How to deal with duplicate content when presenting event and sub-events information?
-
Hi,
I'm have a sport event calendar website.
It presents events that may have multiple races.
The event has its own page as well as the races.example :
Event: /event/edinburgh-marathon-festivalRaces:
/race/emf-half-marathon
/race/emf-10-km
/race/edinburgh-marathon
/race/emf-5-kmThe pages may have a lot of information in common (location, date, description) and they all link to each other.
What would be the best practices to avoid having the pages considered duplicate content by Google?Thanks
-
I like your idea of regrouping on information on one page. My only concern is that the race page has already tabs and that it will lower the number of page vues for the site. As the site revenues come from advertisement ...
Thanks
-
Thank you for your explanations. I'll give the canonical tag a try. As I have more than 20 000 races, It's impossible for me to create unique descriptions. Most races don't have one.
I'll start by adding the canonical tag on the race pages, linking to the corresponding event page.
-
Hi Jean-Loup,
I like Gary's idea for canonicalisation as long as you are not too concerned about search traffic that is specifically dedicated to finding information about (for example), the Edinburgh Marathon 5km race. If the 5km race page is canonicalised to the main marathon page and that main marathon page doesn't mention the 5km, your ranking chances are fairly poor.
One other option to consider is presenting this additional information as tabbed content on the main page. Without seeing the actual pages, it's hard to say what this would look like, but essentially you'd have a primary page that lists all the main info about the event, then has tabs in a secondary navigation that use CSS to show content about the 10km, the 5 and the half marathon. You clearly do not have to repeat the general information about the full marathon festival event on each of these tabs, just include information about the specific races. All the HTML about each event is presented in the source code of the one Edinburgh marathon festival page.
This is not considered underhanded or "cloaking" - it's a common way to present information on the same or very similar topic on one URL. As long as the content behind each tab is highly relevant to the original topic (e.g. the marathon and other races) and is not unduly long (don't try to post a 1,000 word blog post in a tab), you will be fine.
This might be a big stylistic undertaking, but it's another option and it also means that just one URL receives the benefit of all the links people point to the event page.
-
Ok, I hope this is going to be helpful, but I have created two options for you...
- Option 1: Create unique descriptions for each page if you can?
This will take some time and probably a lot of investment. I've experienced this before with clients who always seem to write something very similar for each description, so be very careful with this. - Option 2: OR, Canonicalize all the variations your ' race event' product - what is the best marketable page?
I highly recommend you use the canonical tag to tell search engines that you are fully aware that these 'similar' products are using the same info descriptions, as well as heading etc (if they are). This will help you to keep everything the same for your users, and the bonus is, you do not have to rewrite any new product copy, and... of course this will help avoid getting 'dropped' by search engines. Do this by looking at Google Analytics, what page is working for you, what needs improving? Your analysis will help to create a canonical tag that uses that URL. You should then drop this same tag into allthe products in the set, including the your best page after working out which is working for you (canonical tags can be self referential causing zero problems).
- Option 1: Create unique descriptions for each page if you can?
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
-
Wordpress blog duplicate issue
So after looking at the set up of the blog ive found this. http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/news/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/general/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/snow/ Content shown on http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/ can also be found on the other 3 urls. The permalink structure is set up as /%category%/%postname%/ which I want to change to just %postname% Obviously i want to make things as seo friendly as possible so any suggestions to do this right without losing any indexed pages etc. I have limited access to make changes to plugins etc aswell as these need to be done through the development company who manage our site. Cheers Robert
On-Page Optimization | | Trespass0 -
Duplicate page title - blogs
Hope someone can help me, I am a total SEO noivce so please be gentle. My first report shows that I have duplicate page titles. I have been through and changed all of these so they are different and after my latest crawl they are still showing as duplicates. I am wondering if this is because it;s a blog, here is one of the duplicates: http://www.cottagesoapcompany.co.uk/blog/?row=1 Hope you can help!
On-Page Optimization | | emmamoulden0 -
Is my blog simply duplicate content of my authors' profiles?
www.example.com/blog is the full list of blog posts by various writers. The list contains the title of each article and the first paragraph from the article. In addition to /blog being indexed, each author's contribution list is being indexed separately. It's not a profile, really, just a list of articles in the same title & paragraph format of the /blog page. So if /blog a list of 10 articles written by two writers, I have three pages: /blog/author1 is a list of 4 articles /blog/author2 is a list of 6 different articles /blog is a list of 10 articles (the 4+6 from the two writers) Is this going to be considered duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | Brocberry0 -
Article on site and distribution, is it duplicate content?
I was always taught to place all original articles on site, let them get indexed by Google, then put out for distribution through various press release outlets. With the latest penguin update, how does this practice work out concerning duplicate content? In theory, I wrote the article so I should get credit for it on my site first, then push through various distribution outlets to get it out to my targeted audience in my niche field. Typing out loud I would tend to think if the article is on my site first then I would get credit and any others following would be hit by duplicate content if in fact google considered it a dupe violation. Any input on this? Am I on track or am I heading for a train wreck.
On-Page Optimization | | anthonytjm0 -
Issue: Duplicate Page Title
When you are in Error status for Duplicate Page Titles - but it is because of the root domain: Example.com and Example.com/index How to you go about changing the title of the same page without looking un-natural. My client has built his site with the - index file pulling to the root - but the crawlers are seeing TWO separate pages - when in reality they are the same. Riddle me this batman?
On-Page Optimization | | Chenzo0 -
Does 301 generate organic content ?
I manage this domain name www.jordanhundley.com . Right now it is 301 to www.jordanhundley.net where I hosted the content for almost 18 months. At this point you are only able to read the 301 script if you use CTRL U at the .com domain. Does Google read the content beyond the script? Is the 301 website getting juice from the targeted domain ? This is the script I´m using <html> <head> <title>Jordan Hundleytitle> head> <frameset rows="100%,*" border="0"> <frame src="[http://www.jordanhundley.net](view-source:http://www.jordanhundley.net/)" frameborder="0" /> frameset><noframes>noframes> html>
On-Page Optimization | | mPloria0 -
DUPLICATE PAGE TITLE ISSUE
Hi We have 25 pages with a download form on it. People arrive at the page through a ink with optimised anchor text which sits on the information pages. As there is no information on these pages we do not need them to be optimised so the developer has given all the download pages exactly the same page title. Although the pages in themselves are not significant would this effect the way Google viewed the whole site, and would it pay to make each one unique or doesn't it really matter. Alternatively, is there a better way to handle this? and if so would that ligate the benefit of the anchor text. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | PH2920 -
Category Pages with Sub-Categories
The image will explain it all... Each category page starts on the subject of the first sub-category page. This happens twice (well actually 3 times since this section of the site is called showroom and it starts on the tab mowers). Is this a terrible approach? If so, how could a site like this be better navigation-ally organized. cat-subcat.png
On-Page Optimization | | drewschmaltz0