Handling "legitimate" duplicate content in an online shop.
-
The scenario:
Online shop selling consumables for machinery.
Consumable range A (CA) contains consumables w, x, y, z. The individual consumables are not a problem, it is the consumables groups I'm having problems with.
The Problem:
Several machines use the same range of consumables. i.e. Machine A (MA) consumables page contains the list (CA) with the contents w,x,y,z. Machine B (MB) consumables page contains exactly the same list (CA) with contents w,x,y,z.
Machine A page = Machine B page = Consumables range A page
Some people will search Google for the consumables by the range name (CA). Most people will search by individual machine (MA Consumables, MB Consumables etc).
If I use canonical tags on the Machine consumable pages (MA + MB) pointing to the consumables range page (CA) then I'm never going to rank for the Machine pages which would represent a huge potential loss of search traffic.
However, if I don't use canonical tags then all the pages get slammed as duplicate content.
For somebody that owns machine A, then a page titled "Machine A consumables" with the list of consumables is exactly what they are looking for and it makes sense to serve it to them in that format.
However, For somebody who owns machine B, then it only makes sense for the page to be titled "Machine B consumables" even though the content is exactly the same.
The Question:
What is the best way to handle this from both a user and search engine perspective?
-
That's good solid advice. Thank you. Other ecommerce sites in the niche are nothing to write home about. Where they win is where this site has some major issues (larger than the one I'm asking about) that need fixing too.
I'm just trying to come up with a cohesive plan for a site that will blow the competition out of the water on Google (achievable) and increase sales / visitor. This is part of that.
Much as I don't like your suggestion due to the amount of work it is going to take to implement, I do think you are right and it's a better solution than the canonical tags.
That said, I suspect the canonical tags will be tried first, and then we will end up going with the content writing.
-
I have spent an inordinate amount of time cleaning up sites with templated pages and duplicate content. I can tell you that the potential gains are real, and the potential risks of inaction are often large.
Some text is better than no text. Google prefers a solid base of text-based content, period. It's their bread and butter and it helps them figure out what your page is about. Some time spent discussing with your team/writers how to best differentiate each page could be time very well spent. I don't know that it needs to be a solid block of prose; categories like manufacturer, machine type, year, etc. could be used in list or paragraph form (perhaps you already do this?)
You could look at other ecommerce sites that are ranking in your niche, and in others, to see what they do.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "The text would have to come before the products for SEO." What I will say is the position of the text on the page should probably be dictated by whatever is best for the user. Test it in different positions on the page (even the left or right sidebar) and see what converts better. I doubt if the text's position on the page will affect your rankings a great deal. As for the "boilerplate-ness," the crawlers can see if its unique or not.
-
I did consider that. It's in the hundreds and it could be done, but I'm not sure that's the way to go for the following reasons:
1. The number of consumables in the list is going to be at least 8 per page (each with snippet information and order box). That means that it would take a significant amount of text to make the content significantly different.
2. There is not a lot of difference between many of the machines, so writing a decent amount of text per item would be a major task. The more text written the more it affects point 3.
3. The text would have to come before the products for SEO (after the products just looks like the boilerplate-esque text that it would actually be) and that's not good for the consumer who just wants to see the consumables.
Also, we are finding more problems with the site every hour and we may not have the resources to get the text accomplished in a reasonable time-frame. Certainly, I'd have to be more certain of getting a "win" from it than I currently am before I suggest spending on it over other issues.
-
Ian,
Is it feasible to write unique text for the machine pages? I.e., are they in the hundreds or thousands? Do you have a budget to hire a writer(s)?
-
I may be missing something, but wouldn't canonical tags sort out your sort orders at least?
-
I have the same problem but it is listed as duplicate content within my site as a result of sort mechanisms and category pages. The consumer wants the sort mechanisms and category pages in order to find the products they are looking for quickly and I've tried everything and still have "duplicate content" listed on Moz crawls and Google Webmaster and just about everything. Imaging won't work for me since it is a result of database search mechanisms which cause the "duplicates" I also have canonical urls on pages but that doesn't solve the problem either. I think we are damned if we do and damned if we don't.
-
Hi Ian,
There is a way around it, but first an opinion on duplicate content. I think that duplicate content issues are really about duplication across websites, not duplication within websites. Store ABC is expected to have a fair amount of text that repeats across it's own pages. The problem arises when both Store ABC and Store LMN and Store TUV all have the same bits of content (like product descriptions).
But anyways, if you really do not want to have your lists of consumables repeated on multiple pages, just turn the lists into images....
Then on the Machine A page display the image of the list and give it a file name and alt tag like "Machine A Consumables" and "Consumables for Machine A".
And on the Machine B page display a COPY of the image of the list and give it a NEW file name and alt tag like "Machine B Consumables" and "Consumables for Machine B". Etc, etc...
For the visitor, there is no difference between reading the words from text or an image. (unless they have sight issues and are using a screen reader)
Does this solve the problem?
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
-
Recurring events and duplicate content
Does anyone have tips on how to work in an event system to avoid duplicate content in regards to recurring events? How do I best utilize on-page optimization?
Technical SEO | | megan.helmer0 -
How should I deal with "duplicate" content in an Equipment Database?
The Moz Crawler is identifying hundreds of instances of duplicate content on my site in our equipment database. The database is similar in functionality to a site like autotrader.com. We post equipment with pictures and our customers can look at the equipment and make purchasing decisions. The problem is that, though each unit is unique, they often have similar or identical specs which is why moz (and presumably google/bing) are identifying the content as "duplicate". In many cases, the only difference between listings are the pictures and mileage- the specifications and year are the same. Ideally, we wouldn't want to exclude these pages from being indexed because they could have some long-tail search value. But, obviously, we don't want to hurt the overall SEO of the site. Any advice would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | DohenyDrones0 -
How to fix HTTP/HTTPS duplicate content
I recently installed an SSL certificate on the site: https://libertywholesalesupply.com Moz is now reading thousands of duplicate content pages because it is reading both http and https. I set up the configuration in Magento to auto-redirect the base URL, created a permanent redirect for the URL in the SEO settings, and adjusted the canonical settings. What am I missing??
Technical SEO | | adamxj20 -
How Does Google's "index" find the location of pages in the "page directory" to return?
This is my understanding of how Google's search works, and I am unsure about one thing in specific: Google continuously crawls websites and stores each page it finds (let's call it "page directory") Google's "page directory" is a cache so it isn't the "live" version of the page Google has separate storage called "the index" which contains all the keywords searched. These keywords in "the index" point to the pages in the "page directory" that contain the same keywords. When someone searches a keyword, that keyword is accessed in the "index" and returns all relevant pages in the "page directory" These returned pages are given ranks based on the algorithm The one part I'm unsure of is how Google's "index" knows the location of relevant pages in the "page directory". The keyword entries in the "index" point to the "page directory" somehow. I'm thinking each page has a url in the "page directory", and the entries in the "index" contain these urls. Since Google's "page directory" is a cache, would the urls be the same as the live website (and would the keywords in the "index" point to these urls)? For example if webpage is found at wwww.website.com/page1, would the "page directory" store this page under that url in Google's cache? The reason I want to discuss this is to know the effects of changing a pages url by understanding how the search process works better.
Technical SEO | | reidsteven750 -
Duplicate Content Issue
SEOMOZ is giving me a number of duplicate content warnings related to pages that have an email a friend and/or email when back in stock versions of a page. I thought I had those blocked via my robots.txt file which contains the following... Disallow: /EmailaFriend.asp Disallow: /Email_Me_When_Back_In_Stock.asp I had thought that the robot.txt file would solve this issue. Anyone have any ideas?
Technical SEO | | WaterSkis.com0 -
Taking descriptions from Manufacturer sites and Duplicate content
We are doing some inventory improvements eg new photographs from various angles, etc. We are also writing descriptions for each product.. As one of our suppliers has perfect desriptions on their site what is the theory on how duplicate content will affect our ranking for these products if we copy and paste? Also if we change the descriptions, just how different do they need to be? Thanks
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley1 -
Testing for duplicate content and title tags
Hi there, I have been getting both Duplicate Page content and Duplicate Title content warnings on my crawl diagnostics report for one of my campaigns. I did my research, and implemented the preferred domain setting in Webmaster Tools. This did not resolve the crawl diagnostics warnings, and upon further research I discovered the preferred domain would only be noted by Google and not other bots like Roger. My only issue was that when I ran an SEOmoz crawl test on the same domain, I saw none of the duplicate content or title warnings yet they still appear on my crawl diagnostics report. I have now implemented a fix in my .htaccess file to 301 redirect to the www. domain. I want to check if it's worked, but since the crawl test did not show the issue last time I don't think I can rely on that. Can you help please? Thanks, Claire
Technical SEO | | SEOvet0 -
"Standout" tag and "Original content" tags - what's the latest?
In November 2010 Google introduced the "standout tag" http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=191283 I can't find any articles/blog posts/etc in google after that date, but its use was suggested in a google forum today to help with original content issues. Has anyone used them? Does anyone know what's the latest with them? Are they worth trying for SEO? Is there a possible SEO penalty for using them? Thanks, Jean
Technical SEO | | JeanYates0