Duplicate items across different pages?
-
On our new website we have a testimonials page which you can cycle through them. We also have the testimonial on the our work / project page. Essentially this is duplicate content from another page, what's the best thing to do here? In the sake of SEO, remove the duplicate content and only have one? Or won't it make much difference?
-
From an SEO perspective, duplicate content and how it is handled is important. There are two ways to handle it. The first is to determine which page you identify as the "original". In this case, I'm guessing that would be the testimonials page. The next step is to add a canonical tag to any page that uses the same content. (In your case that would be "our work/project" page). The canonical tag will point to the orignal page.
One thing to keep in mind is that you should only use canonical tags if both pages have the exact same (or almost the exact same content). If the "our work/project" page has multiple testimonials on it, then that page would actually have content that a search engine would deem unique, even thought it consists of a compilation of content that appears elsewhere.
This moz post provides a pretty good overview of how to use canonicals. http://moz.com/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not
-
Won't make a difference unless its within the body (my opinion).
I would also take note that the testimonials on your work/project page shouldn't be the bulk of the content on those pages. If they are just in a fixed location, that should be fine. Plus if they only appear the testimonial and work/project page, I wouldn't worry about it too much.
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
-
Ecommerce Category Pages
First, let's define the terminology for the various types of ecommerce pages. The terminology differs from organization to organization: Product Description Pages (PDPs): These pages have a single product, pricing, an "add to cart" button, reviews, and a product description. Product Listing Pages (PLPs): These are product category/subcategory pages that have product image links and text links to Product Description Pages (PDPs). Category Pages: These pages have subcategory image and text links to subcategory pages. No product images are displayed Hybrid Category Pages: these pages combine sub-Category Images and text at the top of the page and product listings below. Our CMS currently does not allow us to create hybrids. This conversation revolves primarily around mobile. Our ecommerce team is having discussions around the appropriate use of PLPs vs Category pages. After doing a quick audit of the mobile sites of some top ecommerce players, there is definitely a trend to use Category Pages at the top of the category and sub-category hierarchy and use PLPs at the very bottom. The logic from a usability perspective is to allow visitors to navigate a site without ever using the hamburger navigation. ex: Baby (Category Page) => Car Seats (Category Page) => Convertible Car Seats (PLP) The sites I audited all had hamburger menus. A visitor would navigate from a home page image for "Baby," an image on the "Baby" page to "Car Seats", and an image on the "Car Seats" page to the Convertible Car Seats page. At that point, they would be able to shop for "Convertible Car Seats" on a PLP. This appears to be excellent UX and easy to use navigation. Theoretically, good for SEO as well. In short, category and subcategory pages are being used as navigation to allow visitors to easily navigate to the bottom of the hierarchy and shop on the most narrow page in the hierarchy. Much easier to use than a hamburger menu, but it does entail more clicks. The discussion revolves around allowing users to shop for product at a higher level in the taxonomy. For example, what if a visitor wants to shop all Car Seats? In the above taxonomy, we are precluding users from shopping in this manner. There is no "Car Seats" PLP. Our CMS has the ability to create both a Category Page and a PLP for "Car Seats". We could theoretically place an image on the "Car Seats" category page for "View All Car Seats", and allow users to click to a "Car Seats" PLP. None of the major ecommerce players I've audited are adding a PLP option higher up in the hierarchy. That doesn't mean that it's not good UX. Problems: From an SEO perspective, having a Category Page and a PLP for "Car Seats" would cause cannibalization - they would be competing for the same keywords. I am skeptical that canonicals would work. The pages are not near duplicate content. One page has category images, the other has product images. We could place content blocks on the page to make them more similar. We could noindex the PLP, but that's a waste of internal link juice. Need advice: Will canonicals work in this situation? Should we trash this idea entirely? Does adding a PLP add value or confusion? Is noindex a good idea? Is there an option to target keyword variations with the PLP? Is there another solution?
Web Design | | Satans_Apprentice0 -
Sitemap and Privacy Policy marked for duplicate content?
On a recent crawl, Moz flagged a page of our site for duplicate content. However, the pages listed are our sitemap and our privacy policy -- both very different: http://elearning.smp.org/sitemap/ http://elearning.smp.org/privacy-policy/ What is our best option to address this issue? I had considered a noindex tag on the privacy policy page, but since we have enabled user insights in Google Analytics we need to have the privacy policy displayed and I worry that putting a noindex on the page would cause problems later.
Web Design | | calliek0 -
Increase in Soft 404s due to Custom 404 page?
Hi all, We have noticed recently soft 404s are increasing day by day; which are landing on our custom 404 page created a month back. Other 404 pages are NOT landing on custom 404 page. Does this custom 404 page hurting us by causing an increase in soft 404s? Our CMS is WordPress. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
No-index part of page
Hi All, I want to copy articles from CNN/Bloomberg/etc and I want to show the content to my users in Lightbox (CSS), but the problem is duplicate content. Do you have any idea how can I no-index part of page/content?
Web Design | | JohnPalmer0 -
Can anyone recommend a tool that will identify unused and duplicate CSS across an entire site?
Hi all, So far I have found this one: http://unused-css.com/ It looks like it identifies unused, but perhaps not duplicates? It also has a 5,000 page limit and our site is 8,000+ pages....so we really need something that can handle a site larger than their limit. I do have Screaming Frog. Is there a way to use Screaming Frog to locate unused and duplicate CSS? Any recommendations and/or tips would be great. I am also aware of the Firefix extensions, but to my knowledge they will only do one page at a time? Thanks!
Web Design | | danatanseo0 -
What Is The Best Way To Categorize 3 Different Top Level Categories Each With 20 Sub Categories
Hello, We are trying to figure out the best way to categorize our app review website. We have 3 platforms, iPhone, iPad and Android and each platform has several sub categories and numerous apps subcategories totaling around 50 to 60 categories for each platform. Any suggestions how to do this properly? thank you Mike
Web Design | | crazymikesapps10 -
Subdomains, duplicate content and microsites
I work for a website that generates a high amount of unique, quality content. This website though has had development issues with our web builder and they are going to separate the site into different subdomains upon launch. It's a scholarly site so the subdomains will be like history and science and stuff. Don't ask why aren't we aren't using subdirectories because trust me I wish we could. So we have to use subdomains and I'm wondering a couple questions. Will the duplication of coding, since all subdomains will have the same design and look, heavily penalize us and is there any way around that? Also if we generate a good amount of high quality content on each site could we link all those sites to our other site as a possible benefit for link building? And finally, would footer links, linking all the subdirectories, be a good thing to put in?
Web Design | | mdorville0 -
What else should you call the Home page?
In the menu bar and footer the main page is called Home. Would it confuse people to rename it to Business Name Home or Business Name? How do you handle this?
Web Design | | CFSSEO0