Thin Content due to Photo Galleries
-
Hi folks,
i've got a question: we have about 3 million image sites with unique URL on our site. All images with a caption are transmitted to Google index, which regards 2/3 of all images.
We are afraid that this could cause some problems due to thin content.
Please take a look at one of our article sites with such a photo gallery: http://goo.gl/hq6bxG
All gallery pics with a caption are indexed: http://goo.gl/gd9TQ6
Do you have any advices how to handle those photo galleries? How should they be flaged for Google? Every pic "noindex" and "canonical"-Tag to the article?
Thx a lot!
Matthias
-
Hi. I wouldn't use "noindex", so images are actually getting into Google's image search etc, but canonical sounds fine.
-
Dear Dimitrii,
thanks for your answer.
We considered your recommended action to create a slider gallery. but as we are looking for a short term solution this is not an option now (we are planning this anyway in the near future).
Can't we optimize our galleries if we take all image sites out of index and set an canonical-tag to the article as show above? Or do you have any advice how to tag our image sites for Google without changing our site structure - for example images with unique caption stay in the index and images without caption are removed out of index?
Thx a lot!
Matthias
-
Hi Matthias,
I agree that the content is pretty thin and that it would probably be better to present them in a slider (check the example from Autobild http://www.autobild.de/bilder/mazda-mx-5-gegen-bw-z4-6937517.html#bild23). While the presentation is quite similar to your presentation - the source contains all the captions & all the images making the content much richer.
From a usability perspective: each image requires the page to reload completely which is not really great.
I imagine that changing the images from separate url's to a slider can be an enormous amount of work. Having thin content / semi duplicate content on your site is not necessarily a cause for punishment (unless with clear malicious intent) - the issue is mainly that these thin pages will not show up in search results. If you are not optimising for image search (which I assume based on the captions you put under the pictures) you could just as well leave them as it (your normal articles look ok on first sight so you have more than just thin content pages).
If you would optimise for images, you should make your captions a little bit more descriptive & longer and you definitely need to change you alt titles (looks too much like keyword stuffing) - you might check this WBF - it's old but not much has changed on Image Search since then (well - at least in Germany as you are still using the "old" type of image search)
rgds,
Dirk
-
Guten morgen, mein freund.
Well, I have questions about your website's structure, which, indeed, can answer your questions. So, what I see is that there is a page with a link to the gallery without any content. Each of the gallery's images is separate page without any content. Of course it's going to be thin content! Is there a reason the website has been structured this way?
What I recommend is either add content, not just caption, to every image of gallery if you wanna keep the way it's structured now, or rebuild website architecture. I'd do it this way:
Page with slider/gallery with description of the gallery, images are not separate pages, but kinda like a carousel or something. Make sure that all images in the same carousel are united by the same subject/event and each image has it's own unique caption. This way you'll combine the same gallery related pages into one, and this page will be not thin, that's for sure.
Hope this helps.
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
-
Geo Targeting Content Question
Hi, all First question here so be gentle, please My question is around geo targeted dynamic content; at the moment we run a .com domain with, for example, an article about running headphones and then at the end - taking up about 40% of the content - is a review of some people can buy, with affiliate links. We have a .co.uk site with the same page about running headphones and then 10 headphones for the UK market. Note: rel alternative is used on the pages to point to each other, therefore (hopefully) removing duplicate content issues. This design works well but it involves having to build links to two pages, in the case of this example. What we are thinking of doing is to just use the .com domain and having the product page of the page served dynamically, ie, people in the UK see UK products and people in US see US products. What are people's thoughts on this technique, please? From my understanding, it wouldn't be any problem with Google for cloaking etc because a googlebot and a human from the same country will see the same content. The site is made in Wordpress and has <....html lang="en-US"> (for the .com) in the header. Would this cause problems for the page ranking in the UK etc? The ultimate goal of doing this would be to reduce link building efforts by halving the number of pages which links would have to be built for. I welcome any feedback. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | TheMuffinMan0 -
Hide mobile content element
Hello, We are optimizing our mobile (responsive) website at this moment and we want to change some elements on the productpage of our webshop in order of rank. This is the outcome of a data analysis which proves a change in rank of order will result in a higher conversion rate. No doubt. By technical limitations there is no other option but duplicating the element 'product description' in the source of the page to be able to show in on the spot on the product page we like to. Because our webshop is responsive we can not just move the element to the right spot for mobile because the tablet and desktop version then will change as well. My question is: will it be a problem for Google if we hide the original element of the product description on mobile pages by using the bootstrap class "hidden-xs" and duplicate it on another spot in the page to show it with the "visible-xs" class? My concern is that this will create duplicate content and hiding content for Google is not particularly good. On the other hand, I think Google is smart enough to understand that this is not to manipulate visitors or rankings, but this is only for a different look of the mobile website. I hope you guys can give me some good advice.
Technical SEO | | MarcelMoz
Thanks in advance.
Marcel0 -
Container Page/Content Page Duplicate Content
My client has a container page on their website, they are using SiteFinity, so it is called a "group page", in which individual pages appear and can be scrolled through. When link are followed, they first lead to the group page URL, in which the first content page is shown. However, when navigating through the content pages, the URL changes. When navigating BACK to the first content page, the URL is that for the content page, but it appears to indexers as a duplicate of the group page, that is, the URL that appeared when first linking to the group page. The client updates this on the regular, so I need to find a solution that will allow them to add more pages, the new one always becoming the top page, without requiring extra coding. For instance, I had considered integrating REL=NEXT and REL=PREV, but they aren't going to keep that up to date.
Technical SEO | | SpokeHQ1 -
Magento Multistore and Duplicate Content
Hey all, I am currently optimizing a Magento Multistore running with two store views (one per language). Now when I switch from one language to another the urls shows: mydomain.de/.../examplepage.html?___store=german&___from_store=english The same page can also be reached by just entering mydomain.de/.../examplepage.html The question is: Does Google consider this as Duplicate Content or it it nothing to worry about? Or should I just do a dynamic 301 redirect from the 1st version to the 2nd? I read about some hacks posted in diferent magento forums but as I am working for a customer I want to avoid hacks. Also setting "Add Store Code to Urls" didn't help.
Technical SEO | | dominator0 -
Is this considered Duplicate Content?
Good Morning, Just wondering if these pages are considered duplicate content? http://goo.gl/t9lkm http://goo.gl/mtfbf Can you please take a look and advise if it is considered duplicate and if so, what should i do to fix... Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Lots of duplicate content warnings
I have a site that says that I have 2,500 warnings. It is a real estate website and of course we use feeds. it says I have a lot of duplicate content. One thing is a page called "Request an appointment" and that is a url for each listing. Since there are 800 listings on my site. How could I solve this problem so that this doesn't show up as duplicate content since I use the same "Request an Appointment" verbeage on each of those? I guess my developer who used php to do it, created a dedicated url to each. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | SeaC0 -
Duplicate Content
Hello All, my first web crawl has come back with a duplicate content warning for www.simodal.com and www.simodal.com/index.htm slightly mystified! thanks paul
Technical SEO | | simodal0 -
Crawl Errors and Duplicate Content
SEOmoz's crawl tool is telling me that I have duplicate content at "www.mydomain.com/pricing" and at "www.mydomain.com/pricing.aspx". Do you think this is just a glitch in the crawl tool (because obviously these two URL's are the same page rather than two separate ones) or do you think this is actually an error I need to worry about? Is so, how do I fix it?
Technical SEO | | MyNet0