Category pages are treated as duplicate content - is that a problem?
-
Hi there
I have analyzing a webshop where we sell products for pets, gardening and the like. I am getting a lot of "Duplicate Content" alerts from Moz when doing a site crawl and I am told that the pages for e.g. cat products and gardening tools show duplicate content. Those two pages contain no identical products, so I am guessing that it is just the "set up" of the page (they look almost identical, except for the products). My question is: Is this really a problem? Does it affect my ranking in a negative way, and if so, how can I counter it?
Best regards
Frederik
-
It was a big help!
-
Thank you.
/Frederik
-
If possible, I'd ensure that there's enough unique content on the category page in the form of a category description before and/or after the product listings. This can be done without looking like a hideous wall of text, if that's what you're thinking. It shouldn't be a long article.
I think this would help.
Consider running your site through http://siteliner.com too for a duplicate content analysis. It's free.
-
I see.
Is it a problem that the content is considered duplicate then, or can I just leave it the way it is?
Thank you, again.
Frederik
-
If the pages are HTML-heavy with not much text content on the category pages, this could be why. Otherwise it's hard to tell without seeing the actual pages.
-
Thank you.
The former is the case. I have a page that is all cat products and a different page that is all garden products. Neither have snippets or anything other in common than the structure (and the header, search box, contact info etc.) But Moz tells me that the cat page has several duplicates, including the garden page.
-
Just to clarify, do you mean that Moz is showing the cat category to be duplicate of the garden category?
Or that both the cat category and garden category are pages with duplicate content issues?
If the latter is correct, do your category pages have product description snippets? It could be that all that product content being pulled into the category content is causing the duplicate content. If this is the case, then you may want to bulk out your product pages a bit more to not be quite so thin.
I've also seen some ecommerce websites that list the entire category of products on each product page, in a Related section. So effectively, all the product pages within the category have duplicate content of the category page.
A similar thing happens with Wordpress blog posts if you don't noindex the right pages and have a very thin/flat structure. e.g. The main blog index will almost completely duplicate the most popular or main category archive page. Or the /2017/ archive, etc.
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
-
Is it okay to update Page Titles and Meta descriptions over a period of time?
Some of the page are not performing even after having good content, videos, images and faqs. I am planning to update the page titles and planning to use Long Tail keywords in it for example, Contact US - Brand name would be Contact US - Brand Keyword. Is it okay to do that for all the pages?
Local SEO | | Ravi_Rana0 -
Keyword rich domain names -> Point to sales funnel sites or to landing pages on primary domain?
Hey everyone,
Local SEO | | Transpera
We have a tonne of old domains we have done nothing with. All of them are keyword-rich domains.
Things like "[City]SEOPro" or "[City]DigitalMarketing" where [city] is a city that we are already targeting services in. So all of these domains will be targeted for local cities as keywords. We have been having an internal debate about whether or not we should just host sales funnel pages on these domains, that are rich in keywords and content......... ... Or ... ... Should we point these domains to landing pages on our existing domain that are basically the same as what we would do with the sales funnel pages, but are on our primary site? (keyword rich, with good and plentiful content) Then, as a follow-up question... Should these be set as just 301 redirects on these domains to our actual primary domain so the browser sees the landing page domain instead of the actual keyword-rich domain? ( [city]seopro.com ) Thanks guys. I know for some, the response will be an obvious one. However; we have probably way over thought this and have arguments for almost every scenario. We think we have an answer but wanted to send this out to the community first. I won't post what we are thinking yet, so that the answers can remain unbiased for now and we can have a conversation without it being swayed any one way. We understand that 301 redirects would be seen as a doorway page.
We are also only discussing in the context of organic search only.
If we ran the domains as their own sites, they would be about 3 pages of content only. Pretty static, but good content. Think of a PAS style sales funnel. Problem -> Acknowledgement -> Solution.0 -
After Maccabees should I consolidate some of my content?
I'm a local dentist and have a very successful 'veneers price' blog page. People really want to know the cost of veneers and it gets hundreds of visits a day locally and nationally. I also have a main Veneers services page talking about how you get veneers and what they are etc. This gets lots of local visitors but less nationally. I have recently tried to replicate it's success with 'dental implants price', 'tooth whitening price' and others but they've just bombed. I replicated the style and the blogs are similar in structure, same links etc - but obviously totally unique content and topics. The price articles get no search and it's seemed to hurt the main services pages too. They are all linked to one another in a systematic and helpful-to-the-user hierarchy and structure. Maccabees doesn't seem to have made any difference to the veneers traffic but should I consolidate the other price articles into their respective main pages or leave it and see what happens. They have been at less than position 20 for months now. Whereas if you type in Veneers Cost UK, you'll probably see us in the featured snippet and position one or two. How do I know whether google regards the price of something to be a different topic from that thing and worthy of it's own page? Do they just want everything all on one massive page? That seems a bit clumsy to me. Thanks! 🙂
Local SEO | | Smileworks_Liverpool0 -
Searchmetrics Google ranking factors study says content gaining while links losing in importance ? Any View About this Post.
I am very Curious about it anyone please update about this http://searchengineland.com/searchmetrics-google-ranking-factors-study-says-content-gaining-links-losing-importance-265431
Local SEO | | MTPixels0 -
Duplicate content on multiple domains
Dear all, I have bought 30 geo top level domains. This is for an ecommerce project that has not launcehd yet (and isn't indexed by Google). I am now at a point where I can change/consolidate all domains as sub domains or sub folders or keep things as they are. I just worry that link building would be scattered and not focused and that it might be better to concentrate the efforts on one domain. What are your views on this? Many thanks!
Local SEO | | UpMedio_SEO
Ami0 -
SEO and IP based content
Hello, We are building a guide/directory that will service multiple cities across Canada. Currently, our home page will detect your IP, and display local content on the home page. Although we feel this is incredibly useful to the end user, we are worried about how search engines will interpret our home page. In addition to our home page, should we have landing pages for each city that we are in? and should we follow site structure like this? www.thesite.com/vancouver So if a user from Vancouver goes to our home page, they will see Vancouver related content, but how would a search engine see the home page? We would like to know the best approach to placing well for searches in different Canadian cities. Most of our searches will be city specific: Calgary widgets, Vancouver widgets, etc. Thanks
Local SEO | | ebk0 -
How to have different facebook web address connect to the same page?
Hi i seen some huge website does that, even their facebook cover photos are different but they are all linking to the same page. one of the example is groupon. You can check their fan likes are the same across different web address such as Singapore and Malaysia. any idea guys?
Local SEO | | andrewwatson920 -
Duplicate site content and setting up country specific domains
We look after a website which was originally just hosted on mysite.co.uk. We expanded to the European markets creating mysite.de and mysite.fr getting each product and page translated properly into German and French respectively. We have really good success on google.de and google.fr for these sites. We want to do the same with google.ie and create mysite.ie for the Irish market but as they speak English there will be no translation required. The only thing we will change is the base currency from GBP to EUR. From a duplication point of view will this be bad for both businesses mysite.co.uk and mysite.ie or will the .ie site be seen as the 'copier' and the .co.uk as the authority? Has anyone got any advice over best practice here and what would be the best thing for us to consider? We absolutely cannot risk the .co.uk site ranking wise. It's unrealistic for us to rewrite each product description and page so it means the same thing but is worded differently to avoid the duplication issue.
Local SEO | | gavinhoman0