What's the best way to solve this sites duplicate content issues?
-
Hi,
The site is www.expressgolf.co.uk and is an e-commerce website with lots of categories and brands.
I'm trying to achieve one single unique URL for each category / brand page to avoid duplicate content and to get the correct URL's indexed.
Currently it looks like this...
Main URL
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green
Different Versions
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/1
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/2
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/3
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/4
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/all
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/1/
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/2/
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/3/
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/4/
http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/all/
Firstly, what is the best course of action to make all versions point to the main URL and keep them from being indexed - Canonical Tag, NOINDEX or block them in robots?
Secondly, do I just need to 301 the (/) from all URL's to the non (/) URL's ?
I'm sure this question has been answered but I was having trouble coming to a solution for this one site.
Cheers,
Paul
-
Greetings Champion!
Cannonical Linking is the best way to go!
For your conundrum in Example B with the Calvin Green I would find out which URL version is dominant or has the most link juice and structure the redirects to that links. For instance, let us say [http://www.expressgolf.co.uk/shop/clothing/galvin-green/] is the dominant link I would have the copy urls pointing back to that one like so
I manage an Ecommerce Site as well, I had the same issue with the categories and what I basically did the same thing for each level of my site, categories that have the url ending in /1, /2, /3 and so on I would redirect to the first page to make that Url stronger.
Practically think about what Noindexing or Nofollowing would do, you would lose so much link power that you could harness, With redirects you can focus this power in a more effective manner.
Also I was snooping and clicked Golf Clubs which took me to this URL
expressgolf.co .uk/shop/clubs
Made me realize that you had "clubs" at the end, I would put Golf Clubs because when you do a keyword search for Clubs, Bars come up. Putting a Keyword in the URL can greatly enhance that URL. Just a tip if you want to utilize it or not friend ^.^.
Good luck on your quest for Page 1!
Justin Smith
-
It really sounds like canonical is what you need here. Here is Matt Cutts explaining:
-
Hi,
I would say canonical or rel=”next” and rel=”prev”
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html
Would probably be your best bets, as a 301 would solve from a Search Engine perspective, but definitely not good for users wanting to see different versions of the product in question.
hope this helps
w00t!
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
-
Google how deal with licensed content when this placed on vendor & client's website too. Will Google penalize the client's site for this ?
One of my client bought licensed content from top vendor of Health Industry. This same content is on the vendor's website & my client's site also but on my site there is a link back to vendor is placed which clearly tells to anyone that this is a licensed content & we bought from this vendor. My client bought paid top quality content for best source of industry but at this same this is placed on vendor's website also. Will Google penalize my client's website for this ? Niche is HEALTH
Technical SEO | | sourabhrana1 -
Hreflang and possible duplicate content SEO issue
| 0 <a class="vote-down-off" title="This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful">down vote</a> favorite | Hey community, my first question here 🙂 Imagine there is a page with video, it has hreflang tags setup, to lead let's say German visitors to /de/ folder... So, on that German version of page, everything like menus, navigation and such are in German, but the video is the same, the title of the video (H1 tag) is the same, <title></code></strong> and <strong><code>meta description</code></strong> is the same as on the original English page. It means that general (English) page and German version of it has the same key content in English.</p> <p>To me it seems to be a SEO duplicate content issue. As I know, Google doesn't think that content is duplicate, if it is properly translated to other language.</p> <p>Does my explained case mean that the content will be detected by Google as duplicate?</p> </div> </div> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table></title> |
Technical SEO | | poiseo0 -
Should I use my competitor's name in my content to help my rankings?
If I have a competitor that ranks higher than me, would it be helpful to use their name in my content, or in my meta information?
Technical SEO | | greaterstudio0 -
Best way to handle pages with iframes that I don't want indexed? Noindex in the header?
I am doing a bit of SEO work for a friend, and the situation is the following: The site is a place to discuss articles on the web. When clicking on a link that has been posted, it sends the user to a URL on the main site that is URL.com/article/view. This page has a large iframe that contains the article itself, and a small bar at the top containing the article with various links to get back to the original site. I'd like to make sure that the comment pages (URL.com/article) are indexed instead of all of the URL.com/article/view pages, which won't really do much for SEO. However, all of these pages are indexed. What would be the best approach to make sure the iframe pages aren't indexed? My intuition is to just have a "noindex" in the header of those pages, and just make sure that the conversation pages themselves are properly linked throughout the site, so that they get indexed properly. Does this seem right? Thanks for the help...
Technical SEO | | jim_shook0 -
What's the best canonicalization method?
Hi there - is there a canonicalization method that is better than others? Our developers have used the
Technical SEO | | GBC0 -
Client's site dropped completely for all keywords, but not brand name - not manual penalty... help!
We just picked up a new search client a few weeks ago. They've been a customer (we're an automotive dealer website provider) since October of 2011. Their content was very generic (came from the previous provider), so we did a quick once-over as soon as he signed up. Beefed up his page content, made it more unique and relevant... tweaked title tags... wrote meta descriptions (he had none). In just over a week, he went from ranking on page 4 or 5 for his terms to ranking on page 2 or 3. My team was working on getting his social media set up, set up his blog, started competitor research... And then this last weekend, something happened and he dropped completely from the rankings... He still shows up if you do a site: search, or if you search his exact business name, but for everything else, he's nowhere to be found. His URL is www.ohioautowarehouse.com, business name is "Ohio Auto Warehouse" We filed a reconsideration request on Monday, and just got a reply today that there was no manual penalty. They suggested we check our content, but we know we didn't do anything spammy or blackhat. We hadn't even fully optimized his site yet - we were just finishing up his competitor research and were planning on a full site optimization next week... so we're at a complete loss as to what happened. Also, he's not ranking for any of the vehicles in his inventory. Our vehicle pages always rank on page 1 or 2, depending on how big the city is... you can always search "year make model city" and see our customers' sites (whether they're doing SEO or not). This guy's cars aren't showing up... so we know something is going on... Any help would be a lifesaver. We've been doing this for quite some time now, and we've never had a site get penalized. Since the reconsideration request didn't help, we're not sure what to do...
Technical SEO | | Greg_Gifford0 -
Best way to setup large site for multi language
Hello, I am setting up a new site which is going to be very large, over 250,000 products. Most of our customers are in the UK (45%), the rest are from various European countries and the USA. Unfortunately we only have a team of two people writing content for these pages in English. I would value some input on the best way to setup my website structure for ranking. Obviously the best would be individual country oriented domains I.e. domain.fr domain.de domain.co.uk . However we wouldnt have the time to create content for every page and most pages would contain the same content as the English domain. Would I get a penalty for this from google? The second choice is to follow the example of overstock.com and pull in information relating to each country I.e. currency and delivery time. this would be a lot easier but I am concerned that the lack of geo focus would effect my rankings. Does any one have any ideas?
Technical SEO | | DavidLenehan0 -
Site just will not be reincluded in Google's Index
I asked a question about this site (www.cookinggames.com.au) some time ago http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/38488/site-indexing-google-doesnt-like-it and had some very helpful answers which were great. However I'm still no further ahead. I have added some more content, submitted a new XML sitemap, removed the 'lorem ipsum...' Now it seems that even Bing have ditched the site too. The number 1 result in Australia for the search term 'cooking games' is now this one - http://www.cookinggames.net.au/ which surely is not so much better to deserve a #1 spot whilst my site is deindexed? I have just had another reconsideration request 'denied' and am absolutely out of ideas/. If anyone can help suggest what I need to do... or even suggest how I can get feedback from the search engines what's wring that would be fantastic. Thank you David
Technical SEO | | OzDave0