Duplicate Content Issues on Product Pages
-
Hi guys
Just keen to gauge your opinion on a quandary that has been bugging me for a while now.
I work on an ecommerce website that sells around 20,000 products.
A lot of the product SKUs are exactly the same in terms of how they work and what they offer the customer. Often it is 1 variable that changes. For example, the product may be available in 200 different sizes and 2 colours (therefore 400 SKUs available to purchase).
Theese SKUs have been uploaded to the website as individual entires so that the customer can purchase them, with the only difference between the listings likely to be key signifiers such as colour, size, price, part number etc.
Moz has flagged these pages up as duplicate content.
Now I have worked on websites long enough now to know that duplicate content is never good from an SEO perspective, but I am struggling to work out an effective way in which I can display such a large number of almost identical products without falling foul of the duplicate content issue.
If you wouldnt mind sharing any ideas or approaches that have been taken by you guys that would be great!
-
The canonical should pass link equity similar to a 301 redirect.
-
Thanks Mike. It certainly sounds like moving all SKUs onto 1 page is preferable. I suspect that I may need to spend a bit of dosh getting the website's on-page structure amended if going down this approach.
With regards to point 1, I assume the pages will still be crawled but any link equity would be passed to the canonicalised version of the page?
-
I agree with Everett from a standpoint of User Experience. It could potentially be better for users if they appeared on a product page where they could then choose color, size, etc. variables for their product instead of having to click through multiple pages to find the right one or scroll through a huge list of variations.
The reduction in pages should also help consolidate link equity and keep pages from cannibalizing each other in the SERPs.
As for Takeshi's suggestion on Canonicals, I'm a fan of the rel=canonical tag but the potential problem with using them in this instance is twofold. 1) As Takeshi mentioned: "as far as Google is concerned you only have 1 page with the content on it" and 2) Canonicals are suggestions not directives so the search engines may choose not to recognize it if not used properly.
-
As I said, that would be a good second choice, but I'd go with the first option (putting all product variants like size/color on the same page and allowing the user to select which one/s they want to purchase) because the other options still leave a potentially huge amount of product URLs out there for Google to crawl.
Google has to crawl them to see the rel canonical tag. You may only have a certain amount of crawl budget. If you can cut down the amount of URLs on your site that Google has to crawl by as much as half simply by allowing users to select a variant color or size on a product page I think that is best for SEO, as well as for user experience.
-
Thanks for the advice guys.
What do you think of Takeshi's advice below regarding adding canonical link to product page that points to a product category page
I.e. we have 20 of the same jumpers of different sizes, colours. A canonical tag is added to the product page that points to a parent page for the jumper, rather than the specific product page.
-
Thanks Takeshi - this approach sounds like something I can implement sooner rather than later.
Have you had success using it?
-
Thanks Mike - this certainly makes sense.
My product pages do not currently change the URL parameters depending ont he product sku the visitor changes , but the approach you've taken sounds perfect for your setup
-
Similar to what BJS1976 and Takeshi stated, the way we handled the bulk of duplicate content issues from a similar circumstance for our ecommerce site was handling the different varieties of the same product through parameters and then canonicalizing the parameters to the version of the URL sans parameter.
For example, due to database reasons /product1.php?color=42 and /product1.php?color=30 are the same product but one is red and one is blue, the pages are exactly the same & have radials/buttons/dropdowns to choose any available color, /product1.php would default to one specific variation we chose (usually the best selling color) and then /product1.php?color=42 and /product1.php?color=30 had a rel=canonical tag added pointing at /product1.php
For any remaining products flagged as duplicates that couldn't be fixed that way, we set those aside to have myself and another copywriter work on creating further content that would set them apart enough as to not be duplicates.
-
BJS1976 makes some good suggestions.
Another option is to create a category type page that lists all the product variations on it, then canonical each of the individual products to the category page. That way, you still have multiple product pages, but as far as Google is concerned you only have 1 page with the content on it.
-
Hi there,
I'm also working on an ecom site using Magento - in short, there are a couple of ways that come to mind in how to deal with this:
-
Create grouped or configurable products that bring these simple products into 1 single product - customer then chooses size and colour for example.
-
Rewrite a lot of unique content in the product descriptions for each variation.
In my experience, sales convert better on option 1, plus my gut tells me they are favoured by Google.
Good luck!
-
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
-
Duplicate Page Content
Hello, After crawling our site Moz is detecting high priority duplicate page content for our product and article listing pages, For example http://store.bmiresearch.com/bangladesh/power and http://store.bmiresearch.com/newzealand/power are being listed as duplicate pages although they have seperate URLs, page titles and H1 tags. They have the same product listed but I would have thought the differentiation in other areas would be sufficient for these to not be deemed as duplicate pages. Is it likely this issue will be impacting on our search rankings? If so are there any recommendations as to how this issue can be overcome. Thanks
Technical SEO | | carlsutherland0 -
150+ Pages of URL Parameters - Mass Duplicate Content Issue?
Hi we run a large e-commerce site and while doing some checking through GWT we came across these URL parameters and are now wondering if we have a duplicate content issue. If so, we are wodnering what is the best way to fix them, is this a task with GWT or a Rel:Canonical task? Many of the urls are driven from the filters in our category pages and are coming up like this: page04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3F (See the image for more). Does anyone know if these links are duplicate content and if so how should we handle them? Richard I7SKvHS
Technical SEO | | Richard-Kitmondo0 -
Why are my 301 redirects and duplicate pages (with canonicals) still showing up as duplicates in Webmaster Tools?
My guess is that in time Google will realize that my duplicate content is not actually duplicate content, but in the meantime I'd like to get your guys feedback. The reporting in Webmaster Tools looks something like this. Duplicates /url1.html /url2.html /url3.html /category/product/url.html /category2/product/url.html url3.html is the true canonical page in the list above._ url1.html,_ and url2.html are old URLs that 301 to url3.html. So, it seems my bases are covered there. _/category/product/url.html _and _/category2/product/url.html _ do not redirect. They are the same page as url3.html. Each of the category URLs has a canonical URL of url3.html in the header. So, it seems my bases are covered there as well. Can I expect Google to pick up on this? Why wouldn't it understand this already?
Technical SEO | | bearpaw0 -
Looking at creating some auto-generated pages - duplicate content?
Hi Everyone! We just launched a new version of our research site and the main CTA on the page sends users to a subdomain that's blocked by robots.txt. The subdomain link is one of our PPC landing pages and they would be duplicate content for every model (cars). We're also looking at a new content stream of deals pages, on the main domain. The thought process was that we could rank these pages for things like "Volkswagen golf deals" and also use them as canonical URLs from the PPC pages so that Panda doesn't get mad at us for sending hundreds of links to a subdomain that's blocked. It's going to take us a lot of time to write the copy for the deals pages, so if we auto-generate it by pulling a paragraph of copy from the car review, and numerical stats about that model, will it be classes as duplicate and/or is there any downside to doing it? Review Page: http://www.carwow.co.uk/car-reviews/Ford/Fiesta Deals Page: http://www.carwow.co.uk/deals/Ford/Fiesta PPC Landing Page: http://quotes.carwow.co.uk/buy/Ford/Fiesta I can't help but feel that this may all be a bit overkill and perhaps it makes more sense to build 1 central deals page per model with unique content that we can also send the PPC traffic to, then life any block from the quotes. subdomain. But that will take time and we'd also like a quick solution. I'd also question if it's even an issue to link to a blocked subdomain, Google adds the quote URL into the index but can't crawl it, which I've been told is bad - but is it bad enough to do something about? Thanks, JP
Technical SEO | | Matt.Carwow0 -
Does adding subcategory pages to an commerce site limit the link juice to the product pages?
I have a client who has an online outdoor gear company. He mostly sells high end outdoor gear (like ski jackets, vests, boots, etc) at a deep discount. His store currently only resides on Ebay. So we're building him an online store from scratch. I'm trying to determine the best site architecture and wonder if we should include subcategory pages. My issue is that I think the subcategory pages might be good from a user experience, but it'll add an additional layer between the homepage and the product pages. The problem is that I think a lot of user's might be searching for the product name to see if they can find a better deal, and my client's site would be perfect for them. So I really want to rank well for the product pages, but I'm nervous that the subcategory pages will limit the link juice of the product pages. Home --> SubCategory --> Product List --> Product Detail Home --> Men's Ski Clothing --> Men's Ski Jack --> North Face Mt Everest Jacket Should I keep the SubCategory page "Men's Ski Clothing" if it helps usability? On a separate note, the SubCategory pages would have some head keyword terms, but I don't think that he could rank well for these terms anytime soon. However, they would be great pages / terms to rank for in the long term. Should this influence the decision?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Rel canonical for partner sites - product pages only or also homepage and other key pages?
Hello there Our main site is www.arenaflowers.com. We also run a number of partner sites (eg: http://flowershop.cancerresearchuk.org/). We've relcanonical'd the products on the partner site back to the main (arenaflowers.com) site. eg: http://flowershop.cancerresearchuk.org/flowers/tutti_frutti_es_2013 rel canonicals back to: http://www.arenaflowers.com/flowers/tutti_frutti_es_2013). My question: Should we also relcanonical the homepage and other key pages on partner sites back to the main arenaflowers website too? The content is similar but not identical. We don't want our partner sites to be outranking the original (as is the case on kw flower delivery for example). (NB this situation may be complicated by the fact we appear to have an unnatural link penalty on af.com (and when we did an upgrade a while back, the af.com site fell out of the index altogether due to some issues with our move to AWS.) We're getting professional SEO advice on this but wondered what the Moz community's thoughts were.. Cheers, Will
Technical SEO | | ArenaFlowers.com0 -
Fixing Duplicate Pages Titles/Content
I have a DNN site, which I created friendly URL's for; however, the creation of the friendly URL's then created duplicate page content and titles. I was able to fix all but two URL's with rel="canonical" links. BUT The two that are giving me the most issues are pointing to my homepage. When I added the rel = "canonical" link the page then becomes not indexable. And for whatever reason, I can't add a 301 redirect to the homepage because it then gives me "can't display webpage" error message. I am new to SEO and to DNN, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | VeronicaCFowler0 -
Duplicate Pages Issue
I noticed a problem and I was wondering if anyone knows how to fix it. I was a sitemap for 1oxygen.com, a site that has around 50 pages. The sitemap generator come back with over a 2000 pages. Here is two of the results: http://www.1oxygen.com/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/services/rentals.htm
Technical SEO | | chuck-layton
http://www.1oxygen.com/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/1oxygen/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/portableconcentrators/oxusportableconcentrator.htm These are actaully pages somehow. In my FTP there in the first /portableconentrators/ folder there is about 12 html documents and no other folders. It looks like it is creating a page for every possible folder combination. I have no idea why you those pages above actually work, help please???0