Category pages are treated as duplicate content - is that a problem?
-
Hi there
I have analyzing a webshop where we sell products for pets, gardening and the like. I am getting a lot of "Duplicate Content" alerts from Moz when doing a site crawl and I am told that the pages for e.g. cat products and gardening tools show duplicate content. Those two pages contain no identical products, so I am guessing that it is just the "set up" of the page (they look almost identical, except for the products). My question is: Is this really a problem? Does it affect my ranking in a negative way, and if so, how can I counter it?
Best regards
Frederik
-
It was a big help!
-
Thank you.
/Frederik
-
If possible, I'd ensure that there's enough unique content on the category page in the form of a category description before and/or after the product listings. This can be done without looking like a hideous wall of text, if that's what you're thinking. It shouldn't be a long article.
I think this would help.
Consider running your site through http://siteliner.com too for a duplicate content analysis. It's free.
-
I see.
Is it a problem that the content is considered duplicate then, or can I just leave it the way it is?
Thank you, again.
Frederik
-
If the pages are HTML-heavy with not much text content on the category pages, this could be why. Otherwise it's hard to tell without seeing the actual pages.
-
Thank you.
The former is the case. I have a page that is all cat products and a different page that is all garden products. Neither have snippets or anything other in common than the structure (and the header, search box, contact info etc.) But Moz tells me that the cat page has several duplicates, including the garden page.
-
Just to clarify, do you mean that Moz is showing the cat category to be duplicate of the garden category?
Or that both the cat category and garden category are pages with duplicate content issues?
If the latter is correct, do your category pages have product description snippets? It could be that all that product content being pulled into the category content is causing the duplicate content. If this is the case, then you may want to bulk out your product pages a bit more to not be quite so thin.
I've also seen some ecommerce websites that list the entire category of products on each product page, in a Related section. So effectively, all the product pages within the category have duplicate content of the category page.
A similar thing happens with Wordpress blog posts if you don't noindex the right pages and have a very thin/flat structure. e.g. The main blog index will almost completely duplicate the most popular or main category archive page. Or the /2017/ archive, etc.
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
-
How to optimize landing pages for local search?
I'm trying to understand how to optimize landing pages to appear in local search. For example, if someone in Chicago searches for "plumber", Yelp has a page "Top 10 Plumbers in Chicago." They are generating these pages for numerous business types and cities. I can't see anything on the page or metadata that indicates a geographic location or business type. What optimizations are they doing to get Google to know that it's a page for a specific city and type of business?
Local SEO | | Tourizee0 -
We're merging 2 separate websites into 1 but need to ideally rank service pages for both locations
I have a dilemma, we're merging 2 websites, one an Australian branch and one a UK one. We've decided to have a UK page and a AUS page so agency.site/uk/ agency.site/aus/ but what is the best tactic for the service pages? ideally, we'd like a web-design service page to rank in Australia and the UK but not sure if this is actually possible, or whether to duplicate the pages and localise them i.e. /web-design-leeds/ and /web-design-melbourne/ What's everyone's thoughts on this? localised landing pages with some duplicate content or one master page with both locations mentioned? Thanks!
Local SEO | | Unbranded_Lee1 -
Duplicate content across a number of websites.
We have a client who has approximately 25 retail sites (mini department stores) selling in general the same merchandise ranges - some stores carry all the ranges (brands) while others have fewer due to space restrictions. Each destination is different has its own branding and unique selling point which needs to be reflected. The client wants us to build individual websites for each location as they want to promote each location individually. I know that the search engines don't penalise duplicate content, but the core of each website is going to be essentially the same. My concern is there is no way you could write 25 different pages about the same Colony Candle range! Any ideas suggestions would be much appreciated - a one site option would not work as the client wants individual website and due to the different branding, USP and the fact they want to market them individually I would agree with them. Thanks Fraser
Local SEO | | fraserhannah0 -
Geo content and where Googlebot crawls from.
Does anyone have experience with geo-specific content on their homepage and how the location of the Googlebot impacts rank and/or traffic? I ask because looking in Search Console today, I noticed the thumbnail image of our site is different than usual and it was pulling in a specific geo-location and wondered if there is any value/concern on how Google sees our site from different locations and if it could impact SERP's.
Local SEO | | Shawn_Huber0 -
Local Pages for National (Service) Companies
Hi there, I was wanting to know the value of local pages for a service company that operates nationally. They do not have a phone number or address, but they do maintain employees in each of the locations and are thus, keen to emphasize this fact with location pages. The location pages merely explain that they have staff in each of the locations and experience working there, alongside a variety of information that is relevant to the industry/market in that location. None of the location pages are currently ranking well at all - in fact, all of the ones I've looked at so far have had a page authority of 1. Most of the major towns, cities and counties for the entire UK have been covered which means the location pages constitute a significant proportion of all of the pages for the entire site. My questions are: Is a national service company likely to benefit from having location pages? And could it even be something they could be penalised for at some point down the line? Thanks very much, in advance, for your time. Kind Regards, Tom
Local SEO | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Is it necessary to implement hreflang for translated content on different ccTLDs?
Hello there, new MOZ here. I hope someone of the international SEO MOZs can share their opinion on a doubt I have. I've been reading a lot about hreflang and I understand the importance for subdomains and subfolders not only for targeting the same language in different countries (.com, .co.uk, .ca, etc) but also for websites partially or fully translated in other languages. However for these I've always seen examples where you want to have hreflang with subdomains or folders e.g. ru.example.com ; example.com/ru What if I have my translated websites on different ccTLDs - i.e. example.com example.ru. example.br example .fr Do I still need to implement hreflang or in this case is not necessary?
Local SEO | | selectitaly0 -
Francise Space: How to handle Duplicate Content?
We have a client - http://www.certapro.com/ with 330+ individual franchises. The individual franchisees all share the same content. If you perform a series of search by zipcode, you'll see the different regions all share the same copy blocks. How would you handle this situation? New content for all 330+? Canonicalize them to a single source? Keep in mind we need to scale and would have to work with the local partners who may not be web savvy. Also thinking about iframing the same content as an alternative.
Local SEO | | Aviatech0 -
Landing Page vs Call Tracking
It is important for this particular client to maintain a single phone number for brand recognition.That being said; the client also utilizes radio advertising on occasion to announce new products or special promotions. I would like to track response to radio campaigns without call-tracking numbers. I am considering setting-up a separate easy-to-remember domain (the primary domain is quite lengthy) to use as a landing page for a new service the client has launched. I have created a topically relevant page for the new service on the client's primary domain and have achieved excellent organic placement. What might be the best approach to capture response to radio advertising and track PPC conversion metrics? 301 the landing page/domain to the relevant page on the primary domain OR use the separate landing page/domain as a lead capture page with a simple form and option to click-through to the primary domain? As always, I am looking-forward to your helpful suggestions 🙂
Local SEO | | SCW0