Duplicate content, is it ever ok?
-
I am building a large site for a client who sells physical products. I am using WordPress as my CMS (as a piece of background information). There are a few products that need to be listed in the sites hierarchy in multiple locations as such:
-
Parent A
-
Child 1
-
Parent B
-
Child 2
-
Child 3
-
Parent C
-
Child 1
I am concerned that having a product exist in multiple instances will cause indexing problems for that product. I can't be the only person to come across this issue, would love some feedback on the best practices for such an issue.
Thanks in advance
-
-
Hey Jeseph,
I'd concur with Chris and Peter here
I would either structure your site so that individual products aren't in folders: e.g. yoursite.com/product-name; or if that's not possible use rel-canonical to indicate your preferred URL.
Thanks
Hannah
-
We have a similar structure in our web-store. However we don't use WordPress, our company has the same concerns. To use your example we also have a "Child 1" problem, at least as far as our thoughts about duplicate content are concerned. Our experience is that Google has NEVER marked our "Child 1" as duplicate. However our "Parent A" through "Parent C" categories have been marked as duplicate. So we have made changes in or categories to try and stem the issue.
After doing some research on Google duplicate content, they specifically say they only consider duplicate content when the content is similar when the base URL's come from two different sources. What this means to me is that: www.site1.com\Parent-A\Child-1 is a duplicate content to www.site2.com\something-new\Child-1
Where www.site1.com\Parent-A\Child-1 and www.site1.com\Parent-C\Child-1 are not considered duplicate content.
-
Hi Jeseph
Yes, duplicate content can be an issue especially if your sites has lots of it, plus you will get the situation where Google will only index one instance of each page.
The best way around is in your situation though is to have one instance of each product, but to use that instance in multiple locations from a browsing point of view. If done correctly, each product will have a unique URL, but the page it is on can be referenced from a variety of locations/categories.
So, for example, a page about a shiny blue pen could be linked to from a pens category and also a gifts category, but the URL of the shiny blue pen page can be the same, e.g. yourdomain.com/blue-shiny-pen.html so one page and not a duplicate.
In terms of the facilities within Wordpress to make that happen I am not a Wordpress expert but I know there are many on this forum who are, so I am sure someone will give you some guidance on that.
Peter
-
rel=canonical was made for just such a thing so there is not really an excuse, sure you won't have all of them indexed but at the same time it wont bring your whole site down. As long as the user can find that product (even if its in one instance) via Google then I presume that's good for you,.rel="canonical" wouldn't affect their (user) site navigation.
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 on our own website
Our website sells tickets for events. We also have an news articles section with information about events / artists / venues. From time to time we release a product page and a related news article on a separate page. Some of the content in the news article would be perfect for our product page. Essentially its our product page we want too rank. Would it harm our SEO if we had some of the same content on both of these pages?
On-Page Optimization | | Alexogilvie0 -
"Issue: Duplicate Page Content " in Crawl Diagnostics - but these pages are noindex
Saw an issue back in 2011 about this and I'm experiencing the same issue. http://moz.com/community/q/issue-duplicate-page-content-in-crawl-diagnostics-but-these-pages-are-noindex We have pages that are meta-tagged as no-everything for bots but are being reported as duplicate. Any suggestions on how to exclude them from the Moz bot?
On-Page Optimization | | Deb_VHB0 -
Duplicate title tag
Hello,
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
My site have problems with duplicate title, they were reported from google webmaster. For example:
/extra-services/car-pick-up-service-146.html (1) /extra-services/transportation--car-rails--146.html (2) According to my sitemap the first URL is right (1). But the second URL is wrong, I don't know it occur here.0 -
What content is apropriate here
Hello, I've got a dozen good articles in my article section, but nobody is landing on them. Should we write articles about our products? Won't that compete with our product pages?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Is this duplicate content okay?
We have a client who wants to rank locally, nationally and internationally for their products. I wrote a line that goes, "We can ship our products to you whether you’re here in Illinois, nationwide, or international." I added that line after a paragraph or two of unique product description on each of their 30-odd product pages. Will this damage their ranking? I tried researching this but only found full page duplicate content topics. Any advice would be great.
On-Page Optimization | | optimalwebinc0 -
Is This Duplicate Content Hurting Our SERPs?
We sell 1000s of audio book title, many of which are published in more than one format (abridged, unabridged CD, and/or unabridged MP3) by the same publisher. Currently each title has its own page but the basic description of the title (story) is the same. Here is an example title that is offered in three formats. 44 Charles Street - Danielle Steel - abridged CD audiobook 44 Charles Street - Danielle Steel - MP3 CD audiobook 44 Charles Street - Danielle Steel - CD audiobook Each of the above pages has a different page title, a different URL, a different meta description however much of the body (from [Listen to a FREE Audio Clip] down is the same. Is this duplicate content hurting our SERPs?
On-Page Optimization | | lbohen1 -
Checking for content duplication against content on your own site.
We are currently trying to rewrite our product descriptions and I'm afraid some of the salespeople that are writing the descriptions are plagiarizing one-another's writing. Is there a content duplication checker that will allow you to check a piece of writing against a specific site rather than all of the web?
On-Page Optimization | | MichealGooden0 -
I have one page on my site... but still get duplicate name and content errors.
i have only the index.html page. my domain has a permanent 301 to the root. why am i getting duplicate problems? i only have one page the index .html???
On-Page Optimization | | one4u2see0