What's the best way to solve this sites duplicate content issues?
-
Hi,
The site is www.expressgolf.co.uk and is an e-commerce website with lots of categories and brands.
I'm trying to achieve one single unique URL for each category / brand page to avoid duplicate content and to get the correct URL's indexed.
Currently it looks like this...
Main URL
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green
Different Versions
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/1
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/2
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/3
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/4
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/all
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/1/
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/2/
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/3/
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/4/
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/all/
Firstly, what is the best course of action to make all versions point to the main URL and keep them from being indexed - Canonical Tag, NOINDEX or block them in robots?
Secondly, do I just need to 301 the (/) from all URL's to the non (/) URL's ?
I'm sure this question has been answered but I was having trouble coming to a solution for this one site.
Cheers,
Paul
-
Greetings Champion!
Cannonical Linking is the best way to go!
For your conundrum in Example B with the Calvin Green I would find out which URL version is dominant or has the most link juice and structure the redirects to that links. For instance, let us say [http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/] is the dominant link I would have the copy urls pointing back to that one like so
I manage an Ecommerce Site as well, I had the same issue with the categories and what I basically did the same thing for each level of my site, categories that have the url ending in /1, /2, /3 and so on I would redirect to the first page to make that Url stronger.
Practically think about what Noindexing or Nofollowing would do, you would lose so much link power that you could harness, With redirects you can focus this power in a more effective manner.
Also I was snooping and clicked Golf Clubs which took me to this URL
expressgolf.co .uk/shop/clubs
Made me realize that you had "clubs" at the end, I would put Golf Clubs because when you do a keyword search for Clubs, Bars come up. Putting a Keyword in the URL can greatly enhance that URL. Just a tip if you want to utilize it or not friend ^.^.
Good luck on your quest for Page 1!
Justin Smith
-
It really sounds like canonical is what you need here. Here is Matt Cutts explaining:
-
Hi,
I would say canonical or rel=”next” and rel=”prev”
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html
Would probably be your best bets, as a 301 would solve from a Search Engine perspective, but definitely not good for users wanting to see different versions of the product in question.
hope this helps
w00t!
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 question
Hey Mozzers! I received a duplicate content notice from my Cycle7 Communications campaign today. I understand the concept of duplicate content, but none of the suggested fixes quite seems to fit. I have four pages with HubSpot forms embedded in them. (Only two of these pages have showed up so far in my campaign.) Each page contains a title (Content Marketing Consultation, Copywriting Consultation, etc), plus an embedded HubSpot form. The forms are all outwardly identical, but I use a separate form for each service that I offer. I’m not sure how to respond to this crawl issue: Using a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right, because each page/form combo is independent and serves a separate purpose. Using a rel=canonical link doesn’t seem right for the same reason that a 301 redirect doesn’t seem right. Using the Google Search Console URL Parameters tool is clearly contraindicated by Google’s documentation (I don’t have enough pages on my site). Is a meta robots noindex the best way to deal with duplicate content in this case? Thanks in advance for your help. AK
Technical SEO | | AndyKubrin0 -
Another company's website indexing for my site
Hi, I am looking at all the pages which Google are indexing for my website and have come across pages of another company's website. I have contacted them through their online form and Facebook page asking for them to remove their listings for us, but to no avail so far. Is there a way I can do this myself?
Technical SEO | | British-Car-Registrations0 -
Purchasing duplicate content
Morning all, I have a client who is planning to expand their product range (online dictionary sites) to new markets and are considering the acquisition of data sets from low ranked competitors to supplement their own original data. They are quite large content sets and would mean a very high percentage of the site (hosted on a new sub domain) would be made up of duplicate content. Just to clarify, the competitor's content would stay online as well. I need to lay out the pros and cons of taking this approach so that they can move forward knowing the full facts. As I see it, this approach would mean forgoing ranking for most of the site and would need a heavy dose of original content as well as supplementing the data on page to build around the data. My main concern would be that launching with this level of duplicate data would end up damaging the authority of the site and subsequently the overall domain. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Technical SEO | | BackPack851 -
How should I close my forum in a way that's best for SEO?
Hi Guys, I have a forum on a subdomain and it is no longer used. (like forum.mywebsite.com) It kind of feels like a dead limb and I don't know what's best to do for SEO. Should I just leave it as it is and let it stagnate? There is a link in the nav menu to the main domain so users have a chance to find the main domain. Or should I remove it and just redirect the whole subdomain to the main domain? I don't know if redirects would work as I doubt most of the threads would match our articles, plus there are 700 of them. The main domain is PR3 and so is the forum subdomain. Please help!
Technical SEO | | HCHQ0 -
What is the best way to refresh a webpage of a news site, SEO wise?
Hello all, we have a client which is a sports website. In fact it is a veyr big website and has a huge number of news per day. This is mostly the reason why it refreshes some of its pages with news list every 420 seconds. We currently use meta refresh. I have read here and elsewhere that meta refreshes should be avoided. But we don't do it to send to another page and pass any kind of page authority / juice. Is in this case javascript refresh better? Is there any other better way. What do you think & suggest? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | pkontopoulos0 -
How different does content need to be to avoid a duplicate content penalty?
I'm implementing landing pages that are optimized for specific keywords. Some of them are substantially the same as another page (perhaps 10-15 words different). Are the landing pages likely to be identified by search engines as duplicate content? How different do two pages need to be to avoid the duplicate penalty?
Technical SEO | | WayneBlankenbeckler0 -
Redirect from old wordpress site to new php site? Best approach
Hi I have two websites one legacy site done in wordpress the other in php. However I would like to merge the two together and remove the wordpress site. However it has a good link profile and the pages rank well. What is the best approach to do a 301 redirect from the old site with all its pages pointing to the homepage of the new site? If so what's the best way to do this in wordpress? Many thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
Duplicate content
I have to sentences that I want to optimize to different pages for. sentence number one is travel to ibiza by boat sentence number to is travel to ibiza by ferry My question is, can I have the same content on both pages exept for the keywords or will Google treat that as duplicate content and punish me? And If yes, where goes the limit/border for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | stlastla0
