Handling Similar page content on directory site
-
Hi All,
SEOMOZ is telling me I have a lot of duplicate content on my site. The pages are not duplicate, but very similar, because the site is a directory website with a page for cities in multiple states in the US.
I do not want these pages being indexed and was wanting to know the best way to go about this.
I was thinking I could do a rel ="nofollow" on all the links to those pages, but not sure if that is the correct way to do this.
Since the folders are deep within the site and not under one main folder, it would mean I would have to do a disallow for many folders if I did this through Robots.txt.
The other thing I am thinking of is doing a meta noindex, follow, but I would have to get my programmer to add a meta tag just for this section of the site.
Any thoughts on the best way to achieve this so I can eliminate these dup pages from my SEO report and from the search engine index?
Thanks!
-
Thanks Kane!
Meta-robots it is!
I will apply it and see how I go with it.
Cheers
-
The best solution is to use on those pages.
I believe that using robots.txt will still allow the URLs to be shown as URLs in search results, so that is less ideal. Not certain if that's still the case, but it used to be that way.
I personally would not nofollow links to that page, because if you use "noindex, follow" it will in turn pass value to other indexed pages, and nofollowing links to a noindex page isn't supposed to increase pagerank to other links on the page.
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
-
Cached version of my site is not showing content?
Hi mozzers, I am a bit worried since I looked a cache version of my site and somehow content is partially showing up and navigation has completely disappeared. Where could this come from? What should I be doing? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taysir0 -
Page structure and how to optimize old content
SITE STRUCTURE I am trying to optimize the structure of our site Dreamestatehuahin.com. Getting a visible sitemap of my page make me realized it was not a pyramid as I expected it to be but instead very flat. I Would be happy for some advise on how to structure my site in future aswell how to optimize certain place on the page that i think need a change. 1: structure on posts. Maybe I misunderstand how post works in wordpress or something happen with my theme. When I look at my page sitemap my page is VERY flat because permalinks setting I chose the setting as post name (recommended in most articles). http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/sample-post What I actually believed was that post name was place after /blog/ like: http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/blog/sample-post I would be a good idea to do like this right? Should I add some SEO text on the top of my blog page before the actually posts. Or would this be a bad idea due to pagination causing double content? Could one do 4 blogs in one site and replace the name “blog” in the url with a keywords http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/real-estate-announcement/sample-post http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/hua-hin-attractions/sample-post 2) Pages Based on property type From our top menu, i have made links under for sael using wordpress property types http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/property-type/villa/ http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/property-type/hot-deals/ http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/property-type/condominium/ Earlier I found that these pages created duplictaon of titles due to pagenation so I deleted the h1 What would you do with these pages. Should I optimize them with a text and h1. maybe it is possible to add some title and text content for the top of the first page only (the one page that are linked to our top menu) http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/property-type/villa and not to page 2, 3, 4….. http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/property-type/villa/page/2/ b) Also maybe I should rename the property types WOuld it make sence to change name of the property types from etc villa to villas for sale or even better villas for sale hua hin Then the above urls will look like this instead: http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/property-type/villas-for-sale/ Or Maybe renaming a property type would result in many 404 errors and not be worth the effort? 3) LINKING + REPOSTING OUR “PROPERTY” PAGES AND DO A 301 REDIRECT? a) Would It be good idea to link back from all properties description to one of our 5 optimized landingpages (for the keyword home/house/condo/villa) for sale in Hua Hin? http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/property-hua-hin/ http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/house-for-sale-hua-hin/ b) Also so far we haven’t been really good about optimizing each property (no keywords, optimized titles or descriptions) etc. http://www.dreamestatehuahin.com/property/baan-suksamran/ I wonder if it would be worth the effort to optimize content of each of the old properties )photos-text) on our page? Or maybe post the old properties again in a new optimized version and do a 301 redirect from the old post?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
SEO effect of content duplication across hub of sites
Hello, I have a question about a website I have been asked to work on. It is for a real estate company which is part of a larger company. Along with several other (rival) companies it has a website of property listings which receives a feed of properties from a central hub site - so lots of potential for page, title and meta content duplication (if if isn't already occuring) across the whole network of sites. In early investigation I don't see any of these sites ranking very well at all in Google for expected search phrases. Before I start working on things that might improve their rankings, I wanted to ask some questions from you guys: 1. How would such duplication (if it is occuring) effect the SEO rankings of such sites individually, or the whole network/hub collectively? 2. Is it possible to tell if such a site has been "burnt" for SEO purposes, especially if or from any duplication? 3. If such a site or the network has been totally burnt, are there any approaches or remedies that can be made to improve the site's SEO rankings significantly, or is the only/best option to start again from scratch with a brand new site, ensuring the use of new meta descriptions and unique content? Thanks in advance, Graham
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gmwhite9991 -
Category Pages For Distributing Authority But Not Creating Duplicate Content
I read this interesting moz guide: http://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt, which I think answered my question but I just want to make sure. I take it to mean that if I have category pages with nothing but duplicate content (lists of other pages (h1 title/on-page description and links to same) and that I still want the category pages to distribute their link authority to the individual pages, then I should leave the category pages in the site map and meta noindex them, rather than robots.txt them. Is that correct? Again, don't want the category pages to index or have a duplicate content issue, but do want the category pages to be crawled enough to distribute their link authority to individual pages. Given the scope of the site (thousands of pages and hundreds of categories), I just want to make sure I have that right. Up until my recent efforts on this, some of the category pages have been robot.txt'd out and still in the site map, while others (with different url structure) have been in the sitemap, but not robots.txt'd out. Thanks! Best.. Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
When removing a product page from an ecommerce site?
What is the best practice for removing a product page from an Ecommerce site? If a 301 is not available and the page is already crawled by the search engine A. block it out in the robot.txt B. let it 404
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryan_Loconto0 -
medical site with no unique content
Hi I'm trying to promote an ecommerce site that sells vitamins and health goods. The site owner doesn't want to add texts in the product pages because it is medical material. therefore he Currently has non unique (duplicated) content in each product page' It is the same exact content all others have (taken From the manufacturer)' Any ideas? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
How to Remove Joomla Canonical and Duplicate Page Content
I've attempted to follow advice from the Q&A section. Currently on the site www.cherrycreekspine.com, I've edited the .htaccess file to help with 301s - all pages redirect to www.cherrycreekspine.com. Secondly, I'd added the canonical statement in the header of the web pages. I have cut the Duplicate Page Content in half ... now I have a remaining 40 pages to fix up. This is my practice site to try and understand what SEOmoz can do for me. I've looked at some of your videos on Youtube ... I feel like I'm scrambling around to the Q&A and the internet to understand this product. I'm reading the beginners guide.... any other resources would be helpful.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | deskstudio0 -
How to handle link building to product pages that change regularly?
How do I handle building links to an eCommerce site where the product pages change regularly because product is only available for a certain time frame? Should I focus on building links to the category pages instead?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mj7750