9' would have a canonical tag that points to 'website.com/$competition/' the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season/' would still have a canonical tag that points to 'website.com/$competition/' In essence the canonical tag is constantly traveling through the pages. Advantages: UX: for a user this is a very neat solution. Wherever a user goes, he sees the information he expects. So that's all good. SEO: the search engines get very clear guidelines as to how the website functions and we prevent duplicate content. Disavantages: I have some concerns regarding the weekly changing canonical tag from a SEO perspective. Every week, within every competition the canonical tags are updated. How often do Search Engines update their index for canonical tags? I mean, say it takes a Search Engine a week to visit a page, crawl a page and process a canonical tag correctly, then the Search Engines will be a week behind on figuring out the actual structure of the hierarchy. On top of that: what do the changing canonical URLs to the 'quality' of the website? In theory this should be working all but I have some reservations on this. If there is a canonical tag from 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-8', what does this do to the indexation and ranking of it's subpages (the actual match pages) Option B - Using 301-redirects Using 301-redirects essentially the user and the Search Engine are treated the same. When the Season page or competition page are requested both are redirected to game week page. The same applies here as applies for the canonical URL: every week there are changes in the redirects. So in game week 8: the page on 'website.com/$competition/' would have a 301-redirect that points to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-8' the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season' would have a 301-redirect that points to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-8' A week goes by, so then you have: the page on 'website.com/$competition/' would have a 301-redirect that points to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-9' the page on 'website.com/$competition/$season' would have a 301-redirect that points to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-9' Advantages There is no loss of link authority. Disadvantages Before a playweek starts the playweek in question can be indexed. However, in the current playweek the playweek page 301-redirects to the competition page. After that week the page's 301-redirect is removed again and it's indexable. What do all the (changing) 301-redirects do to the overall quality of the website for Search Engines (and users)? Option C - Using 302-redirects Most SEO's will refrain from using 302-redirects. However, 302-redirect can be put to good use: for serving a temporary redirect. Within my website there's the content that's most important to the users (and therefor search engines) is constantly moving. In most cases after a week a different piece of the website is most interesting for a user. So let's take our example above. We're in playweek 8. If you want 'website.com/$competition/' to be redirecting to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-8/' you can use a 302-redirect. Because the redirect is temporary The next week the 302-redirect on 'website.com/$competition/' will be adjusted. It'll be pointing to 'website.com/$competition/$season/week-9'. Advantages We're putting the 302-redirect to its actual use. The pages that 302-redirect (for instance 'website.com/$competition' and 'website.com/$competition/$season') will remain indexed. Disadvantages Not quite sure how Google will handle this, they're not very clear on how they exactly handle a 302-redirect and in which cases a 302-redirect might be useful. In most cases they advise webmasters not to use it. I'd very much like your opinion on this. Thanks in advance guys and galls!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | StevenvanVessum0 -
Duplicate page content and Duplicate page title errors
Hi, I'm new to SeoMoz and to this forum. I've started a new campaign on my site and got back loads of error. Most of them are Duplicate page content and Duplicate page title errors. I know I have some duplicate titles but I don't have any duplicate content. I'm not a web developer and not so expert but I have the impression that the crawler is following all my internal links (Infact I have also plenty of warnings saying "Too many on-page links". Do you think this is the cause of my errors? Should I implement the nofollow on all internal links? I'm working with Joomla. Thanks a lot for your help Marco
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marcodublin0 -
Capitals in url creates duplicate content?
Hey Guys, I had a quick look around however I couldn't find a specific answer to this. Currently, the SEOmoz tools come back and show a heap of duplicate content on my site. And there's a fair bit of it. However, a heap of those errors are relating to random capitals in the urls. for example. "www.website.com.au/Home/information/Stuff" is being treated as duplicate content of "www.website.com.au/home/information/stuff" (Note the difference in capitals). Anyone have any recommendations as to how to fix this server side(keeping in mind it's not practical or possible to fix all of these links) or to tell Google to ignore the capitalisation? Any help is greatly appreciated. LM.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarlS0 -
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?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0