Duplicate ecommerce domains and canonical
-
Hi everybody!
I'd like to discuss the SEO strategy I've thought regarding a client of mine and ask for help because it's a serious case of duplicate content.
There is a main website (the business model one) where he compares the cost of medicines in several pharmacies, to show the cheapest shopping cart to the customer. But the shopping has to been made in another domain, within the selected pharmacie, because my country's law in Europe says that is compulsory to sell the medicines only on the pharmacy website.
So my client has started to create domains, one for each pharmacy, where the differences between them are only some products, the business information of the pharmacy and the template's colour. But all of them shares the same product data base.
My aim is to rank the comparing website (it contains all the products), not each pharmacy, so I've started to create different content for this one. Should I place rel=canonical in the pharmacies domains t the original one? For instance:
www.pharmacie1.com >> www.originaltorank.com
www.pharmacie2.com >> www.originaltorank.com
www.pharmacie1.com/product-10 >> www.originaltorank.com/product-10
I've already discuss the possibilities to focus all the content in only one website, but it's compulsory to have different domains in order to sell medicines
By the way, I can't redirect 301 because I need these websites exist for the same reason (the law)
He is creating 1-3 new domains every week so obviously he has had a drop in his SEO traffic that I have to solve this fast.
Do you think the canonical will be the best solution? I dont want to noindex these domains beacuse we're creating Google Local pages for each one in order to be found in their villages.
Please, I'll appreciate any piece of advice. Thanks!
-
Thanks very much for your answer Dirk!
Yes, I'm not totally sure this is going to work but canonical is the best solution that came to my mind... It's a difficult situation. This is why I want to be totally transparent to Google to show that I don't want to do spam, but only searching for a solution.
Your idea regarding the products it's really smart, thanks!
Please if somebody thinks that it exists a better solution I want to know it!
-
You could start with putting a canonical url like you mentioned. Not sure if it's going to work - the way you describe the situation it seems like an old spam technique - creating thin content sites to create links to the main domain. Canonicals could still be considered as "links" to the main domain.
As you want to have the products indexed on the main domain you could noindex the product part on the individual pharmacie sites (noindex doesn't have to be done on domain level). That way you could still have the sites having Google Local pages & on the other hand be sure that Google will only index the products on the main site.
Dirk
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 Titles
It seems as though we are being flagged for duplicate page titles when really they are slightly different. Is it better to remove the "dart board" or "dart board backboard" from all the product titles? We were doing this for optimal SEO - to rank for the search of "dart board" - but is it really hurting us? for example, our product titles are: Obama dart board backboard, Texas dart board backboard, Oklahoma dart board backboard, etc. Yet they are being flagged as duplicate titles.
On-Page Optimization | | DartsDecor0 -
I have an eCommerce Site with in some cases, 100s of versions of the same product. How do I avoid "duplicate content" without writing literally 100s of unique product descriptions for the exact same product?
For instance, one item where the only difference is the Sports Team Logo is different, etc... or It comes in a variety of color Variants. I'm using Shopify.
On-Page Optimization | | pstone291 -
Duplicate Content Indentification Tools
Does anyone have a recommendation for a good tool that can identify which elements on a page are duplicated content? I use Moz Analytics to determine which pages have the duplicated content on them, but it doesn't say which pieces of text or on-page elements are in fact considered to be duplicate. Thanks Moz Community in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | EmpireToday0 -
Subdomain vs. Root Domain design
I know that there are penalties if you have a navigation item in your categories that links to another site (root domain) that yields the same design as the original link. Is there any negative SEO implications with having a subdomain with the same design as the root domain i.e. root.com vs. store.root.com And the navigation functionality within will have links to both store.root.com as well as root.com directories? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | customerparadigm.com0 -
Duplicated Products on Homepage and category pages
I have some of my best sellers located on the homepage of my websites. These same products may also appear on the category page as well. On the home page and the category page, the product title, short description, thumbnail, etc. are exact duplicates and I am afraid this is hurting me. I would appreciate any advice you may have on how to deal with this issue. These are some of my best sellers and most often, the homepage will outrank the category page for the product. Thanks in advance, lordhenry
On-Page Optimization | | jake3720 -
Canonical Tag for Ecommerce Site
My client has an ecommerce site with over 1,000 products. We have a ton of duplicates because of how their ecommerce system handles product pages. Each time a new product is added, there is a default product page created (/product/12345-product-name.aspx). Each time that product is added to a specific product category, another, separate URL is created (/product/office-chairs/12345-product-name.aspx). The site has over 1,000 duplicates (at least one for each product) because of how the ecommerce system structures URLs. We are unable to have unique content on /products/12345-product-name.aspx and /product/office-chairs/12345-product-name.aspx because both pages pull from the same database. Their webteam informed me that they can't implement canonical tags on individual pages, they must be dynamically added to the site all at once. Thus forcing me to choose all of the default product pages as primary URLs. Both types of URLs are getting indexed and the product URLs that were added to the categories are SEO friendly so I'm leary to eliminate one or the other with a canonical tag or a no index. Suggestions?
On-Page Optimization | | DynoSaur0 -
Canonical Tag for a 404 page
Hi i have a got a 404 page for example : www.example.com/404.aspx can i use canonical tag on this page so that when the search engine hits the page www.example.com/123123123 13123 it will say Will this be right method ?
On-Page Optimization | | usef4u0 -
Duplicate Content
What I can do to avoid the duplicate content on the index and in the categorys, I cant block my categorys, cause are pages with big autorithy, so what i can do ?
On-Page Optimization | | nafera20