Glossary index and individual pages create duplicate content. How much might this hurt me?
-
I've got a glossary on my site with an index page for each letter of the alphabet that has a definition. So the M section lists every definition (the whole definition).
But each definition also has its own individual page (and we link to those pages internally so the user doesn't have to hunt down the entire M page).
So I definitely have duplicate content ... 112 instances (112 terms). Maybe it's not so bad because each definition is just a short paragraph(?)
How much does this hurt my potential ranking for each definition? How much does it hurt my site overall?
Am I better off making the individual pages no-index? or canonicalizing them?
-
Thanks, Ryan!
-
From here: http://moz.com/messages/write to Dirk's username: DC1611. There used to be a button in profiles, but it looks like it got shuffled in the redesign.
-
PM? Does Moz offer that function?
-
It's a bit difficult to assess which of the pages is more important without knowing the site. Having a lot of content is good - but if the only link between the content is that they all start with the same letter it could be pretty weak or pretty strong depending on the situation:
I'll give 2 examples :
Suppose that the index is on First names starting with S - in this case this page is a valuable one because a lot of people are searching for it - and the search volume is potentially bigger than the number of people that are looking for first name steve (= one specific item)
Suppose the index is about Illnesses starting with S - in this case the index page has very little value for a searcher, because people are searching illnesses based the symptoms -the fact that illnesses start with S doesn't link them together.
It could be helpful if you send me the actual url's via PM if you don't want to disclose them here.
rgds
Dirk
-
Oops. Sorry. Poor wording there. Meant to say ...
Definitely not concerned that the M index page and the M* definition** page BOTH show up in the search results.
We definitely do want at least one of the pages to not only show up in the rankings, but to rank highly. I'm guessing the M index page would actually have a chance of ranking high because it will have so many long tails related to our short-tail.
But it would seem weird to put a no-index on the M* definition** page ... since we have multiple internal links to those pages.
Thanks again for your patience. Really appreciate the feedback.
Steve
-
That's exactly what I am saying - your index page with all the definitions is from Google perspective completely different from the detailed definition page (the first one being much richer in content than the 2nd one). If getting these pages ranked is the least of concerns - you can keep it as it is. If you want to play on the safe side, you can put a noindex on the index page.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Just having a bit of a dilemma. Trying to make it easier for people who come to the glossary and then go to ... say ... the M page. Don't have to keep clicking away to see the definitions. Result: More user-friendly
But we also want to have a very specific definition page so that when we link from an article to the definition, the user doesn't have to see all of the M definitions. Result: More user-friendly.
Definitely not concerned that both the M index page and the M* definition** page show up in the search results. That would actually be swell. Just more concerned that our overall site ranking or domain authority will somehow suffer.
If you're saying that the M index page and the M* page** are dramatically different (because the M index page is much, much longer) and so I shouldn't worry, that's great. (Hope that's what you're saying.)
Thanks!
-
Hi,
As far as I understand it's not really a question of duplicate content in the SEO meaning. Although all the definitions starting with M are on the M-index page this page is quite different to the pages that contain the individual definitions of the terms that start with M.
A problem on many sites is that the pages that only contain the explanation of one term are very light in terms of content, and that the page with is listing all these terms is generally not very interesting from a user (and search perspective). I don't know your site, so difficult to assess if this is the case
You could make the index page noindex/follow - and just list the terms, linking to the explanation pages. For the explanation pages which are probably the most interesting for users & search engines: try to enrich them by adding more content, like links to articles on your site that use the term, or have more information on the term
Hope this helps,
Dirk
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
-
Content Strategy/Duplicate Content Issue, rel=canonical question
Hi Mozzers: We have a client who regularly pays to have high-quality content produced for their company blog. When I say 'high quality' I mean 1000 - 2000 word posts written to a technical audience by a lawyer. We recently found out that, prior to the content going on their blog, they're shipping it off to two syndication sites, both of which slap rel=canonical on them. By the time the content makes it to the blog, it has probably appeared in two other places. What are some thoughts about how 'awful' a practice this is? Of course, I'm arguing to them that the ranking of the content on their blog is bound to be suffering and that, at least, they should post to their own site first and, if at all, only post to other sites several weeks out. Does anyone have deeper thinking about this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Google indexing only 1 page out of 2 similar pages made for different cities
We have created two category pages, in which we are showing products which could be delivered in separate cities. Both pages are related to cake delivery in that city. But out of these two category pages only 1 got indexed in google and other has not. Its been around 1 month but still only Bangalore category page got indexed. We have submitted sitemap and google is not giving any crawl error. We have also submitted for indexing from "Fetch as google" option in webmasters. www.winni.in/c/4/cakes (Indexed - Bangalore page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_blr_cakes.xml) 2. http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 (Not indexed - Hyderabad page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_hyd_cakes.xml) I tried searching for "hyderabad site:www.winni.in" in google but there also http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 this link is not coming, instead of this only www.winni.in/c/4/cakes is coming. Can anyone please let me know what could be the possible issue with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abhihan0 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content (with and without www)
How can we resolve pages with duplicate page content? With and without www?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | directiq
Thanks in advance.0 -
Google is indexing the wrong pages
I have been having problems with Google indexing my website since mid May. I haven't made any changes to my website which is wordpress. I have a page with the title 'Peterborough Cathedral wedding', I search Google for 'wedding Peteborough Cathedral', this is not a competitive search phrase and I'd expect to find my blog post on page one. Instead, half way down page 4 I find Google has indexed www.weddingphotojournalist.co.uk/blog with the title 'wedding photojournalist | Portfolio', what google has indexed is a link to the blog post and not the blog post itself. I repeated this for several other blog posts and keywords and found similar results, most of which don't make any sense at all - A search for 'Menorca wedding photography' used to bring up one of my posts at the top of page one. Now it brings up a post titled 'La Mare wedding photography Jersey" which happens to have a link to the Menorca post at the bottom of the page. A search for 'Broadoaks country house weddng photography' brings up 'weddingphotojournalist | portfolio' which has a link to the Broadoaks post. a search for 'Blake Hall wedding photography' does exactly the same. In this case Google is linking to www.weddingphotojournalist.blog again, this is a page of recent blog posts. Could this be a problem with my sitemap? Or the Yoast SEO plugin? or a problem with my wordpress theme? Or is Google just a bit confused?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | weddingphotojournalist0 -
Site been plagiarised - duplicate content
Hi, I look after two websites, one sells commercial mortgages the other sells residential mortgages. We recently redesigned both sites, and one was moved to a new domain name as we rebranded it from being a trading style of the other brand to being a brand in its own right. I have recently discovered that one of my most important pages on the residential mortgages site is not in Google's index. I did a bit of poking around with Copyscape and found another broker has copied our page almost word-for-word. I then used copyscape to find all the other instances of plagiarism on the other broker's site and there are a few! It now looks like they have copied pages from our commercial mortgages site as well. I think the reason our page has been removed from the index is that we relaunced both these sites with new navigation and consequently new urls. Can anyone back me up on this theory? I am 100% sure that our page is the original version because we write everything in-house and I check it with copyscape before it gets published, Also the fact that this other broker has copied from several different sites corroborates this view. Our legal team has written two letters (not sent yet) - one to the broker and the other to the broker's web designer. These letters ask the recipient to remove the copied content within 14 days. If they do remove our content from our site, how do I get Google to reindex our pages, given that Google thinks OUR pages are the copied ones and not the other way around? Does anyone have any experience with this? Or, will it just happen automatically? I have no experience of this scenario! In the past, where I've found duplicate content like this, I've just rewritten the page, and chalked it up to experience but I don't really want to in this case because, frankly, the copy on these pages is really good! And, I don't think it's fair that someone else could potentially be getting customers that were persuaded by OUR copy. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Amelia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommT0 -
Duplicate pages with http and https
Hi all, We changed the payment part of our site to https from http a while ago. However once on the https pages, all the footer and header links are relative URLs, so once users have reached the payment pages and then re-navigate back to other pages in our website they stay on https. The build up of this happening has led to Google indexing all our pages in https (something we did not want to happen), and now we are in the situation where our homepage listing on Google is https rather than http. We would prefer the organic listings to be http (rather than https) and having read lots on this (included the great posts on the moz (still feels odd not refering to it as seomoz!) blog around this subject), possible solutions include redirects or a canoncial tags. My additional questions around these options are: 1. We already have 2 redirects on some pages (long story), will another one negatively impact our rankings? 2. Is a canonical a strong enough hint to Google to stop Google indexing the https versions of these page to the extent that out http pages will appear in natural listings again? If anyone has any other suggestions or other ideas of how to address this issue, that would be great! Thanks 🙂 Diana
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Indexed Pages in Google, How do I find Out?
Is there a way to get a list of pages that google has indexed? Is there some software that can do this? I do not have access to webmaster tools, so hoping there is another way to do this. Would be great if I could also see if the indexed page is a 404 or other Thanks for your help, sorry if its basic question 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0 -
The system shows duplicate content for the same page (main domain and index.html). Is this an error of SEOMOZ?
Should I be worried that this will affect SEO? Most sites redirect to the index.html page, right? [edited by staff to remove toolbar data]
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moskowman0