Duplicate Content issue on pages with Authority and decent SERP results
-
Hi, I'm not sure what the best thing to do here is.
I've got quite a few duplicate page errors in my campaign. I must admit the pages were originally built just to rank a keyword variation.
e.g. Main page keyword is [Widget in City] the "duplicate" page is [Black Widget in City]
I guess the normal route to deal with duplicate pages is to add a canonical tag and do a 304 redirect yea? Well these pages have some page Authority and are ranking quite well for their exact keywords, what do I do?
-
Just thought I would update the results on this.
After taking PoolGuy's advice I 301'd the duplicate pages to their main pages, i.e.
[Black Widget in City] ->301-> [Widget in City]
Now almost every single main page has moved up on average 12 places to #1 on google!
The duplicate pages are still showing in the SERPs but appear to be dropping and I guess will eventually dissapear.
So I'm now a staunch promoter of dealing with duplicate content!
-
I would predict you will continue to rank well for your duplicate pages. I further predict they (because of Panda) will bring down the rankings of the rest of your site. If you can add some good unique content to 50 different colors of a product, then by all means, make 50 pages. But if you can't generate the content necessary to establish each individual page as "quality", then I would remove them, and simply not go that route at all, and 301 redirect all those pages into the main page. If you think it still holds value to users, then keep them up and just use a canonical tag.
-
Hi There
From what you've described, it does sound like Duplicate Content is a potential issue for your site, it's great that you're addressing it.
A Canonical Tag as you've suggested is a logical and sensible course of action. Correctly implemented, this will certainly help.
One thought, what would provide the best user experience for your visitors? Have a think about whether these 'additional' pages actually add any value or not for your visitors. I suspect that you could include every different color of a certain type of widget on a single page for each type, rather than having separate pages for each color.
In this scenario, consider 301 redirecting those additional/duplicate pages to the main appropriate widget page, that would almost certainly provide a cleaner better user experience. Obviously need to take into account your business objectives and target audience goals when making such a decision.
So really, it's Canonicals or 301s, depending on what best matches your business objectives and the user experience.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
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
-
What is this on SERP results?
Hi Guys, Does anyone know what this is called: https://d.pr/i/RA6RsG And how Google pulls it from a page? Do you need some kind of markup? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nattyhall0 -
Fix Duplicate Content Before Migration?
My client has 2 Wordpress sites (A and B). Each site is 20 pages, with similar site structures, and 12 of the pages on A having nearly 100% duplicate content with their counterpart on B. I am not sure to what extent A and/or B is being penalized for this. In 2 weeks (July 1) the client will execute a rebrand, renaming the business, launching C, and taking down A and B. Individual pages on A and B will be 301 redirected to their counterpart on C. C will have a similar site structure to A and B. I expect the content will be freshened a bit, but may initially be very similar to the content on A and B. I have 3 questions: Given that only 2 weeks remain before the switchover - is there any purpose in resolving the duplicate content between A and B prior to taking them down? Will 301 redirects from penalized pages on A or B actually hurt the ranking of the destination page on C? If a page on C has the same content as its predecessor on A or B, could it be penalized for that, even though the page on A or B has since been taken down and replaced with a 301 redirect?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | futumara0 -
Increase in duplicate page titles due to canonical tag issue
Implemented canonical tag (months back) in product pages to avoid duplicate content issue. But Google picks up the URL variations and increases duplicate page title errors in Search Console. Original URL: www.example.com/first-product-name-123456 Canonical tag: Variation 1: www.example.com/first-product--name-123456 Canonical tag: Variation 2: www.example.com/first-product-name-sync-123456 Canonical tag: Kindly advice the right solution to fix the issue.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SDdigital0 -
Duplicate Content: Is a product feed/page rolled out across subdomains deemed duplicate content?
A company has a TLD (top-level-domain) which every single product: company.com/product/name.html The company also has subdomains (tailored to a range of products) which lists a choosen selection of the products from the TLD - sort of like a feed: subdomain.company.com/product/name.html The content on the TLD & subdomain product page are exactly the same and cannot be changed - CSS and HTML is slightly differant but the content (text and images) is exactly the same! My concern (and rightly so) is that Google will deem this to be duplicate content, therfore I'm going to have to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of all subdomain pages, pointing to the original product page on the TLD. Does this sound like the correct thing to do? Or is there a better solution? Moving on, not only are products fed onto subdomain, there are a handfull of other domains which list the products - again, the content (text and images) is exactly the same: other.com/product/name.html Would I be best placed to add a rel cannonical tag into the header of the product pages on other domains, pointing to the original product page on the actual TLD? Does rel cannonical work across domains? Would the product pages with a rel cannonical tag in the header still rank? Let me know if there is a better solution all-round!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iam-sold0 -
Product Syndication and duplicate content
Hi, It's a duplicate content question. We sell products (vacation rental homes) on a number of websites as well as our own. Generally, these affiliate sites have a higher domain authority and much more traffic than our site. The product content (text, images, and often availability and rates) is pulled by our affiliates into their websites daily and is exactly the same as the content on our site, not including their page structure. We receive enquiries by email and any links from their domains to ours are nofollow. For example, all of the listing text on mysite.com/listing_id is identical to my-first-affiliate-site.com/listing_id and my-second-affiliate-site.com/listing_id. Does this count as duplicate content and, if so, can anyone suggest a strategy to make the best of the situation? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McCaldin0 -
Duplicate page content query
Hi forum, For some reason I have recently received a large increase in my Duplicate Page Content issues. Currently it says I have over 7,000 duplicate page content errors! For example it says: Sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Content http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/gowns/news.html http://dikelli.com.au/accessories/news.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sterls
http://dikelli.com.au/gallery/dikelli/gowns/gowns/sale_gowns.html However there are no physical links to any of these page on my site and even when I look at my FTP files (I am using Dreamweaver) these directories and files do not exist. Can anyone please tell me why the SEOMOZ crawl is coming up with these errors and how to solve them?0 -
Very basic - domain authority vs page authority
what does that mean and how is that information valuable? thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thirsty31 -
Pop Up Pages Being Indexed, Seen As Duplicate Content
I offer users the opportunity to email and embed images from my website. (See this page http://www.andertoons.com/cartoon/6246/ and look under the large image for "Email to a Friend" and "Get Embed HTML" links.) But I'm seeing the ensuing pop-up pages (Ex: http://www.andertoons.com/embed/5231/?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=370&width=700&modal=true and http://www.andertoons.com/email/6246/?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=432&width=700&modal=true) showing up in Google. Even worse, I think they're seen as duplicate content. How should I deal with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andertoons0