Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Duplicate Content for Spanish & English Product
-
Hi There,
Our company provides training courses and I am looking to provide the Spanish version of a course that we already provide in English. As it is an e-commerce site, our landing page for the English version gives the full description of the course and all related details. Once the course is purchased, a flash based course launches within a player window and the student begins the course.
For the Spanish version of the course, my target customers are English speaking supervisors purchasing the course for their Spanish speaking workers. So the landing page will still be in English (just like the English version of the course) with the same basic description, with the only content differences on that page being the inclusion of the fact that this course is in Spanish and a few details around that.
The majority of the content on these two separate landing pages will be exactly the same, as the description for the overall course is the same, just that it's presented in a different language, so it needs to be 2 separate products.
My fear is that Google will read this as duplicate content and I will be penalized for it. Is this a possibility or will Google know why I set it up this way and not penalize me? If that is a possibility, how should I go about doing this correctly?
Thanks!
-
Thank you for this information, Optimize. Not having a very technical background in this area, it seems quite confusing to try to implement this correctly.
-
Hola Julio,
even though here in SEOmoz we are happy that Mozzers find occasions for collaborating with other people, we think that it would be better (and even safer for your inbox) to use the private message function.
-
Niall,
What is the theme of your course? We are in Mexico searching for new training modules to sell in Latin Market. Maybe we can talk about it...
We have some good websites very well ranked.
Email me!!!
Thanks...
Julio
[email removed by staff]
-
You are going to have a problem with this.....Unfortunately, the combination of duplicate looking content and a directory/subdirectory structure causes sites to be stuck in Googles Panda filter. Google pulled out a "large roll of duct tape" to fix the problem with multiple language version websites, writing “hreflang” on one strip and writing“canonical” on the other strip.
Basically, Google is telling us that we should use a regional subtag in our head tag on each URL to help Google’s spider figure out what kind of content is on each page and where it is intended. Once this is done, Google will consider that the content is intended for that region. Here are the rules for hreflang and canonical....make sure you are sitting down......
Hreflang
The hreflang attribute (hreflang: rel="alternate" hreflang="x") rules in a nutshell:
- Applies to any users from different parts of the world, with content translated in the native language to target that region.
- Used for multilingual websites using substantially the same content on all web pages (e.g., English pages for Australia, Canada, and the U.S.)
- Can specify the language, country, and URLs of content translated for multiple countries.
- Used when:
- You translate only the template of your page (navigation and footer) and main content is still in a single language.
- Pages have broadly similar content within a single language, but are targeted at different regions (e.g., English-language content targeted in U.S., UK, and Australia).
- Content on the web page is fully translated (e.g., have Spanish, French, and English versions of each page).
- How to use rel="alternate" hreflang ="x"
- If there are multiple language versions of the website, each language must use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" (e.g., a page in Spanish must have a rel="alternate" hreflang="x" link to the English and French version and the English and French version must include a link pointing to the Spanish site.
(For more information: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077)
Canonical
The multilingual canonical tag (rel="canonical") tells Google that x URL is the preferred location and the most important translated version of the content of the URL.
Multilingual canonical is:
- Used in conjunction with hreflang.
- Can be used when web pages have the same content in the same language targeting multiple countries.
- Sometimes users are directed to the wrong language.
- The canonical designates the version of content that gets indexed and returned to users.
- Use rel="canonical" tag on other versions of the webpage.
- When users enter content into search results, users will likely see the URL that corresponds to their language preference.
Putting hreflang and canonical together:
Spanish site is the canonical and contains the following tags:
link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://en.example.com/" /English site contains the following tags:
link rel="canonical" href="http://es.example.com/" /French site contains the following tags:
link rel="canonical" href="http://es.example.com/" /(**CAN ONLY BE USED WHEN SPANISH IS THE MAIN LANGUAGE AND ONLY THE TEMPLATE IS TRANSLATED TO ENLISH AND FRENCH)
Hope this is helpful......All of this information can be found in the original author at this link:
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 content in sidebar
Hi guys. So I have a few sentences (about 50 words) of duplicate content across all pages of my website (this is a repeatable text in sidebar). Each page of my website contains about 1300 words (unique content) in total, and 50 words of duplicate content in sidebar. Does having a duplicate content of this length in sidebar affect the rankings of my website in any way? Thank you so much for your replies.
On-Page Optimization | | AslanBarselinov1 -
Duplicate 'meta title' issue (AMP & NON-AMP Pages)
how to fix duplicate meta title issue in amp and non-amp pages? example.com
On-Page Optimization | | 21centuryweb
example.com/amp We have set the 'meta title' in desktop version & we don't want to change the title for AMP page as we have more than 10K pages on the website. ----As per SEMRUSH Tool---- ABOUT THIS ISSUE It is a bad idea to duplicate your title tag content in your first-level header. If your page’s <title>and <h1> tags match, the latter may appear over-optimized to search engines. Also, using the same content in titles and headers means a lost opportunity to incorporate other relevant keywords for your page.</p> <p><strong>HOW TO FIX IT</strong></p> <p>Try to create different content for your <title> and <h1> tags.<br /><br />this is what they are recommending, for the above issue we have asked our team to create unique meta and post title for desktop version but what about AMP page?<br /><br />Please help!</p></title>0 -
Duplicate content with tagging and categories
Hello, Moz is showing that a site has duplicate content - which appears to be because of tags and categories. It is a relatively new site, with only a few blog publications so far. This means that the same articles are displayed under a number of different tags and categories... Is this something I should worry about, or just wait until I have more content? The 'tag' and 'category' pages are not really pages I would expect or aim for anyone to find in google results anyway. Would be glad to here any advice / opinions on this Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia1 -
How often should I update category and product content to keep it fresh?
I want to keep our site up to date and fresh with content. How often should I update categories and products pages with content? What angel should I take with categories (new products/services etc.) Thanks Craig
On-Page Optimization | | Towelsrus0 -
If I enbed the same video from my YouTube account on two different websites, will I get a duplicate content penalty?
I have a YouTube video I want to show my B2B and B2C customers. But I have a different websites for each. If I embed the video will I get duplicate content strike against me?
On-Page Optimization | | RoxBrock0 -
Does schema.org assist with duplicate content concerns
The issue of duplicate content has been well documented and there are lots of articles suggesting to noindex archive pages in WordPress powered sites. Schema.org allows us to mark-up our content, including marking a components URL. So my question simply, is no-indexing archive (category/tag) pages still relevant when considering duplicate content? These pages are in essence a list of articles, which can be marked as an article or blog posting, with the url of the main article and all the other cool stuff the scheme gives us. Surely Google et al are smart enough to recognise these article listings as gateways to the main content, therefore removing duplicate content concerns. Of course, whether or not doing this is a good idea will be subjective and based on individual circumstances - I'm just interested in whether or not the search engines can handle this appropriately.
On-Page Optimization | | MarkCA0 -
What's the best practice for handling duplicate content of product descriptions with a drop-shipper?
We write our own product descriptions for merchandise we sell on our website. However, we also work with drop-shippers, and some of them simply take our content and post it on their site (same photos, exact ad copy, etc...). I'm concerned that we'll loose the value of our content because Google will consider it duplicated. We don't want the value of our content undermined... What's the best practice for avoiding any problems with Google? Thanks, Adam
On-Page Optimization | | Adam-Perlman0 -
ECommerce Product Meta Descriptions vs. Product Descriptions
Wondering if using on-page product descriptions as the individual product meta descriptions is a best practice for an eCommerce site? Instead of writing two product descriptions (one regular and one meta), I am thinking if the product copy is SEO rich, we'd be good to use just the one for both purposes. Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Seems that many companies follow this practice. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | kennyrowe1