How do I fix my portfolio causing duplicate content issues?

[HonestSEOStudio]

Hi, Im new to this whole duplicate content issue. I have a website, fatcatpaperie.com that I use the portofolio feature in Wordpress as my gallery for all my wedding invitations.  I have a ton of duplicate content issues from this. I don't understand at all how to fix this. I'd appreciate any help! Below is an example of one duplicate content issue. They have slightly different names, different urls, different images and all have no text. But are coming up as duplicates. Would it be as easy as putting a different metadescription for each?? Thanks for the help!

Rena

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"Treasure" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie

http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/treasure-designers-fine-press	1	0	0	0	200	3 duplicates

"Perennial" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie

http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/perennial-by-designers-fine-press	1	0	0	0	200	1 of 3 duplicates

"Primrose" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie

http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/8675	1	0	0	0	200	2 of 3 duplicates

"Catalina" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie

http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/catalina-designers-fine-press |

[HonestSEOStudio]

Thank you, I didn't think of the alt tag idea. I will try that. The awards on the bottom I put into the footer not on each individual page.

Thanks again,
Rena

[mcncl]

Rena,

As mentioned above, this is due to the only difference in pages being the HTML for the feature image. A way of fixing this (and potentially improving conversion/enquiries too) would be to detail the item; what kind of paper stock does it come on, what colours can be provided, are there set types of font, and so on?

Do you have clients who are willing to provide a few words on their opinion of the item which could be used as unique content on an invite's page?

[LoganRay]

James,

They do have that threshold, confirmed by Tawny's comment on this thread from a while back.

[LoganRay]

Hi Rena,

Issues like this pop up frequently in Moz QA. Here's what's happening - the only difference on these pages is the name of the product, the meta data, and the URL. This being the case, the majority of the source code for each page is the same, when you take into account all the code for the template (header, footer, etc). Moz sets a threshold of 90% for source code match, any 2 pages that have at least 90% same source code get flagged as duplicate.

So what can you do about it? It looks like you're using these pages as product detail pages like you'd see on an ecommerce site. Product detail pages typically have descriptions providing details about the particular product. I'd recommend writing some descriptive content for each of these pages. This will increase the uniqueness of the pages and should differentiate them enough to not trigger the dupe content warning. Descriptions on these products will also help your users' experience on the site, so you're not doing this just to appease the bots.

Hope that helps clear things up!

[RobCairns]

Hi Rena,

I don't think the duplicate issue is being called out with regard to the pictures/titles on your pages. I think Yoast is picking up on the images representing your awards below the images of your cards. Depending on how you have developed these pages that would be my guess - are these images being uploaded according to a tag system/structure (i.e. are they being automatically uploaded as placeholders for each page?). If so, I have seen that register as duplicate content.

The titles and images of the products themselves shouldn't be returning duplicate content issues. If so, I wouldn't worry about them since there's nothing wrong with how the pages are created as they are. The only addition I would make would be to add some short descriptors and perhaps some Alt-Text on your images to differentiate them from one another.

Let me know if I can be of further help!

Rob