Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Duplicate Content for Spanish & English Product
-
Hi There,
Our company provides training courses and I am looking to provide the Spanish version of a course that we already provide in English. As it is an e-commerce site, our landing page for the English version gives the full description of the course and all related details. Once the course is purchased, a flash based course launches within a player window and the student begins the course.
For the Spanish version of the course, my target customers are English speaking supervisors purchasing the course for their Spanish speaking workers. So the landing page will still be in English (just like the English version of the course) with the same basic description, with the only content differences on that page being the inclusion of the fact that this course is in Spanish and a few details around that.
The majority of the content on these two separate landing pages will be exactly the same, as the description for the overall course is the same, just that it's presented in a different language, so it needs to be 2 separate products.
My fear is that Google will read this as duplicate content and I will be penalized for it. Is this a possibility or will Google know why I set it up this way and not penalize me? If that is a possibility, how should I go about doing this correctly?
Thanks!
-
Thank you for this information, Optimize. Not having a very technical background in this area, it seems quite confusing to try to implement this correctly.
-
Hola Julio,
even though here in SEOmoz we are happy that Mozzers find occasions for collaborating with other people, we think that it would be better (and even safer for your inbox) to use the private message function.
-
Niall,
What is the theme of your course? We are in Mexico searching for new training modules to sell in Latin Market. Maybe we can talk about it...
We have some good websites very well ranked.
Email me!!!
Thanks...
Julio
[email removed by staff]
-
You are going to have a problem with this.....Unfortunately, the combination of duplicate looking content and a directory/subdirectory structure causes sites to be stuck in Googles Panda filter. Google pulled out a "large roll of duct tape" to fix the problem with multiple language version websites, writing “hreflang” on one strip and writing“canonical” on the other strip.
Basically, Google is telling us that we should use a regional subtag in our head tag on each URL to help Google’s spider figure out what kind of content is on each page and where it is intended. Once this is done, Google will consider that the content is intended for that region. Here are the rules for hreflang and canonical....make sure you are sitting down......
Hreflang
The hreflang attribute (hreflang: rel="alternate" hreflang="x") rules in a nutshell:
- Applies to any users from different parts of the world, with content translated in the native language to target that region.
- Used for multilingual websites using substantially the same content on all web pages (e.g., English pages for Australia, Canada, and the U.S.)
- Can specify the language, country, and URLs of content translated for multiple countries.
- Used when:
- You translate only the template of your page (navigation and footer) and main content is still in a single language.
- Pages have broadly similar content within a single language, but are targeted at different regions (e.g., English-language content targeted in U.S., UK, and Australia).
- Content on the web page is fully translated (e.g., have Spanish, French, and English versions of each page).
- How to use rel="alternate" hreflang ="x"
- If there are multiple language versions of the website, each language must use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" (e.g., a page in Spanish must have a rel="alternate" hreflang="x" link to the English and French version and the English and French version must include a link pointing to the Spanish site.
(For more information: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077)
Canonical
The multilingual canonical tag (rel="canonical") tells Google that x URL is the preferred location and the most important translated version of the content of the URL.
Multilingual canonical is:
- Used in conjunction with hreflang.
- Can be used when web pages have the same content in the same language targeting multiple countries.
- Sometimes users are directed to the wrong language.
- The canonical designates the version of content that gets indexed and returned to users.
- Use rel="canonical" tag on other versions of the webpage.
- When users enter content into search results, users will likely see the URL that corresponds to their language preference.
Putting hreflang and canonical together:
Spanish site is the canonical and contains the following tags:
link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://en.example.com/" /English site contains the following tags:
link rel="canonical" href="http://es.example.com/" /French site contains the following tags:
link rel="canonical" href="http://es.example.com/" /(**CAN ONLY BE USED WHEN SPANISH IS THE MAIN LANGUAGE AND ONLY THE TEMPLATE IS TRANSLATED TO ENLISH AND FRENCH)
Hope this is helpful......All of this information can be found in the original author at this link:
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
-
Product Descriptions (SEO)
So I would like a few opinions. How long should a product description be? Enough to get the point across? 100 words? 800 words? Over detailed? Any advice would be appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | mattl990 -
Will it upset Google if I aggregate product page reviews up into a product category page?
We have reviews on our product pages and we are considering averaging those reviews out and putting them on specific category pages in order for the average product ratings to be displayed in search results. Each averaged category review would be only for the products within it's category, and all reviews are from users of the site, no 3rd party reviews. For example, averaging the reviews from all of our boxes products pages, and listing that average review on the boxes category page. My question is, will this be doing anything wrong in the eyes of Google, and if so how so? -Derick
On-Page Optimization | | Deluxe0 -
Duplicate Content Re: Product listing body copy on Website, Amazon & Ebay - issues ?
Hi Is it ok to have identical product body copy on market/platform listings same as the websites product listings ? In this case the products are the websites/own brand products (all pages canonicalised), so i take it shouldn't cause any issues or are you supposed to differentiate the product body copy on marketplace listings ? Im asking re seo reasons All Best Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Duplicate Content with ?Page ID's in WordPress
Hi there, I'm trying to figure out the best way to solve a duplicate content problem that I have due to Page ID's that WordPress automatically assigns to pages. I know that in order for me to resolve this I have to use canonical urls but the problem for me is I can't figure out the URL structure. Moz is showing me thousands of duplicate content errors that are mostly related to Page IDs For example, this is how a page's url should look like on my site Moz is telling me there are 50 duplicate content errors for this page. The page ID for this page is 82 so the duplicate content errors appear as follows and so on. For 47 more pages. The problem repeats itself with other pages as well. My permalinks are set to "Post Name" so I know that's not an issue. What can I do to resolve this? How can I use canonical URLs to solve this problem. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | SpaMedica0 -
Duplicate Content - Blog Rewriting
I have a client who has requested a rewrite of 250 blog articles for his IT company. The blogs are dispersed on a variety of platforms: his own website's blog, a business innovation website, and an IT website. He wants to have each article optimised with keyword phrases and then posted onto his new website thrice weekly. All of this is in an effort to attract some potential customers to his new site and also to establish his company as a leader in its field. To what extent would I need to rewrite each article so as to avoid duplicating the content? Would there even be an issue if I did not rewrite the articles and merely optimised them with keywords? Would the articles need to be completely taken by all current publishers? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | StoryScout0 -
Should I watermark my product images
I am in the process of creating new images for my products to use on my website. Are there any advantages or disadvantages of watermarking each image? Is there an SEO impact good or bad? I am aware that filename and Alt tags are important, but am unsure if google dislikes watermarked images.
On-Page Optimization | | BipSum1 -
How often should I update category and product content to keep it fresh?
I want to keep our site up to date and fresh with content. How often should I update categories and products pages with content? What angel should I take with categories (new products/services etc.) Thanks Craig
On-Page Optimization | | Towelsrus0 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0