Tags, Categories, & Duplicate Content
-
Looking for some advice on a duplicate content issue that we're having that definitely isn't unique to us.
See, we are allowing all our tag and category pages, as well as our blog pagination be indexed and followed, but Moz is detecting that all as duplicate content, which is obvious since it is the same content that is on our blog posts.
We've decided in the past to keep these pages the way they are as it hasn't seemed to hurt us specifically and we hoped it would help our overall ranking. We haven't seen positive or negative signals either way, just the warnings from Moz.
We are wondering if we should noindex these pages and if that could cause a positive change, but we're worried it might cause a big negative change as well.
Have you confronted this issue? What did you decide and what were the results?
Thanks in advance!
-
Erica, Thank you for sticking with this and continuing to share your thoughts. It's very helpful and much appreciated!
-
Thanks Erica.
We're deindexing the tags pages for now and going to see what happens. If all goes well, we might deindex the category pages as well.
Thanks!
-
EGOL is definitely correct that those pages can hold a ton of value if a brand/company has the time/resources/bandwidth to optimize them. Most don't, so it's better to noindex than have duplicate and/or thin content category pages. But if you can and will optimize, do it!
-
That makes sense. But I really want to make sure I (and others) understand because of EGOL's earlier referenced comments (June 2011).
"If I kept my category pages out of the search indexes I would be walking away from hundreds of search engine visitors per minute.
Do analytics to see how much traffic is coming into these pages from search, who is linking to them, how much revenue they earn and also consider their future traffic potential.
Its not good to follow generalized advice blindly." and (February 2012) ...
"I have two wordpress blogs and category pages are where most of my search engine traffic enters. Some bring in thousands per month. Most of my post pages bring in very little traffic.
If you are not having any problem with duplicate content at present maybe it would be a good idea to allow indexing of the main page, the post pages and the category pages. They if you do have a duplicate content problem you can remove from the index the pages that bring in the least amount of traffic."
So is the key then, ensuring the category pages contain unique content in addition to whatever else is on the category pages? I would have thought the mere fact that you're creating a unique combination of unique content by the grouping excerpts from identically tagged posts might have been enough. That content would also get updated each time a new post gets published.
I'd appreciate your thoughts on this Erica.
-
You can either choose to deindex pages one by one or deindex the whole subfolder.
Since usually category pages have the same content as or a preview of the content on your other pages, this doesn't affect your long tail traffic as that traffic will go to the other pages. Usually the problem with category pages is that the content's thin or duplicate. Now, you can make content just for category pages and keep them to drive traffic to. I worked in e-commerce pre-Moz and we wanted to rank/land people on category pages, such as women's shirts, and made unique, solid content for those page.
-
This is certainly what we've heard and it's good to hear of a real case where you went from indexing to noindexing. My bet is that we would have the same result, my hope is that we would have an increase over time, and my fear is that we'll have a decrease.
-
We do upgrade our blog twice a week and keep a pretty good spread across our categories and tags.
The hope is that we'll have the boost you mentioned, in long-tail and whatnot, but the fear is that it could hurt us (like Erica mentioned above).
Like Erica, we haven't seen any negativity, but we wonder if we're being affected without even knowing it and by setting them to noindex we could potentially get a boost. It's a dream, we just don't want the opposite to happen.
-
Erica, shouldn't the decision to noindex category pages be done on a case-by-case basis? If the blog has few posts, or if posts aren't updated frequently, then the chance of category pages being viewed as thin increases and it would make sense to noindex them.
If, on the other hand:
- category pages have different content from that of the main blog page;
- the main blog and category pages use excerpts;
- tag, archive and author pages are noindexed;
- and frequent updates;
doesn't it then make a case to index category pages? They can be a rich source of long-tail keywords and therefore a good draw for new entrants to the site as explained in this earlier Q&A post.
-
It's highly recommend that you noindex category, tag, archives, and author pages in WordPress. (I assume you're using WP; though there are many similar blogging platforms out there.) The reason is because these pages come across as thin and/or duplicate content, and you are risking getting hit by Panda. Now that doesn't always happen. My own personal blog had these pages indexed for a very long time, and I didn't have any problems. But I also didn't seen any problems when I did deindex them. But I don't get a ton of traffic, and I'm sure traffic to, popularity of site, and competitive nature all factor into Google's radar.
-
Hi Bradjn, With duplicate content i would go for the use of canonicals. Give the original page and its duplicates the same cannonical url, so searchengines will know what's the original and (most of the time) won't see it as duplicate.
Here some more about duplicate content and also canonicals: http://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content
I can't give you a good answer about using noindex or this wil be a positive change. Did you check in webmastertools about duplicates? or only MOZ?
Grtz, Leonie
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
-
Categories VS Tag Duplicate Content
Hello Moz community, I have a question about categories and tags . Our customer www.elshow.pe just had a redesign of its website. We use the same categories listed before . The only change was that two sub categories were added ( these sub-categories were popular tags before ) .Then now I have 2 URL's covering the same content: The first is the URL of the subcategory : www.elshow.pe/realitys/combate/ The second is the URL that is generated by the tag "combate" that is www.elshow.pe/noticias/combate/ I have the same with the second sub category: "Esto es guerra" www.elshow.pe/realitys/esto-es-guerra/ www.elshow.pe/noticias/esto-es-guerra/ The problem is when I search the keyword "combate" in my country (Perú), the URL that positions is the tag URL in 1st page. But, when I search for "esto es guerra" the URL that positions is the **sub category **in the second page. I also check in OSE both links and sub categories goes better than tags. So what do you guys recommend for this? 301 redirect? canonicals? Any coment is welcome. Thanks a lot for your time. Italo,
Technical SEO | | neoconsulting
@italominano WmzlklG.png 1RKcoX8.png0 -
Duplicate content through product variants
Hi, Before you shout at me for not searching - I did and there are indeed lots of threads and articles on this problem. I therefore realise that this problem is not exactly new or unique. The situation: I am dealing with a website that has 1 to N (n being between 1 and 6 so far) variants of a product. There are no dropdown for variants. This is not technically possible short of a complete redesign which is not on the table right now. The product variants are also not linked to each other but share about 99% of content (obvious problem here). In the "search all" they show up individually. Each product-variant is a different page, unconnected in backend as well as frontend. The system is quite limited in what can be added and entered - I may have some opportunity to influence on smaller things such as enabling canonicals. In my opinion, the optimal choice would be to retain one page for each product, the base variant, and then add dropdowns to select extras/other variants. As that is not possible, I feel that the best solution is to canonicalise all versions to one version (either base variant or best-selling product?) and to offer customers a list at each product giving him a direct path to the other variants of the product. I'd be thankful for opinions, advice or showing completely new approaches I have not even thought of! Kind Regards, Nico
Technical SEO | | netzkern_AG0 -
GWT Duplicate Content and Canonical Tag - Annoying
Hello everyone! I run an e-commerce site and I had some problems with duplicate meta descriptions for product pages. I implemented the rel=canonical in order to address this problem, but after more than a week the number of errors showing in google webmaster tools hasn't changed and the site has been crawled already three times since I put the rel canonical. I didn't change any description as each error regards a set of pages that are identical, same products, same descriptions just different length/colour. I am pretty sure the rel=canonical has been implemented correctly so I can't understand why I still have these errors coming up. Any suggestions? Cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
How to solve Parameter Issue causing Duplicate Content
Hi everyone, My site home page comes up in SERP with following url www.sitename/?referer=indiagrid My question is:- Should I disallow using robots.txt.? or 301 redirect to the home page Other issue is i have few dynamic generated URL's for a form http://www.www.sitename/career-form.php?position=SEO Executive I am using parameter "position" in URL Parameter in GWT. But still my pages are indexed that is leading to duplicate page content. Please help me out.
Technical SEO | | himanshu3019890 -
Duplicate Content - Just how killer is it?
Yesterday I received my ranking report and was extremely disappointed that my high-priority pages dropped in rank for a second week in a row for my targeted keywords. This is after running them through the gradecard and getting As for each of them on the keywords I wanted. I looked at my google webmaster tools and saw new duplicate content pages listed, which were the ones I had just modified to get my keyword targeting better. In my hastiness to work on getting the keyword usage up, I neglected to prevent these descriptions from coming up when viewing the page with filter parameters, sort parameters and page parameters... so google saw these descriptions as duplicate content (since myurl.html and myurl.html?filter=blah are seen as different). So my question: is this the likely culprit for some pretty drastic hits to ranking? I've fixed this now, but are there any ways to prevent this in the future? (I know _of _canonical tags, but have never used them, and am not sure if this applies in this situation) Thanks! EDIT: One thing I forgot to ask as well: has anyone inflicted this upon themselves? And how long did it take you to recover?
Technical SEO | | Ask_MMM0 -
How do I get rid of duplicate content
I have a site that is new but I managed to get it to page one. Now when I scan it on SEO Moz I see that I have duplicate content. Ex: www.mysite.com, www.mysite.com/index and www.mysite.com/ How do I fix this without jeopardizing my SERPS ranking? Any tips?
Technical SEO | | bronxpad0 -
Duplicate Page Titles and Content
I have a site that has a lot of contact modules. So basically each section/page has a contact person and when you click the contact button it brings up a new window with form to submit and then ends with a thank you page. All of the contact and thank you pages are showing up as duplicate page titles and content. Is this something that needs to be fixed even if I am not using them to target keywords?
Technical SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
Noindex duplicate content penalty?
We know that google now gives a penalty to a whole duplicate if it finds content it doesn't like or is duplicate content, but has anyone experienced a penalty from having duplicate content on their site which they have added noindex to? Would google still apply the penalty to the overall quality of the site even though they have been told to basically ignore the duplicate bit. Reason for asking is that I am looking to add a forum to one of my websites and no one likes a new forum. I have a script which can populate it with thousands of questions and answers pulled direct from Yahoo Answers. Obviously the forum wil be 100% duplicate content but I do not want it to rank for anyway anyway so if I noindex the forum pages hopefully it will not damage the rest of the site. In time, as the forum grows, all the duplicate posts will be deleted but it's hard to get people to use an empty forum so need to 'trick' them into thinking the section is very busy.
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0