Directory with Duplicate content? what to do?
-
Moz keeps finding loads of pages with duplicate content on my website.
The problem is its a directory page to different locations.
E.g if we were a clothes shop we would be listing our locations:
www.sitename.com/locations/london
www.sitename.com/locations/rome
www.sitename.com/locations/germany
The content on these pages is all the same, except for an embedded google map that shows the location of the place. The problem is that google thinks all these pages are duplicated content.
Should i set a canonical link on every single page saying that www.sitename.com/locations/london is the main page?
I don't know if i can use canonical links because the page content isn't identical because of the embedded map.
Help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
-
Hi Tertiary Education,
From the way you describe it your pages are being considered duplicate content becuase they are so very similiar, that is to say that they are near-duplicates if not actual duplicates.
It sounds like the content on those pages is somewhat thin- is there anything else on the page apart from the map? If the answer is "no", or "not much", then consider padding them out with (quality) content that serves your audience. I think this is what Patrick is referring to with his suggestions (forgive me if I am mis-interpreting you Patrick!), and I think he is absolutely right. Other things to consider as creating unique title and descriptions for each page (I mention it in case you have over looked it).
By adding valuable differentiated, content to those pages you will be differentiating one from the other as well as providing value to your users. As Moz sees these changes it should stop flagging them as duplicates, and as google re-indexes the pages it will begin to appreciate the differences between them and gradually index them as non-duplicate content.
Hope that helps
-
Hello,
There are over 200 locations on the location page. If you click on a location you are then taken to a page with the address of the place followed by a google map showing where it is on a map. There isn't actually any written content and there really doesn't need to be any. So writing unique content is impossible.
Even though these pages all have a different address on them for some reason google still thinks its 'duplicate' page content because of the embedded map.
Any further help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
-
Hi there
No do not do a canonical tag to one page because that's a bad user / search experience. Keep this structure on your site, but keep a few things in mind; I wanted to share an article from Search Engine Journal with ideas I was going to post as an answer.
One quick note that I will emphasize - your customers / audience in different locations is different, so make sure that the content on these location specific pages is specific to that audience. Things to think about:
- How long has that location been around?
- What services / products do you offer to that location only?
- Who works at this location?
- What are reviews specific to this location?
- Are there any specific partnerships / certifications in this location?
- etc.
You can definitely make each page unique with content, you just have to be logical / use common sense in what information a user or potential client would want about that location.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
P
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
-
Website Redesign - Duplicate Content?
I hired a company to redesign our website.there are many pages like the example below that we are downsizing content by 80%.(believe me, not my decision)Current page: https://servicechampions.com/air-conditioning/New page (on test server):https://servicechampions.mymwpdesign.com/air-conditioning/My question to you is, that 80% of content that i am losing in the redesign, can i republish it as a blog?I know that google has it indexed. The old page has been live for 5 years, but now 80% of it will no longer be live. so can it be a blog and gain new (keep) seo value?What should i do with the 80% of content i am losing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CamiloSC0 -
Fix Duplicate Content Before Migration?
My client has 2 Wordpress sites (A and B). Each site is 20 pages, with similar site structures, and 12 of the pages on A having nearly 100% duplicate content with their counterpart on B. I am not sure to what extent A and/or B is being penalized for this. In 2 weeks (July 1) the client will execute a rebrand, renaming the business, launching C, and taking down A and B. Individual pages on A and B will be 301 redirected to their counterpart on C. C will have a similar site structure to A and B. I expect the content will be freshened a bit, but may initially be very similar to the content on A and B. I have 3 questions: Given that only 2 weeks remain before the switchover - is there any purpose in resolving the duplicate content between A and B prior to taking them down? Will 301 redirects from penalized pages on A or B actually hurt the ranking of the destination page on C? If a page on C has the same content as its predecessor on A or B, could it be penalized for that, even though the page on A or B has since been taken down and replaced with a 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | futumara0 -
Thin Content to Quality Content
How should i modify content from thin to high quality content. Somehow i realized that my pages where targetted keywords didn't had the keyword density lost a massive ranking after the last update whereas all pages which had the keyword density are ranking good. But my concern is all pages which are ranking good had all the keyword in a single statement like. Get ABC pens, ABC pencils, ABC colors, etc. at the end of a 300 word content describing ABC. Whereas the pages which dropped the rankings had a single keyword repeated just twice in a 500 word article. Can this be the reason for a massive drop. Should i add the single statement like the one which is there on pages ranking good? Is it good to add just a single line once the page is indexed or do i need to get a fresh content once again along with a sentence of keyword i mentioned above?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure1 -
Scraped content ranking above the original source content in Google.
I need insights on how “scraped” content (exact copy-pasted version) rank above the original content in Google. 4 original, in-depth articles published by my client (an online publisher) are republished by another company (which happens to be briefly mentioned in all four of those articles). We reckon the articles were re-published at least a day or two after the original articles were published (exact gap is not known). We find that all four of the “copied” articles rank at the top of Google search results whereas the original content i.e. my client website does not show up in the even in the top 50 or 60 results. We have looked at numerous factors such as Domain authority, Page authority, in-bound links to both the original source as well as the URLs of the copied pages, social metrics etc. All of the metrics, as shown by tools like Moz, are better for the source website than for the re-publisher. We have also compared results in different geographies to see if any geographical bias was affecting results, reason being our client’s website is hosted in the UK and the ‘re-publisher’ is from another country--- but we found the same results. We are also not aware of any manual actions taken against our client website (at least based on messages on Search Console). Any other factors that can explain this serious anomaly--- which seems to be a disincentive for somebody creating highly relevant original content. We recognize that our client has the option to submit a ‘Scraper Content’ form to Google--- but we are less keen to go down that route and more keen to understand why this problem could arise in the first place. Please suggest.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ontarget-media0 -
Blog Duplicate Content
Hi, I have a blog, and like most blogs I have various search options (subject matter, author, archive, etc) which produce the same content via different URLs. Should I implement the rel-canonical tag AND the meta robots tag (noindex, follow) on every page of duplicate blog content, or simply choose one or the other? What's best practice? Thanks Mozzers! Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How to compete with duplicate content in post panda world?
I want to fix duplicate content issues over my eCommerce website. I have read very valuable blog post on SEOmoz regarding duplicate content in post panda world and applied all strategy to my website. I want to give one example to know more about it. http://www.vistastores.com/outdoor-umbrellas Non WWW version: http://vistastores.com/outdoor-umbrellas redirect to home page. For HTTPS pages: https://www.vistastores.com/outdoor-umbrellas I have created Robots.txt file for all HTTPS pages as follow. https://www.vistastores.com/robots.txt And, set Rel=canonical to HTTP page as follow. http://www.vistastores.com/outdoor-umbrellas Narrow by search: My website have narrow by search and contain pages with same Meta info as follow. http://www.vistastores.com/outdoor-umbrellas?cat=7 http://www.vistastores.com/outdoor-umbrellas?manufacturer=Bond+MFG http://www.vistastores.com/outdoor-umbrellas?finish_search=Aluminum I have restricted all dynamic pages by Robots.txt which are generated by narrow by search. http://www.vistastores.com/robots.txt And, I have set Rel=Canonical to base URL on each dynamic pages. Order by pages: http://www.vistastores.com/outdoor-umbrellas?dir=asc&order=name I have restrict all pages with robots.txt and set Rel=Canonical to base URL. For pagination pages: http://www.vistastores.com/outdoor-umbrellas?dir=asc&order=name&p=2 I have restrict all pages with robots.txt and set Rel=Next & Rel=Prev to all paginated pages. I have also set Rel=Canonical to base URL. I have done & apply all SEO suggestions to my website but, Google is crawling and indexing 21K+ pages. My website have only 9K product pages. Google search result: https://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&safe=off&pws=0&gl=US&q=site:www.vistastores.com&biw=1366&bih=520 Since last 7 days, my website have affected with 75% down of impression & CTR. I want to recover it and perform better as previous one. I have explained my question in long manner because, want to recover my traffic as soon as possible.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Why duplicate content for same page?
Hi, My SEOMOZ crawl diagnostic warn me about duplicate content. However, to me the content is not duplicated. For instance it would give me something like: (URLs/Internal Links/External Links/Page Authority/Linking Root Domains) http://www.nuxeo.com/en/about/contact?utm_source=enews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=enews20110516 /1/1/31/2 http://www.nuxeo.com/en/about/contact?utm_source=enews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=enews20110711 0/0/1/0 http://www.nuxeo.com/en/about/contact?utm_source=enews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=enews20110811 0/0/1/0 http://www.nuxeo.com/en/about/contact?utm_source=enews&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=enews20110911 0/0/1/0 Why is this seen as duplicate content when it is only URL with campaign tracking codes to the same content? Do I need to clean this?Thanks for answer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nuxeo0 -
Duplicate Content from Article Directories
I have a small client with a website PR2, 268 links from 21 root domains with mozTrusts 5.5, MozRank 4.5 However whenever I check in google for the amount of link: Google always give the response none. My client has a blog and many articles on the blog. However they have submitted their blog article every time to article directories as well, plain and simle creating duplicate and content. Is this the reason why their link: is coming up as none? Is there something to correct the situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielkamen0