Duplicate Content For Product Alternative listing
-
Hi
I have a tricky one here. cloudswave is a directory of products and we are launching new pages called Alternatives to Product X
This page displays 10 products that are an alternative to product X (Page A)
Lets say now you want to have the alternatives to a similar product within the same industry, product Y (Page B), you will have 10 product alternatives, but this page will be almost identical to Page A as the products are in similar and in the same industry. Maybe one to two products will differ in the 2 listings.
Now even SEO tags are different, aren't those two pages considered duplicate content? What are your suggestions to avoid this problem?
thank you guys
-
Thank you Andy
Had the same conclusion actually, was hoping their could be a magical trick
Thanks anyways for your feedback
-
I see - and you are absolutely correct that a canonical here wouldn't be advisable.
The two pages are very similar with just the one product being changed, so I would try to add additional content in there or re-write other aspects so that this doesn't become an issue.
There isn't a 'trick' to get around what you are trying to do here. Two different products and two sets of page titles targeting different keywords. Keep each page as unique and content-rich as possible,
-Andy
-
And yes pages are built automatically, and there are so many pages that it would be very difficult to create unique content for each one of them.
-
Hello! Are the pages being built manually or automatically? How many pages are you talking about? If they are being made manually and there are not too many you can include unique text about the products and the choices. The way I would do it would be to minimise the duplication of text and instead try to list the products using images with minimal text to reduce the duplication issue. It clearly isn't going to be in the interest of the user to have multiple pages which which consist predominantly of very similar lists and little else. Each list and page needs to be significantly different in order to offer value to the user and so as not to be hit for duplicate content. Good luck!
-
I think I know what you are saying, and by the sounds of it, if you rel=canonical page 2 to page 1, this should circumvent any duplication issues.
If I have understood
-Andy
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
-
Different language with direct translation: duplicate content, meta?
For a site that does NOT want a separate subdomain, or directory, or TLD for a country/language would the directly translated page (static) content/meta be duplicate? (NOT considering a translation of the term/acronym which could exist in another language) i.e. /SEO-city-state in English vs. /SEO-city-state Spanish -In this example a term/acronym that is the same in any language. Outside of duplicate content, are their other conflict potentials in rankings you can think of?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bozzie3110 -
Geographic site clones and duplicate content penalties
We sell wedding garters, niche I know! We have a site (weddinggarterco.com) that ranks very well in the UK and sell a lot to the USA despite it's rudimentary currency functions (Shopify makes US customers checkout in £gbp; not helpful to conversions). To improve this I built a clone (theweddinggarterco.com) and have faked a kind of location selector top right. Needless to say a lot of content on this site is VERY similar to the UK version. My questions are... 1. Is this likely to stop me ranking the USA site? 2. Is this likely to harm my UK rankings? Any thoughts very welcome! Thanks. Mat
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mat20150 -
Duplicate Content Pages - A Few Queries..
I am working through the latest Moz Crawl Report and focusing on the 'high priority' issues of Duplicate Page Content. There are some strange instances being flagged and so wondered whether anyone has any knowledge as to why this may be happening... Here is an example; This page; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/destinations/cruise-breaks-&-british-isles/bruges/ ...is apparently duplicated with these pages; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/guides/excursions http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/guides/cruises-from-the-uk http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-deals/norwegian-star-europe-cruise-deals Not sure why...? Also, pages that are on our 'Cruise Reviews' section such as this page; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/cruise-reviews/p&o-cruises/adonia/cruising/931 ...are being flagged as duplicated content with a page like this; http://www.bolsovercruiseclub.com/destinations/cruise-breaks-&-british-isles/bilbao/ Is this a 'thin content' issue i.e. 2 pages have 'thin content' and are therefore duplicated? If so, the 'destinations' page can (and will be) rewritten with more content (and images) but the 'cruise reviews' are written by customers and so we are unable to do anything there... Hope that all makes sense?! Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomKing0 -
Canonical Vs No Follow for Duplicate Products
I am in the process of migrating a site from Volusion to BigCommerce. There is a limitation on the ability to display one product in 2 different ways. Here is the situation. One of the manufacturers will not allow us to display products to customers who are not logged in. We have convinced them to let us display the products with no prices. Then we created an Exclusive Contractor section that will allow users to see the price and be able to purchase the products online. Originally we were going to just direct users to call to make purchases like our competitors are doing. Because we have a large amount of purchasers online we wanted to manipulate the system to be able to allow online purchases. Since these products will have duplicates with no pricing I was thinking that Canonical tags would be kind of best practice. However, everything will be behind a firewall with a message directing people to log in. Since this will undoubtedly create a high bounce rate I feel like I need to no follow those links. This is a rather large site, over 5000 pages. The 250 no follow URLs most likely won't have a large impact on the overall performance of the site. Or so I hope anyway. My gut tells me if these products are going to technically be hidden from the searcher they should also be hidden from the engines. Does Disallowing these URLs seem like a better way to do this than simply using the Canonical tags? Any thoughts or suggestions would be really helpful!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonicaOConnor0 -
Penalized for Similar, But Not Duplicate, Content?
I have multiple product landing pages that feature very similar, but not duplicate, content and am wondering if this would affect my rankings in a negative way. The main reason for the similar content is three-fold: Continuity of site structure across different products Similar, or the same, product add-ons or support options (resulting in exactly the same additional tabs of content) The product itself is very similar with 3-4 key differences. Three examples of these similar pages are here - although I do have different meta-data and keyword optimization through the pages. http://www.1099pro.com/prod1099pro.asp http://www.1099pro.com/prod1099proEnt.asp http://www.1099pro.com/prodW2pro.asp
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stew2220 -
Why are these pages considered duplicate content?
I have a duplicate content warning in our PRO account (well several really) but I can't figure out WHY these pages are considered duplicate content. They have different H1 headers, different sidebar links, and while a couple are relatively scant as far as content (so I might believe those could be seen as duplicate), the others seem to have a substantial amount of content that is different. It is a little perplexing. Can anyone help me figure this out? Here are some of the pages that are showing as duplicate: http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/narrator/Seth+Green/?bioid=5554 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byAuthor/author/Solomon+Northup/?bioid=11758 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/?mediatype=audio+books&bioid=3665 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byAuthor/author/Marcus+Rediker/?bioid=10145 http://www.downpour.com/catalogsearch/advanced/byNarrator/narrator/Robin+Miles/?bioid=2075
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DownPour0 -
Multi-language, multi-country localized website with duplicate content penalty
My company website is multi-language and multi-country. Content created for the Global (English-language only, root directory) site is automatically used when no localization exists for the language and country choice (i.e. Brazil). I'm concerned this may be harming our SEO through dupe content penalties. Can anyone confirm this is possible? Any recommendations on how to solve the issue? Maybe the canonical tag? Thanks very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTreviranus0 -
Duplicate block of text on category listings
Fellows, We are deciding whether we should include our category description on all pages of the category listing - for example; page 1, page 2, page 3... The category description is currently a few paragraphs of text that sits on page 1 of the category only at present. It also includes an image (linked to a large version of it) with appropriate ALT text. Would we benefit from including this introductory text on the rest of the pages in the category? Or should we leave it on the first page only? Would it flag up duplicate signals? Ideas please! Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Peter2640