Pages with near duplicate content
-
Hi Mozzers,
I need your opinion on the following. Imagine that we have a product X (brand Sony for example), so if we sell parts for different models of items of this product X, we then have numerous product pages with model number.
Sony camera
parts for Sony Camera XYZ
parts for Sony Camera XY
etc.
So the thing is that these pages are very very similar, like 90% duplicate and they do duplicate pages for Panasonic, Canon let's say with small tweaks in content. I know that those are duplicates and I would experiment removing a category for one brand only (least seached for), but at the same time I cannot remove for the rest as they convert a lot, being close to the search query of the customer (customer looks for parts for Sony XYZ, lands on the page and buys, insteading of staying on a page for Sony parts where should additionally browse for model number). What would you advise to make as unique as possible these pages, I am thinking about:
-
change page titles. meta descriptions
-
tweak the content as much as I can (very difficult, there is nothing fancy or different in those :(()
-
i will start with top top pages that really drive traffic first and see how it goes. I will remove least visited pages and prominently put the model number in Sony parts page to see how it goes in terms of organic and most importantly conversions
Any other ideas? I am really concerned about dupes and a penalty, but I try to think of solutions in order not to kill conversions at this point.
Have a lovely Monday
-
-
I would disagree that this does no harm. If you are targeting the keyword "Sony" for example, it loses relevancy the more you have it dispersed throughout your site with duplicate content. Matt Cutts has a great video here, http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-duplicate-content-wont-hurt-you-unless-it-is-spammy-167459 where he discusses this. If any of those duplicate pages have keywords, you are losing ranking opportunities.
Have you thought about adding a reviews system to those pages? That helped me a lot with all of the parts and accessories I have on my site. I also started putting them on the main pages to build some prioritization. For example:
My Generator Page: Includes the Generator, then displays the accessory and parts pages. I allow my users to add them to the cart from this page in order to focus the traffic in one location. This has helped my main pages and and my accessory pages.
I added reviews to the parts pages and then helpful tidbits of information where I could. Such as maintenance schedules, how to articles and any other topic I could think of that would be helpful to someone looking for those parts and accessories.
-
In multiple conversations with Google's John Mueller we have discussed this matter. There is NO penalty for internal duplicate content, if its unique to your site then you have nothing to worry about, especially if it is there for genuine reasons.
What John suggests is to focus on top level pages and try to cover the main details on those pages creating on great page to capture the traffic and funnel them down to other pages if need be. If that works you could effectively noindex the other pages.
There is nothing wrong with the way you have it if its genuine and serves a purpose and works in Google. It is always good to add more useful content if you can.
If however its dup content from other sites then I would really make sure you have your own unique content to add.
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
When I say duplicate content, I don't mean that the content on a clients site is displaying on another site on the web or taken from a site on the web. A client has a few product pages and each product page has content on the bottom of the page (4-5 paragraphs) describing the product. Now, this content is also displaying on other pages, but re-worded so it's not 100% duplicate. Some pages show a duplicate content % ranging from 12% to 35% and maybe 40%. Just curious if I should suggest having each product page less than 10% duplicated. Thanks for your help.
On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Dynamic links & duplicate content
Hi there, I am putting a proposal together for a client whose website has been optimised to include many dynamic links and so there are many pages with duplicate content: only the page title, h1 and URL is different. My client thinks this isn't an issue. What is the current consensus on this? Many thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | lorraine.mcconechy0 -
Duplicate Content on Event Pages
My client has a pretty popular service of event listings and, in hope of gathering more events, they opened up the platform to allow users to add events. This works really well for them and they are able to garner a lot more events this way. The major problem I'm finding is that many event coordinators and site owners will take the copy from their website and copy and paste it, duplicating a lot of the content. We have editor picks that contain a lot of unique content but the duplicate content scares me. It hasn't hurt our page ranking (we have a page ranking of 7) but I'm wondering if this is something that we should address. We don't have the manpower to eliminate all the duplication but if we cut down the duplication would we experience a significant advantage over people posting the same event?
On-Page Optimization | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
I have a question about having to much content on a single page. Please help :)
I am working on a music related site. We are building a feature in our system to allow people to write information about songs on their playlist. So when a song is currently being played a user can read some cool facts or information about the song. http://imgur.com/5jFumPW ( screenshot). Some playlists have over 100 songs and could be completely random in genre and artist. I am wondering if some of these playlists have over 5,000 words of content if that is going to hurt us? We will be very strict about making sure its non spammy and good content. Also for the titles of the content is it bad to have over 100 h3 tags on one page? Just want to make sure we are on the right track. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | mikecrib10 -
Home Page Content
Hello. i'm optimizing this website, > home page for one keyword phrase and i was wondering how many words article do i need with that keyword?and if i need it at all? as you can see if i add some content on my home page before the slider, it will ruin the look of the website, What is the right way to do it? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | KentR0 -
Recommended Length for a Companies "Services" Page Content
I am in the process of revamping my company's website. I do WordPress Development, Design, and SEO consulting, and i'm running into a sort of writer's block when wring my services pages. For example, my page on WordPress Security has 388 words of "body" content, and I feel from a content perspective, it serves it's purpose, but from an SEO perspective it is considered a little light. I really don't know what the SOP is here, because, I've literally seen competitors sites have a page on "WordPress Security" rank on the first page of Google with absolutely no content, an empty page. I see a lot of the Moz posts are huge, thosands of words, and I know they perform very well (and they also have ton's of links / PR...etc) and I just want to do the right thing. I know sites like http://www.seerinteractive.com/our-services/search-engine-optimization have relatively short info pages as well. Thanks in advance for your feedback. Zachary Russell President, ProTech Internet Group
On-Page Optimization | | Zachary_Russell0 -
How to avoid duplicate page content
I have over 5.000 duplicate page content because my urls contains ?district=1&sort=&how=ASC¤cy=EUR. How can I fix this?
On-Page Optimization | | bruki0 -
Duplicate page titles
We have search results pages on our site. They share the same page title, there is no real differentiator between the result pages, other than page 1, page 2 etc. How do we de-dup the titles? just add page 1/2/3 etc to the end of them?
On-Page Optimization | | lilibooz0