Removing Duplicate Content Issues in an Ecommerce Store
-
Hi All
OK i have an ecommerce store and there is a load of duplicate content which is pretty much the norm with ecommerce store setups
e.g. this is my problem
http://www.mystoreexample.com/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/brandname/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/appliancetype/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/brandname/appliancetype/product1.html
http://www.mystoreexample.com/appliancetype/brandname/product1.htmlso all the above lead to the same product
I also want to keep the breadcrumb path to the productHere's my plan
Add a canonical URL to the product page
e.g. http://www.mystoreexample.com/product1.html
This way i have a short product URLNoindex all duplicate pages but do follow the internal links so the pages are spidered
What are the other options available and recommended?
Does that make sense?
Is this what most people are doing to remove duplicate content pages?thanks
-
Recently we had the same situation which was resolved nicely with rel canonical alone.
-
Happy to reply, it might be sad but I quite enjoy it.
If it was a smaller site I would say pick your best performing page and use that, but given how many pages I imagine you have that's going to be pretty much impossible. I would go with domain/brand/product (provided that the brand is a keyword and the total isn't too long) that way if people link using just the URL you get another keyword into the mix.
If appliance type makes better sense go with that, just don't make it too long.
EDIT: and yes if you provide a canonical link to the page you want credited you won't have to worry about the noindexing (sorry forgot that bit).
-
thanks Tompt i appreciate you taking time to reply
do you think its best i keep a short URL as the preferred option or follow a breadcrumb and use that option
e.g. URL.com/brand/appliancetype/product1.html
or have the canonical URL as URL.com/product1.html
if i dont noindex the pages but do provide a canonical link on the page will this remove my duplicate content headache?
-
That makes sense and it sounds like you're going about things the right way, but do you really need to noindex the items?
Could you not add the canonical URL to all of the pages? So add http://www.mystoreexample.com/brand/product1.html to any page that features the content? That way you preserve your links and keep your site more open to the spiders?
That would be my only suggestion.
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
-
Same content, different languages. Duplicate content issue? | international SEO
Hi, If the "content" is the same, but is written in different languages, will Google see the articles as duplicate content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chalet
If google won't see it as duplicate content. What is the profit of implementing the alternate lang tag?Kind regards,Jeroen0 -
Http vs. https - duplicate content
Hi I have recently come across a new issue on our site, where https & http titles are showing as duplicate. I read https://moz.com/community/q/duplicate-content-and-http-and-https however, am wondering as https is now a ranking factor, blocked this can't be a good thing? We aren't in a position to roll out https everywhere, so what would be the best thing to do next? I thought about implementing canonicals? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Duplicate content due to parked domains
I have a main ecommerce website with unique content and decent back links. I had few domains parked on the main website as well specific product pages. These domains had some type in traffic. Some where exact product names. So main main website www.maindomain.com had domain1.com , domain2.com parked on it. Also had domian3.com parked on www.maindomain.com/product1. This caused lot of duplicate content issues. 12 months back, all the parked domains were changed to 301 redirects. I also added all the domains to google webmaster tools. Then removed main directory from google index. Now realize few of the additional domains are indexed and causing duplicate content. My question is what other steps can I take to avoid the duplicate content for my my website 1. Provide change of address in Google search console. Is there any downside in providing change of address pointing to a website? Also domains pointing to a specific url , cannot provide change of address 2. Provide a remove page from google index request in Google search console. It is temporary and last 6 months. Even if the pages are removed from Google index, would google still see them duplicates? 3. Ask google to fetch each url under other domains and submit to google index. This would hopefully remove the urls under domain1.com and doamin2.com eventually due to 301 redirects. 4. Add canonical urls for all pages in the main site. so google will eventually remove content from doman1 and domain2.com due to canonical links. This wil take time for google to update their index 5. Point these domains elsewhere to remove duplicate contents eventually. But it will take time for google to update their index with new non duplicate content. Which of these options are best best to my issue and which ones are potentially dangerous? I would rather not to point these domains elsewhere. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ajiabs0 -
Concerns of Duplicative Content on Purchased Site
Recently I purchased a site of 50+ DA (oldsite.com) that had been offline/404 for 9-12 months from the previous owner. The purchase included the domain and the content previously hosted on the domain. The backlink profile is 100% contextual and pristine. Upon purchasing the domain, I did the following: Rehosted the old site and content that had been down for 9-12 months on oldsite.com Allowed a week or two for indexation on oldsite.com Hosted the old content on my newsite.com and then performed 100+ contextual 301 redirects from the oldsite.com to newsite.com using direct and wild card htaccess rules Issued a Press Release declaring the acquisition of oldsite.com for newsite.com Performed a site "Change of Name" in Google from oldsite.com to newsite.com Performed a site "Site Move" in Bing/Yahoo from oldsite.com to newsite.com It's been close to a month and while organic traffic is growing gradually, it's not what I would expect from a domain with 700+ referring contextual domains. My current concern is around original attribution of content on oldsite.com shifting to scraper sites during the year or so that it was offline. For Example: Oldsite.com has full attribution prior to going offline Scraper sites scan site and repost content elsewhere (effort unsuccessful at time because google know original attribution) Oldsite.com goes offline Scraper sites continue hosting content Google loses consumer facing cache from oldsite.com (and potentially loses original attribution of content) Google reassigns original attribution to a scraper site Oldsite.com is hosted again and Google no longer remembers it's original attribution and thinks content is stolen Google then silently punished Oldsite.com and Newsite.com (which it is redirected to) QUESTIONS Does this sequence have any merit? Does Google keep track of original attribution after the content ceases to exist in Google's search cache? Are there any tools or ways to tell if you're being punished for content being posted else on the web even if you originally had attribution? Unrelated: Are there any other steps that are recommend for a Change of site as described above.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PetSite0 -
Cross Domain duplicate content...
Does anyone have any experience with this situation? We have 2 ecommerce websites that carry 90% of the same products, with mostly duplicate product descriptions across domains. We will be running some tests shortly. Question 1: If we deindex a group of product pages on Site A, should we see an increase in ranking for the same products on Site B? I know nothing is certain, just curious to hear your input. The same 2 domains have different niche authorities. One is healthcare products, the other is general merchandise. We've seen this because different products rank higher on 1 domain or the other. Both sites have the same Moz Domain Authority (42, go figure). We are strongly considering cross domain canonicals. Question 2 Does niche authority transfer with a cross domain canonical? In other words, for a particular product, will it rank the same on both domains regardless of which direction we canonical? Ex: Site A: Healthcare Products, Site B: General Merchandise. I have a health product that ranks #15 on site A, and #30 on site B. If I use rel=canonical for this product on site B pointing at the same product on Site A, will the ranking be the same if I use Rel=canonical from Site A to Site B? Again, best guess is fine. Question 3: These domains have similar category page structures, URLs, etc, but feature different products for a particular category. Since the pages are different, will cross domain canonicals be honored by Google?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AMHC1 -
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 -
Are all duplicate content issues bad? (Blog article Tags)
If so how bad? We use tags on our blog and this causes duplicate content issues. We don't use wordpress but with such a highly used cms having the same issue it seems quite plausible that Google would be smart enough to deal with duplicate content issues caused by blog article tags and not penalise at all. Here it has been discussed and I'm ready to remove tags from our blog articles or monitor them closely to see how it effects our rankings. Before I do, can you give me some advice around this? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daniel_B
Daniel.0 -
Site duplication issue....
Hi All, I have a client who has duplicated an entire section of their site onto another domain about 1 year ago. The new domain was ranking well but was hit heavily back in March by Panda. I have to say the set up isn't great and the solution I'm proposing isn't ideal, however, as an agency we have only been tasked with "performing SEO" on the new domain. Here is an illustration of the problem: http://i.imgur.com/Mfh8SLN.jpg My solution to the issue is to 301 redirect the duplicated area of the original site out (around 150 pages) to the new domain name, but I'm worried that this could be could cause a problem as I know you have to be careful with redirecting internal pages to external when it comes to SEO. The other issue I have is that the client would like to retain the menu structure on the main site, but I do not want to be putting an external link in the main navigation so my proposed solution is as follows: Implement 301 redirects for URLs from original domain to new domain Remove link out to this section from the main navigation of original site and add a boiler plate link in another area of the template for "Visit xxx for our xxx products" kind of link to the other site. Illustration of this can be found here: http://i.imgur.com/CY0ZfHS.jpg I'm sure the best solution would be to redirect in URLs from the new domain into the original site and keep all sections within the one domain and optimise the one site. My hands are somewhat tied on this one but I just wanted clarification or advice on the solution I've proposed, and that it wont dramatically affect the standing of the current sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiroAsh0