Will our two retail sites get hit with duplicate content?
-
Our retail site just rolled out a second online store. The URL is new and it is showing some of the same products from the same vendors (probably about 40% of the fist store is in the second store). Down the road, we will remove the products from the first site, however, we are keeping it for now. The products show up on both sites, with the same images, and the same descriptions and almost the same URL query string. Are we going to get hit with any penalties due to duplicate content?
-
Ive asked them to Canonicalize from the old site to the new site.... although... we have great rankings for some of the brands on the old site.
-
You are definitely at risk of it, yes. One of the main benefits of the duplicate content filters that google introduced was to stop people rolling out cookie-cutter sites of the same products in order to dominate the SERPs. Whilst that isn't your aim the result is quite similar and you could therefore get penalised.
My fear would be a penalty that goes beyond just affecting the duplicate parts. This might be a particular concern on a new site.
You might be able to lower the risk of this by altering the mix:
- Can you lose any of the duplicate products for now?
- Could you just no-index them on the new site for now?
- If you can add new descriptions can you add something unique to the existing ones?
- Is there other unique content that you could add
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
-
Hi friends, I have a question. I want to know how Google detects the author of a content.
Hi friends, I have a question. I want to know how Google detects the author of a content.
Content Development | | Alopii0 -
What to do with outdated and irrelevant content on a website?
Hi everyone, On our corporate website we have a blog where we publish articles which are directly related to our company (house heating systems and gas cylinders) and some articles which are completely irrelevant to our core business, but which might be of interest to our potential clients. Recently I've been told that it is not a good idea to include these not directly related posts to our core business, because Google might be somewhat confused at to what our core business is all about. I was advised to research this topic and think of completely removing blog posts that are irrelevant to our core business from our blog. By removing I mean completely removing pages and setting a 410 status to tell Google that it is not a 404 error but that these pages were intentionally removed. I would like to hear some independent advice from Moz community as to what I should do? Thank you very much in advance.
Content Development | | Intergaz0 -
What is the best tactic to fix thousands of product descriptions on an eCommerce site?
I've asked this to dozens of people already, but I still haven't found a satisfactory answer... perhaps someone here can help me: I keep hearing how important it is to update product descriptions to avoid duplicate content, decrease thin content and improve conversion rates - but for any new eCommerce sites like ours, with thousands of listings going up at once, this is nearly impossible to control. Outsourcing is clearly a bad idea from an SEO standpoint as well as a UX standpoint... But are there any other options? Should I let go of my other responsibilities and focuses as an in-house SEO manager and virtually stop, drop and roll out unique product descriptions? That would be a project that would take me at least a year to complete. Do I just give up? Do two descriptions a day and hope for the best? What do you guys think? What have you recommended for others? I can't imagine our company is alone in this dilemma. Thanks in advance! Hanna
Content Development | | whiteonlySEO0 -
Do you know any website you can get in touch with bloggers?
I would like to get in touch with some good bloggers who would be happy to write a blog about my company services. Is there any website where is the list of blogs so you can get in touch with them or buy blog post on their blogs? Thanks Lukas
Content Development | | Lukas-ST0 -
Need to know about content marketing strategy
Hi, Can anybody guide me to a document or a presentation that elaborates how the content for overall Internet marketing strategy should be developed? And how do people beyond marketing department contribute to its success? Regards
Content Development | | IM_Learner0 -
Duplicate Content Discovery
I was hit with Penguin on April 24th like a ton of bricks. Luckily my cash cow keyword was kept safe and still is today with even an increase in traffic over the year. With some other main keywords I used to rank far I fell off the board on that day. Since then I have been slowly trying to clean things up as much as I know Today I was sitting down with my coffee and Penguin mindset and I decided to use copyscape again to review duplicate content issues and something I noticed which I either didn't before or didn't think was an issue was my footer. In my footer I used a blurb from some other site in my niche a long time ago. Which I discovered they used from one of the main sites in my niche. Anyways I noticed that my footer is what kept coming up as being duplicate content and was always at an overage of 28% according to copyscape. My question is should I be worried about the footer? Is 28% a lot?
Content Development | | cbielich0 -
I have created 2 blogs for a client as they have 2 domains (1 for their core business, and 1 for a product). I want to use the same content on both blogs. What is the best way to set this up so there are no ranking or duplicate content issues?
We are pushing SEO for only one of the domains, therefore I would like one to be dominant. We will be sending the blog post via email to their database, therefore each blog needs to have the same content. Thank you!
Content Development | | MarketingResults0 -
Define: Good Content
I am curious to hear what you guys consider to be the characteristics of good content and in which order if you have a preference. Here are a few I can think of: Informative (you can learn something new) Substantial (enough of it and thorough) Complete (doesn't give half-baked information or ideas) Unique (not regurgitated original content) Helpful (practical actionable information) Visual (content complemented by media) Referenced (claims made are substantiated through citations) Entertaining (or otherwise emotional, e.g. surprising, sad, shocking, controversial) Formatted (easy to read and follow) Timely (right content at the right time, applies for news) Professional (writing style, grammar, spelling and sentence structure) Can you add to this list?
Content Development | | Dan-Petrovic1
