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
-
How do I fix my portfolio causing duplicate content issues?
Hi, Im new to this whole duplicate content issue. I have a website, fatcatpaperie.com that I use the portofolio feature in Wordpress as my gallery for all my wedding invitations. I have a ton of duplicate content issues from this. I don't understand at all how to fix this. I'd appreciate any help! Below is an example of one duplicate content issue. They have slightly different names, different urls, different images and all have no text. But are coming up as duplicates. Would it be as easy as putting a different metadescription for each?? Thanks for the help! Rena | "Treasure" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/treasure-designers-fine-press 1 0 0 0 200 3 duplicates "Perennial" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/perennial-by-designers-fine-press 1 0 0 0 200 1 of 3 duplicates "Primrose" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/8675 1 0 0 0 200 2 of 3 duplicates "Catalina" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/catalina-designers-fine-press |
On-Page Optimization | | HonestSEOStudio0 -
Duplicate Page Content
Hi there, We keep getting duplicate page content issues. However, its not actually the same page.
On-Page Optimization | | HamiltonIsland
E.G - There might be 5 pages in say a Media Release section of the website. And each URL says page 1, 2 etc etc. However, its still coming up as duplicate. How can this be fixed so Moz knows its actually different content?0 -
Duplicate content from category pages?
I have an ecommerce store with different categories for my products. Some products do appear in more than one category, is that an issue even if you end up on the same product page/link? Also, I have a "show all products" category, which I believe creates duplicate content too? What is your take on this? What can I do to solve this? Is it even an issue of duplicate content? All answers are very much appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | danielpett0 -
High Volume Duplicate Title and Content Errors: Scale of 1-10 How bad is this?
I have 15k pages and 1.5K have duplicate title and content errors. the reason is I have a ring parent page with child pages for each of the size variations. On a scale of 1-10 how big an issue is this and does it need fixing?
On-Page Optimization | | Tippman0 -
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 -
Duplicated Page Content
I have encountered this weird problem about duplicate page content. My site got 3 duplicate content similar on the link structure below. If I'm going to use rel canonical does it help to resolve the duplication problem? Thanks http://www.sample.com http://www.sample.com/ http://www.sample.com/index.php
On-Page Optimization | | mattvectorbpo0 -
Duplicate page content & title for www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/index.php?
Hi, First post so please be gentle! My Crawl Diagnostics Summary is showing an error relating to duplicate page content and duplicate page title for www.mydomain.com and www.mydomain.com/index.php which are, in my view, the same thing/page? Could anyone shed any light please? Thanks Carl
On-Page Optimization | | Carl2870 -
Duplicate Page Title
Hi Guys, First off, it's an honour to be a part of this awesome community. I'm using WordPress and getting top 3 rankings for great keywords and I'm very excited, however my page titles are in this format "keyword optimised title here - site name here" eg: "This is my keyword - this is the name of my blog", "This is another keyword - this is the name of my blog", "This is a longtail keyword - this is the name of my blog" SEOMoz is reporting errors because of duplicate page title tags due to the "this is the name of my blog" being in every page title. Will this hurt my rankings? Thanks in advance and keep up the great work! Cheers, Troy.
On-Page Optimization | | TroyDean710