How much does on-site duplicated content affect SERPs?
-
Hi,
We've recently gotten into Moz, with our E-commerce websites, and discovered that it's crawler takes note of about 2500 pages which it thinks are the same (duplicated). We've now begun to completely rewrite every description of every product (including Meta Title/Description) so that this number may be reduced.
Since this is the biggest issue Moz spots I'm wondering what the effect of fixing it will be on our position in the SERP (mainly Google). Does anybody have some stories or experience about this topic?
Thanks in Advance!
Alexander
-
Thanks for your insight! we're trying to get all of our pages rank A, according to Moz's on-page analyis, optimised for different keywords.
-
If the duplicate content was duplicated on other sites, then by rewriting the content and making it unique, you may see your site ranking for keywords you didn't rank for previously. Google and Bing try to weed out duplicate content. They prefer to just show one result with that content. So, typically, they pick one of the pages that has the content, the one they think it the original, and they only include that page in the search results (at least in the first few pages). So, if you're site was being kept out of the search results because Google didn't pick your site to display, you may now start to rank for those keywords.
As to how dramatic a change it will be for you, it depends on how competitive the keywords are, how well you optimize the pages, and how authoritative your website is.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
Yeah! We're re-doing all content! including categories, which we want to rank for their specific keywords of course
-
Depends on how fast your pages get crawled again, which depends on your niche and your domain trust as well.
Ive gotten badly optimised ecom sites to rank by just making great onpage seo changes. In a highly competitive space, you will see less "drastic" jumps but you'll still be able to see it. Be sure to add great unique content on your category pages ok?
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
-
I have a site that has a 302 redirect loop on the home page (www.oncologynurseadvisor.com) i
i am trying to do an audit on it using screaming frog and the 302 stops it. My dev team says it is to discourage Non Human Traffic and that the bots will not see it. Is there any way around this or what can I tell the dev team that shows them it is not working as they state.
Web Design | | HayMktVT0 -
My news site not showing in "In the news" list on Google Web Search
I got a news website (www.tapscape.com) which is 6 years old and has been on Google News since 2012. However, whenever I publish a news article, it never shows up "In the news" list on Google Web Search. I have already added the schema.org/NewsArticle on the website and have checked it if it's working or not on Google structured data testing tool. I see everything shows on on the structured data testing tool. The site already has a news sitemap (http://www.tapscape.com/news-sitemap.xml) and has been added to Google webmaster tools. News articles show perfectly fine in the News tab, but why isn't the articles being shown on "In the news" list on the Google web search? My site has a strong backlink background already, so I don't think I need to work on the backlinks. Please let me know what I'm doing wrong, and how can I get it to the news articles on "In the news" list. Below is a screenshot that I have attached to this question to help you understand what I mean to say. 1qoArRs
Web Design | | hakhan2010 -
Any alternative techniques to display tabbed content without using Javascript / JSON and be SEO Friendly?
John Mueller's input in the EGWMH hangout suggests that Google MAY ignore expandable content served by Javascript. Are there any alternative techniques to display tabbed content without using Javascript / JSON and be SEO Friendly? I do however view these as good for website interactivity and UX - and see many examples of websites performing well and ranking highly whilst using these techniques - are there any Google friendly ways to serve content on a page so that search bots can recognise and choose to crawl / consume the content as legitimate fodder?
Web Design | | Fergclaw0 -
Managing website content/keywords for wordpress site
We are in the midst of redesigning our website and have been working with freelance blog/content writers to increase the unique content on our site. We are finding it increasingly difficult to manage the topics/keywords as we continue to expand. Googledrive and google spreadsheets have been our primary tools thus far. Can anyone recommend a good tool that would allow us to manage content and blog posts for our site?
Web Design | | Tom_Carc0 -
URL parameters causing duplicate content errors
My ISP implemented product reviews. In doing so, each page has a possible parameter string of ?wr=1. I am not receiving duplicate page content and duplicate page title errors for all my product URLs. The report shows the base URL and the base URL?wr=1. My ISP says that the search engines won't have a problem with the parameters and a check of Google Webmaster Tools for my site says I don't have any errors and recommends against configuring URL parameters. How can I get SEOmoz to stop reporting these errors?
Web Design | | NiftySon1 -
Site Ranks on Page 1 - Would launching new site hurt that
Hello, I currently have a website ranking in the top 7 for my main keyword. The website was built in 2004 and is definitely outdated, yet still ranks very high and brings in business. If i launched a new site on this domain, what would happen to my rankings? Would they drop? would they rise? If i don't launch the new site, will this site eventually drop due to being old and outdated? Any advice would be helpful...
Web Design | | Prime850 -
Two URLs with same content
We recently had a client who own multiple brands switch from having multiple urls to having a single domain with multiple sub domains. I've posted an example below to better explain. My question is the original url is still functional, so there are two urls with identical content, yet I haven't been getting a duplicate content error. Also, would a rel canonical link be beneficial in this case since the duplicate content is on two separate domains? My thoughts were to put a 301 redirect on the original pages so they permanently forward to the new sub-domain format. Is this the best course of action? If not, what would you recommend? Example: Original URLs
Web Design | | BluespaceCreative
www.example1.com
www.example2.com
www.example3.com
www.parentcompany.com New URLs
example1.parentcompany.com
example2.parentcompany.com
example3.parentcompany.com
www.parentcompany.com Let me know if this I need to clarify anything in better detail.
Thanks in advance!0 -
Best Site navigation solution
Hi there, We are getting our website redesigned and would like to know whether to increase the links on our site wide navigation or not. At the moment we have around 30 links from the navigation. We want to use exploding navigation menu and increase the links to our most important categories. Say if we increase to 60-70 would that be alright. (what will be the highest we can go for) At the moment categories that get links from navigation are ranking pretty good. If we increase would we loose those rankings. What will be the pros and cons of increasing navigation links? Second question we are also adding fooer links to top 10 categories in the footer. Would this be ok as far as seo and google concerned. Many Thanks
Web Design | | Jvalops0