I try to apply best duplicate content practices, but my rankings drop!
-
Hey,
An audit of a client's site revealed that due to their shopping cart, all their product pages were being duplicated.
http://www.domain.com.au/digital-inverter-generator-3300w/
and
http://www.domain.com.au/shop/digital-inverter-generator-3300w/
The easiest solution was to just block all /shop/ pages in Google Webmaster Tools (redirects were not an easy option).
This was about 3 months ago, and in months 1 and 2 we undertook some great marketing (soft social book marking, updating the page content, flickr profiles with product images, product manuals onto slideshare etc).
Rankings went up and so did traffic.
In month 3, the changes in robots.txt finally hit and rankings decreased quite steadily over the last 3 weeks.
Im so tempted to take off the robots restriction on the duplicate content.... I know I shouldnt but, it was working so well without it?
Ideas, suggestions?
-
Agreed with Alan (deeper in the comments) - you may have cut off links to these pages or internal link-juice flow. It would be much better to either 301-redirect the "/shop" pages or use the canonical tag on those pages. In Apache, the 301 is going to be a lot easier - if "/shop/product" always goes to "/product" you can set up a rewrite rule in .htaccess and you don't even need to modify the site code (which site-wide canonical tags would require).
The minor loss from the 301s should be much less than the problems that may have been created with Robots.txt. As Alan said, definitely re-point your internal links to the canonical (non-shop) version.
-
No I mean internal links,
if you do a 301, your internal links poiting to shop/ urls will still work, but they will lose a little link juice when they are 301 redirected. you should point them to the final destination the non shop url.
-
No, it was a very new site. There was only 10 links all to the root.
Thanks for your help.
-
Yes i would 301 then
Are there any links pointing to the shop/ version, internal links? then i would fix them also, as 301's leak link juice you should create link that go directly to the destionation page where you can.
-
The difference between blocking something in robots.txt and a 301?
The duplicates are actively created.
When the products are added to the cart plugin, they automatically create the /shop/product page. These pages were horrible for SEO, and as they were automatically created they could not be edited easily (the plugin developers clearly had no SEO understanding).
My client's developer created a new WP Post for every product and added in a shortcode calling the product from the plugin. This created the duplicate. As this is a wordpress post, the SEO was far more adaptable.
-
I dont understand the difference, is this the reason behind the duplicates?
-
No it's Apache.
Would you guys say it's best to just 301 rewrite all /shop/product to /product? Then unblock from robots.txt?
-
I work with Microsoft Technolgies, I dont work with CMS like WP.
On IIS i would use a outgoing url rewrite url to insert the meta tag. You can do this without touching the website.
Are you by any luck hosting on IIS or are you on Apache?
-
The shopping cart WP plugin is creates the /shop/product pages automatically. I have very little control over them.
Instead the developer has created post pages and inserted the product short codes (this gives the /product effect). I have far more control over these pages, and as such they are far better for SEO.
Do you know of a way I can no index/follow, all /shop pages in the robots.txt?
-
I have been telling other not to do what you have done. what is better is you use "no-index follow" tags instead.
Link juice flows into your pages blocked by robots though links to them never to be seen again. If you use the noindex-follow meta tag you allow the link juice to flow in and out.
The best idea is not to have the duplicates, after thet you should use a canonical tag, if that is not posible then use the noindex, follow tag.
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
-
Ranking all but lost after new content pushed
Okay, I thought I was following best practices. In our industry, electronic hardware, we were ranking well for a particular product line (/spacers) but we wanted to do better. We addressed several concerns that Moz found first; duplicate page titles, lack of meta-descriptions and overall lack of targeted keywords. We also took a new approach to add a better structure to our site. Instead of being presented with a list of part numbers we wanted the user to learn more about our products with content. So we added a /products page with content and a product specific page (/spacers) that is almost a definitive buyers guide. We are attempting to answer the questions that we think our customers find most relevant. Well our customers might find it relevant but Google sure didn't. After our deployment of new content our rankings for targeted keywords in Google fell from 10-15 to 80-95 As an open ended question, could somebody explain to me why our ranks fell off a cliff? Homepage: https://www.lyntron.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jandk4014
New catalog summary page: https://www.lyntron.com/products
New content with focus to rank high: https://www.lyntron.com/spacers TPdn6ym1 -
Help! Rankings dropping after optimising
I have been using MOZ a lot, in the past I have always been able to optimise a website enough to rank well in my local areas, but lately every time I optimise a website based on MOZ recommendations the rankings are just dropping and dropping... I haven't focused any efforts on backlinks, but a few sites have gone from the first page of SERP to 2nd and continue to drop... I have 2 example sites: https://www.documentmanagementsoftware.com.au/ - optimised for "Document Management Software" - was initially ranked no.7 in google AU, now it is no.16 after my efforts. http://www.tmphysio.com.au/ - optimised for "canberra physiotherapy" - was no.6 now it is dropping to no.9 after 'optimisation' Any help or insights would be extremely helpful as I feel hopeless!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thinkLukeSEO0 -
URL Change Best Practice
I'm changing the url of some old pages to see if I can't get a little more organic out of them. After changing the url, and maybe title/desc tags as well, I plan to have Google fetch them. How does Google know that the old url is 301'd to the new url and the new url is not just a page of duplicate content? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Duplicate content URLs from bespoke ecommerce CMS - what's the best solution here?
Hi Mozzers Just noticed this pattern on a retail website... This URL product.php?cat=5 is also churning out products.php?cat=5&sub_cat= (same content as product.php?cat=5 but from this different URL - this is a blank subcat - there are also unique subcat pages with unique content - but this one is blank) How should I deal with that? and then I'm seeing: product-detail.php?a_id=NT001RKS0000000 and product-detail.php?a_id=NT001RKS0000000&cont_ref=giftselector (same content as product-detail.php?a_id=NT001RKS0000000 but from this different URL) How should I deal with that? This is a bespoke ecommerce CMS (unfortunately). Any pointers would be great 🙂 Best wishes, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
How do I use public content without being penalized for duplication?
The NHTSA produces a list of all recalls for automobiles. In their "terms of use" it states that the information can be copied. I want to add that to our site, so there is an up-to-date list for our audience to see. However, I'm just copying and pasting. I'm allowed to according to NHTSA, but google will probably flag it right? Is there a way to do this without being penalized? Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content
I've attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio0 -
Canonical Meta Tag Best Practices
I've noticed that some website owners use canonical tags even when there may be no duplicate issues.For examplewww.examplesite.com has a canonical tag.......rel="canonical" href="http://www.examplesite.com/" />www.examplesite.com/bluewidget has a canonical tag.......rel="canonical" href="http://www.examplesite.com/bluewidget/" />Is this recommended or helpful to do this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
Duplicate Content on Product Pages
I'm getting a lot of duplicate content errors on my ecommerce site www.outdoormegastore.co.uk mainly centered around product pages. The products are completely different in terms of the title, meta data, product descriptions and images (with alt tags)but SEOmoz is still identifying them as duplicates and we've noticed a significant drop in google ranking lately. Admittedly the product descriptions are a little bit thin but I don't understand why the pages would be viewed as duplicates and therefore can be ranked lower? The content is definitely unique too. As an example these three pages have been identified as being duplicates of each other. http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/regatta-landtrek-25l-rucksack.html http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/canyon-bryce-adult-cycling-helmet-9045.html http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/outwell-minnesota-6-carpet-for-green-07-08-tent.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gavinhoman0