Duplicate Content... Really?
-
Hi all,
My site is www.actronics.eu
Moz reports virtually every product page as duplicate content, flagged as HIGH PRIORITY!.
I know why.
Moz classes a page as duplicate if >95% content/code similar.
There's very little I can do about this as although our products are different, the content is very similar, albeit a few part numbers and vehicle make/model.
Here's an example:
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/audi-a4-8d-b5-1994-2000-abs-ecu-en/bosch-5-3
http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/bmw-3-series-e36-1990-1998-abs-ecu-en/ate-34-51Now, multiply this by ~2,000 products X 7 different languages and you'll see we have a big dupe content issue (according to Moz's Crawl Diagnostics report).
I say "according to Moz..." as I do not know if this is actually an issue for Google? 90% of our products pages rank, albeit some much better than others?
So what is the solution? We're not trying to deceive Google in any way so it would seem unfair to be hit with a dupe content penalty, this is a legit dilemma where our product differ by as little as a part number.
One ugly solution would be to remove header / sidebar / footer on our product pages as I've demonstrated here - http://woodberry.me.uk/test-page2-minimal-v2.html since this removes A LOT of page bloat (code) and would bring the page difference down to 80% duplicate.
(This is the tool I'm using for checking http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php)Other "prettier" solutions would greatly appreciated. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thanks,
Woody -
Hey David
Thanks for reply.
3. Use a plugin to apply rich snippet markup to the individual product pages, adding another layer of "uniqueness"
I had thought about this already and was looking into the MPN (Manufacturer Part Number) attribute for products (https://schema.org/mpn) however, it's not clear if, like SKU, the MPN needs to be unique to ProductModel (https://schema.org/ProductModel)?
If that were the case, I'd have a problem as there are multiple MPN's per ProductModel.
I see https://schema.org/isVariantOf too, which could be useful?
Anyone with experience of Schema?
-
First, why were you looking at the reports? Have you seen some type of ranking loss that you are trying to remedy?
Second, the moz tools are just tools to provide you with an oversight on where you are at, and potential areas your site can be improved. They work, but are not dedicated to any one type of website i.e. e-commerce vs static or content-based.
To get the unique pages you seek, it may be possible to use javascript to load content for variables of part numbers. As stated before, your site is getting seen as duplicate due to only a few things changing out per page.
Possible fixes:
1. Use dynamic coding to load part number variables, such as drop down menus for alternate versions or parts or models. This will allow you fewer pages to direct your backlinks to as well.2. Have more top level pages based around the category, and focus on getting the category pages ranking rather than the individual part pages. Again, focus your backlinking efforts on these pages.
3. Use a plugin to apply rich snippet markup to the individual product pages, adding another layer of "uniqueness"
-
The pages were not intended strictly for SEO value, they were mainly built for user value, i.e. returning a 100% focused page on the part number they searched for. Remember, many people use Google as a navigational tool and they also consider the product to the the part no. they searched for, not the main manufacturer of the product (ATE).
I understand what you are saying though and think building stronger product pages is the way to go, although I will try on a subset of pages and monitor results.
Now to decide which approach to take to yield the best results:
a.) SEO focus on ATE MK70 (list all the vehicle makes/models/years this product work on, including list of part numbers)
or...
b.) SEO focus on vehicle makes/model (then list all the manufacturers of suitable products, with corresponding part numbers)Thanks,
Woody -
This is one of the things Panda was trying to discourage (creating pages strictly for SEO value as opposed to user value that have thin content).
Consolidating and building out a single page is the way to go. Google will still crawl the product numbers, and they will be on a much stronger page. Even if they're not in the URL and title, a more valuable page nearly always wins out.
Not only that, you're playing with fire right now. If you haven't been hit by Panda yet, your odds are much higher with the numerous little pages.
-
Thanks guys
William
What's the thought process of creating a bunch of new pages, even though it's the same product, just referred to differently by different companies? Just for the unique URLs and titles?
Samuel
Would you want to create a separate page for "red Honda Civic," "green Honda civic," and countless other colors? Of course not.
To hopefully address both questions with one answer; the reason for building separate pages was to give SEO focus to the unique part numbers and the product type by vehicle make / model / year.
Very few people in the industry search for the product by name, it's always by part number. In fact, I'd go as far as to say there's few who would actually know the brand of "the product", that being ATE MK70 in our example above.
I understand the logic of building a strong single product page with all these part numbers listed, but would this page really rank well for searches on part number? Bear in mind, unlike the red, green, blue Honda Civic example, where there's perhaps a dozen different colours, we're talking literally 100's of part numbers per product and variations of it's formatting.
I welcome further conversation and ideas on this
Thanks so far guys! -
Thanks for the question. I'm not able to go through your site at the moment, but I would ask: Do you really need a separate page for every single make, model, and part number? Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be what you're doing. If so, you're just asking for a Panda penalty.
Here's a basic example: Say that you sell Honda Civics. Would you want to create a separate page for "red Honda Civic," "green Honda civic," and countless other colors? Of course not. All of the content would be entirely the same except for the listed color throughout each title and page's text.
I'd take a look at Amazon as an example. Say that I go to a page for a certain T-shirt. The same page for that individual product will include all of the color variations w_ithin that single product page_. Each color variation is not a new page and URL (or if it is, it has a rel=canonical tag back to the main product page -- I don't remember). I'd look to this example as a way that you can vastly cut down the number of product pages so that each one is truly unique, valuable, and useful to both search engines and customers.
I hope that helps -- good luck!
-
I think you're already in Panda territory. The content can't get much thinner. It seems like all those sub-pages that are linked to on the page you just shared are unnecessary, no? Couldn't you just have the one page, build it out with the cars it works in, maybe a diagram or instruction on how to put it in, and make a really valuable page?
What's the thought process of creating a bunch of new pages, even though it's the same product, just referred to differently by different companies? Just for the unique URLs and titles?
Consolidating all of that would eliminate thin content and likely strengthen your landing page exponentially.
-
Thank you for your answer William and taking the time to respond,
I understand what you are saying but I am a little skeptical as that being a logical/achievable solution?
Let's say we did write some content for each product, the content would be "thin" to say the least.
As an example, we have over 700 products (per language), this being on of them - http://www.actronics.eu/en/shop/product/ate-mk70
This product alone works in over 43 different vehicle marques, illustrated in the list of on the page.
The only thing different about them is the part number, i.e. what the manufacturer refers to this part as (Audi A3 refer to it as 10097003153, Peugeot 206 refer to it as 9659136980). There really is nothing more to say about the product, without creating more dupe content and getting into Panda territory, so I don't see this being a viable solution?
We have the pages in place as mechanics/garages search by manufactures number, not product type.
Any more thoughts/ideas?
-
This issue isn't duplicate content, Moz is just flagging it as that because of the severe lack of content, making the footer, sidebar, etc. the majority of the content on the page. This is not good, and the best way to remedy it would be to build out more content.
I realize with roughly 14k pages, this isn't realistic to do for every single page, but you could prioritize. What are your most popular products? Start with those and build out content to make sure they rank and perform as well as possible, and then continue to go down the list as you have time to do so, manually optimizing and building out the most profitable/popular pages first.
When it comes to unique content, there is no automated solution. Either you write stuff, hire someone else to write stuff, or do what a lot of places do: implements a review system for customers to use and crowd-source the unique content that way.
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
-
Semi-duplicate content yet authoritative site
So I have 5 real estate sites. One of those sites is of course the original, and it has more/better content on most of the pages than the other sites. I used to be top ranked for all of the subdivsion names in my town. Then when I did the next 2-4 sites, I had some sites doing better than others for certain keywords, and then I have 3 of those sites that are basically the same URL structures (besides the actual domain) and they aren't getting fed very many visits. I have a couple of agents that work with me that I loaned my sites to to see if that would help since it would be a different name. My same youtube video is on each of the respective subdivision pages of my site and theirs. Also, their content is just rewritten content from mine about the same length of content. I have looked over and seen a few of my competitors who only have one site and their URL structures arent good at all, and their content isn't good at all and a good bit of their pages rank higher than my main site which is very frustrating to say the least since they are actually copy cats to my site. I sort of started the precedent of content, mapping the neighborhood, how far that subdivision is from certain landmarks, and then shot a video of each. They have pretty much done the same thing and are now ahead of me. What sort of advice could you give me? Right now, I have two sites that are almost duplicate in terms of a template and same subdivsions although I did change the content the best I could, and that site is still getting pretty good visits. I originally did it to try and dominate the first page of the SERPS and then Penguin and Panda came out and seemed to figure that game out. So now, I would still like to keep all the sites, but I'm assuming that would entail making them all unique, which seems to be tough seeing as though my town has the same subdivisions. Curious as to what the suggestions would be, as I have put a lot of time into these sites. If I post my site will it show up in the SERPS? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Veebs0 -
Manage category pages and duplicate content issues
Hi everybody, I am now auditing this website www.disfracessimon.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite
this website has some issues with canonicals and other things. But right now I have found something that I would like to know your opinion. When I was checking parts of the content in google to find duplicate content issues I found this: I google I searched: "Chaleco de streck decorado con botones" and found First result: "Hombre trovador" is the one I was checking -> Correct
The following results are category pages where the product is listed in. I was wondering if this could cause any problem related with duplicated content. Should I no index category pages or should I keep it?
The first result in google was the product page. And category pages I think are good for link juice transfer and to capture some searchs from Google. Any advice? Thank you0 -
Will merging sites create a duplicate content penalty?
I have 2 sites that would be better suited being merged and creating a more authoritative site. Basically I'de like to merge site A in to site B. If I add new pages from site A to Site B and create 301 redirects for those pages on site A to the new pages on Site B is that the best way to go about it? As the pages are already indexed would this create any duplicate content issue or would the redirect solve this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boballanjones0 -
Duplicate Content for Deep Pages
Hey guys, For deep, deep pages on a website, does duplicate content matter? The pages I'm talk about are image pages associated with products and will never rank in Google which doesn't concern me. What I'm interested to know though is whether the duplicate content would have an overall effect on the site as a whole? Thanks in advance Paul
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kevinliao1 -
Is SEOmoz.org creating duplicate content with their CDN subdomain?
Example URL: http://cdn.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions Canonical is a RELATIVE link, should be an absolute link pointing to main domain: http://www.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions <link href='[/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions](view-source:http://cdn.seomoz.org/q/help-with-getting-no-conversions)' rel='<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>' /> 13,400 pages indexed in Google under cdn subdomain go to google > site:http://cdn.seomoz.org https://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.seomoz.org%2F&oq=site:http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.seomoz.org%2F&gs_l=hp.2...986.6227.0.6258.28.14.0.0.0.5.344.3526.2-10j2.12.0.les%3B..0.0...1c.Uprw7ko7jnU&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=97577626a0fb6a97&biw=1920&bih=936
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irvingw1 -
Duplicate Content / 301 redirect Ariticle issue
Hello, We've got some articles floating around on our site nlpca(dot)com like this article: http://www.nlpca.com/what-is-dynamic-spin-release.html that's is not linked to from anywhere else. The article exists how it's supposed to be here: http://www.dynamicspinrelease.com/what-is-dsr/ (our other website) Would it be safe in eyes of both google's algorithm (as much as you know) and with Panda to just 301 redirect from http://www.nlpca.com/what-is-dynamic-spin-release.html to http://www.dynamicspinrelease.com/what-is-dsr/ or would no-indexing be better? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Duplicate content on sub-domains?
I have 2 subdamains intented for 2 different countries (Colombia and Venezuela) ve.domain.com and co.domain.com. The site it's an e-commerce with over a million products available so they have the same page with the same content on both sub-domains....the only differences are the prices a payment options. Does google take that as duplicate content? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daniel.alvarez0 -
Removing Duplicate Page Content
Since joining SEOMOZ four weeks ago I've been busy tweaking our site, a magento eCommerce store, and have successfully removed a significant portion of the errors. Now I need to remove/hide duplicate pages from the search engines and I'm wondering what is the best way to attack this? Can I solve this in one central location, or do I need to do something in the Google & Bing webmaster tools? Here is a list of duplicate content http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=asc&mode=grid&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=asc&mode=list&order=name
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveMaguire
http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=asc&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=desc&mode=grid&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=desc&mode=list&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?dir=desc&order=name http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?mode=grid http://www.unitedbmwonline.com/?mode=list Thanks in advance, Steve0