Duplicate content issue
-
Hello! We have a lot of duplicate content issues on our website. Most of the pages with these issues are dictionary pages (about 1200 of them). They're not exactly duplicate, but they contain a different word with a translation, picture and audio pronunciation (example http://anglu24.lt/zodynas/a-suitcase-lagaminas). What's the better way of solving this? We probably shouldn't disallow dictionary pages in robots.txt, right?
Thanks!
-
No problem!
-
Thanks for the help!
-
Adding nofollow to links that point to dictionary pages will prevent search engines from getting there, but since the pages are in the index (and you don't want to change that) you're still facing the duplicate content issue.
I know it's a huge project to take on to add content to these pages, but it seems as though it's your only option. Perhaps you could split the project up between a few people and each update one page per day. That way it doesn't turn into a major time-suck.
-
Got it. We actually have plenty of organic entrances to these pages. So rel=canonical is not an option here.
And one more thing. Does it make sense to add nofollow links internally to main dictionary page(http://anglu24.lt/zodynas)? What are downsides of that? Or the negative effect might be similar to rel=canonical in our case?
-
You can do that, but you should check Google Analytics to see how many organic entrances you get to these dictionary pages first. If a lot of people enter your site that way, rel=canonical is going to hurt your traffic numbers significantly. For example, when you add a canonical tag to this page (http://anglu24.lt/zodynas/a-suitcase-lagaminas) that points elsewhere, the suitcase page is going to get dropped from the index.
-
Thanks for the suggestion. Adding more content is the perfect way to deal with this. The downside for us is that we unfortunately don't have resources at the time to make such upgrades to 1000+ pages.
What about using rel=canonical? Is it possible to choose one dictionary page to be the original, and to tell Google that all the other ones are similar thus avoiding possible penalties? How would this work?
-
The ideal situation would be to create more unique content on these pages. You're getting duplicate errors because more than 90% of the source code on the dictionary pages is a match. When you consider the header and footer, and the other code for the template, it's the same everywhere. The dictionary pages are very thin on content, so it's not enough to differentiate. If you can, build out the content more.
Here's a few ways you might add more content to each dictionary page:
- Include a sentence (or 2) for in-context example of each word
- Game-ify it by writing a short paragraph of text where the translated word is blank and the user has to choose from a set of answers
- Add the phonetics for how to pronounce each word
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
-
Semi-duplicate content yet authoritative site
So I have 5 real estate sites. One of those sites is of course the original, and it has more/better content on most of the pages than the other sites. I used to be top ranked for all of the subdivsion names in my town. Then when I did the next 2-4 sites, I had some sites doing better than others for certain keywords, and then I have 3 of those sites that are basically the same URL structures (besides the actual domain) and they aren't getting fed very many visits. I have a couple of agents that work with me that I loaned my sites to to see if that would help since it would be a different name. My same youtube video is on each of the respective subdivision pages of my site and theirs. Also, their content is just rewritten content from mine about the same length of content. I have looked over and seen a few of my competitors who only have one site and their URL structures arent good at all, and their content isn't good at all and a good bit of their pages rank higher than my main site which is very frustrating to say the least since they are actually copy cats to my site. I sort of started the precedent of content, mapping the neighborhood, how far that subdivision is from certain landmarks, and then shot a video of each. They have pretty much done the same thing and are now ahead of me. What sort of advice could you give me? Right now, I have two sites that are almost duplicate in terms of a template and same subdivsions although I did change the content the best I could, and that site is still getting pretty good visits. I originally did it to try and dominate the first page of the SERPS and then Penguin and Panda came out and seemed to figure that game out. So now, I would still like to keep all the sites, but I'm assuming that would entail making them all unique, which seems to be tough seeing as though my town has the same subdivisions. Curious as to what the suggestions would be, as I have put a lot of time into these sites. If I post my site will it show up in the SERPS? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Veebs0 -
Could this be seen as duplicate content in Google's eyes?
Hi I'm an in-house SEO and we've recently seen Panda related traffic loss along with some of our main keywords slipping down the SERPs. Looking for possible Panda related issues I was wondering if the following could be seen as duplicate content. We've got some very similar holidays (travel company) on our website. While they are different I'm concerned it may be seen as creating content that is too similar: http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays/the-wildlife-and-beaches-of-kenya.aspx http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays/ultimate-kenya-wildlife-and-beaches.aspx http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays/wildlife-and-beach-family-safari.aspx They do all have unique text but as you can see from the titles, they are very similar (note from an SEO point of view the tabbed content is all within the same page at source level). At the top level of the holiday pages we have a filtered search:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KateWaite
http://www.naturalworldsafaris.com/destinations/africa-and-the-indian-ocean/kenya/suggested-holidays.aspx These pages have a unique introduction but the content snippets being pulled into the boxes is drawn from each of the individual holiday pages. I'm just concerned that these could be introducing some duplicating issues. Any thoughts?0 -
Is legacy duplicate content an issue?
I am looking for some proof, or at least evidence to whether or not sites are being hurt by duplicate content. The situation is, that there were 4 content rich newspaper/magazine style sites that were basically just reskins of each other. [ a tactic used under a previous regime 😉 ] The least busy of the sites has since been discontinued & 301d to one of the others, but the traffic was so low on the discontinued site as to be lost in noise, so it is unclear if that was any benefit. Now for the last ~2 years all the sites have had unique content going up, but there are still the archives of articles that are on all 3 remaining sites, now I would like to know whether to redirect, remove or rewrite the content, but it is a big decision - the number of duplicate articles? 263,114 ! Is there a chance this is hurting one or more of the sites? Is there anyway to prove it, short of actually doing the work?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Fammy0 -
Joomla Duplicate Page content fix for mailto component?
Hi, I am currently working on my site and have the following duplicate page content issues: My Uni Essays http://www.myuniessays.co.uk/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&template=it_university&link=2631849e33 My Uni Essays http://www.myuniessays.co.uk/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&template=it_university&link=2edd30f8c6 This happens 15 times Any ideas on how to fix this please? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grays01800 -
Duplicate content throughout multiple URLs dilemma
We have a website with lots of categories and there are problems that some subcategories have identical content on them. So, is it enough to just add different text on those problematic subcategories or we need to use "canonical" tag to main category. Same dilemma is with our search system and duplicate content. For example, "/category/sports" URL would have similar to identical content with "/search/sports" and "/search/sports-fitness/" URLs. Ranking factors is important for all different categories and subcategories. Ranking factors is also important for search individual keywords. So, the question is, how to make them somehow unique/different to rank on all those pages well? Would love to hear advices how it can be solved using different methods and how it would affect our rankings. When we actually need to use "canonical" tag and when 301 redirect is better. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | versliukai0 -
Get Duplicate Page content for same page with different extension ?
I have added a campaign like "Bannerbuzz" in SEOMOZ Pro account and before 2 or 3 days i got errors related to duplicate page content . they are showing me same page with different extension. As i mentioned below http://www.bannerbuzz.com/outdoor-vinyl-banners.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit
&
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/outdoor_vinyl_banner.php We checked our whole source files but we didn't define php related urls in our source code. we want to catch only our .html related urls. so, Can you please guide us to solve this issue ? Thanks <colgroup><col width="857"></colgroup>
| http://www.bannerbuzz.com/outdoor-vinyl-banners.html |0 -
Which duplicate content should I remove?
I have duplicate content and am trying to figure out which URL to remove. What should I take into consideration? Authority? How close to the root the page is? How clear the path is? Would appreciate your help! Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ocularis0 -
Should I do something about this duplicate content? If so, what?
On our real estate site we have our office listings displayed. The listings are generated from a scraping script that I wrote. As such, all of our listings have the exact same description snippet as every other agent in our office. The rest of the page consists of site-wide sidebars and a contact form. The title of the page is the address of the house and so is the H1 tag. Manually changing the descriptions is not an option. Do you think it would help to have some randomly generated stuff on the page such as "similar listings"? Any other ideas? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0