SEOMOZ and non-duplicate duplicate content
-
Hi all,
Looking through the lovely SEOMOZ report, by far its biggest complaint is that of perceived duplicate content. Its hard to avoid given the nature of eCommerce sites that oestensibly list products in a consistent framework.
Most advice about duplicate content is about canonicalisation, but thats not really relevant when you have two different products being perceived as the same.
Thing is, I might have ignored it but google ignores about 40% of our site map for I suspect the same reason. Basically I dont want us to appear "Spammy". Actually we do go to a lot of time to photograph and put a little flavour text for each product (in progress).
I guess my question is, that given over 700 products, why 300ish of them would be considered duplicates and the remaning not?
Here is a URL and one of its "duplicates" according to the SEOMOZ report:
http://www.1010direct.com/DGV-DD1165-970-53/details.aspx
http://www.1010direct.com/TDV-019-GOLD-50/details.aspxThanks for any help people
-
The point I'm trying to get across is this:
"I asked the question of why these pages are considered duplicate, the answer appears to be : because textually they are even if visually they are not."
I don't think that's the complete answer, or even the most important part of the answer. Surely having mostly similar content across pages won't help, but as I've tried to point out, there are other factors that come into play here. It's not just about the content, but putting the content into context for the search engines. In order for them to understand what it is they're looking it, there's more that's important than just the content.
Michel
-
I think this highlights the fundamental problem with SEO and
eCommerce sites.We are all aware that the ultimate aim for search engines and
therefore ultimately SEO is to add value to users. But is "value" the
same for an eCommerce site as it is for a blog, or a travel information site or
a site offering information on health and advice?In my opinion, it is not. If I am looking to make a purchase, I
am looking for a site that is responsive, easy to navigate, has good imagery to
help me visualise, is secure and doesn’t clutter with in-your-face promotional
info, and of course offers value for money.Unique content therefore doesn’t really factor into it too much. Its hard enough for us, but I can only imagine how difficult it is for a company selling screws or rope, just how much creativity does that take to provide unique content for 3.5 inch brass screws over 2.5 inch steel ones?
The current mantra is to stop worrying about SEO tricks, and
focus on building a site with value. But this particular issue is an indication
we are still not there with that utopia yet.For example, as pointed out in the posts above .. these pages are considered duplicate, because by percentage the variable information is minimal; If you look at our product page we put the functionality of filling in your prescription below the product to make it
easier for the customer, but in order to solve the "percentage unique" issue, we would need to move that onto another page. Basically, we need to reduce value (convenience) to appear to add value (uniqueness).Anyway, little point complaining, I asked the question of why these pages are considered duplicate, the answer appears to be : because textually they are even if visually they are not.
I could be worrying about nothing, I believe all these pages are indexed (through crawling), its just a good proportion of our sitemap is being overlooked, I am assuming its perceived duplication as suggested in SEOMOZ. That in turn makes me concerned google is marking us down as spammy.
I appreciate all your comments.
Thanks
Paul
-
I do not agree. I see these kinds of pages on e-commerce websites on a daily basis. For webshops that sell only a certain kind of product, almost all product pages will look alike.
In this case, the H1 is different, the page title is different, and the description is different. This is only a small portion of the page but that's not uncommon, so I would argue that it cannot be just that.
I would look into URLs, marking up your data using http://schema.org/Product, possibly making small changes to accomodate the tags. For instance splitting up brand, color etc. so that you can mark them accordingly.
-
Tom has this spot on. Google doesn't only look for direct duplication, but also very similar, and these really are I'm afraid.
You need to find ways to make each page unique in its own right - let Google see that no two pages are the same and there is a real reason to rank them.
-
I wonder if the details.aspx has something to do with it?
www.1010direct.com/TDV-019-GOLD-50/details.aspx
www.1010direct.com/DGV-DD1165-970-53/details.aspxBasically, both pages are called details.aspx. Depending on how you look at it, you have 2 pages that are named the same (with mostly similar content, though not unusual for e-commerce websites) in different subfolders. I'm not sure if there's some kind of difference in the way Moz works, and if that's part of why Moz marks this as duplicate content?
Are you unable to create 'prettier' URL's? Such as:
www.1010direct.com/tim-dilsen-019-gold-50-glasses.aspx
www.1010direct.com/dolce-gabbana-dd1165-970-53-glasses.aspxWith or without the aspx of course.
-
I'm not surprised Moz is flagging those pages as duplicate content and I wouldn't be totally surprised if Google did in the future.
Put it this way, the pages are identical bar for a single sentence title description, a price and roughly a 20 word section describing the product. Everything else is identical. It's duplicate.
Look at it another through Google's eyes. Here's how the two pages look when crawled by Google:
(If that doesn't work, try yourself at http://www.seo-browser.com/)
Just look at how much text and HTML is shared between the two pages. Yes, there are key differences on the pages (namely the product), but the Google bot nor the Mozbot is going to recognise those elements when it crawls it.
Presuming Google ignores the site nav, it still has a bunch of text and crawlable elements that are shared - pretty much everything under the product description. It doesn't see the individual images and the flavour text is frankly too small to make any sort of dent in the duplicate content %.
I'd seriously recommend at revising how your product pages look - there's far too much repeated content per page (you can still promote these things on each page but in a much, much smaller way) and the individual descriptions for the products, in my eyes, are not substantial enough.
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
-
Duplicate Footer Content Issue
Please check given screenshot URL. As per the screenshot we are using highlighted content through out the website in the footer section of our website (https://www.mastersindia.co/) . So, please tell us how Google will treat this content. Will Google count it as duplicate content or not? What is the solution in case if the Google treat it as duplicate content. Screenshot URL: https://prnt.sc/pmvumv
Technical SEO | | AnilTanwarMI0 -
Duplicate Content within Site
I'm very new here... been reading a lot about Panda and duplicate content. I have a main website and a mobile site (same domain - m.domain.com). I've copied the same text over to those other web pages. Is that okay? Or is that considered duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | CalicoKitty20000 -
Duplicate Content Issues on Product Pages
Hi guys Just keen to gauge your opinion on a quandary that has been bugging me for a while now. I work on an ecommerce website that sells around 20,000 products. A lot of the product SKUs are exactly the same in terms of how they work and what they offer the customer. Often it is 1 variable that changes. For example, the product may be available in 200 different sizes and 2 colours (therefore 400 SKUs available to purchase). Theese SKUs have been uploaded to the website as individual entires so that the customer can purchase them, with the only difference between the listings likely to be key signifiers such as colour, size, price, part number etc. Moz has flagged these pages up as duplicate content. Now I have worked on websites long enough now to know that duplicate content is never good from an SEO perspective, but I am struggling to work out an effective way in which I can display such a large number of almost identical products without falling foul of the duplicate content issue. If you wouldnt mind sharing any ideas or approaches that have been taken by you guys that would be great!
Technical SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Duplicate Content
We have a ton of duplicate content/title errors on our reports, many of them showing errors of: http://www.mysite.com/(page title) and http://mysite.com/(page title) Our site has been set up so that mysite.com 301 redirects to www.mysite.com (we did this a couple years ago). Is it possible that I set up my campaign the wrong way in SEOMoz? I'm thinking it must be a user error when I set up the campaign since we already have the 301 Redirect. Any advice is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Ditigal_Taylor0 -
Is anyone using Canonicalization for duplicate content
Hi i am trying to find out if anyone is using Canonicalization for duplicate content on a joomla site. I am using joomla 1.5 and trying to find either a module or manually how to sort this out as i have over 300 pages of duplicate content because i am not using this technique any help and advice would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Avoiding duplicate content on internal pages
Lets say I'm working on a decorators website and they offer a list of residential and commercial services, some of which fall into both categories. For example "Internal Decorating" would have a page under both Residential and Commercial, and probably even a 3rd general category of Services too. The content inside the multiple instances of a given page (i.e. Internal Decorating) at best is going to be very similar if not identical in some instances. I'm just a bit concerned that having 3 "Internal Decorating" pages could be detrimental to the website's overall SEO?
Technical SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
Duplicate Page Titles and Content
I have a site that has a lot of contact modules. So basically each section/page has a contact person and when you click the contact button it brings up a new window with form to submit and then ends with a thank you page. All of the contact and thank you pages are showing up as duplicate page titles and content. Is this something that needs to be fixed even if I am not using them to target keywords?
Technical SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
Duplicate content connundrum
Hey Mozzers- I have a tricky situation with one of my clients. They're a reputable organization and have been mentioned in several major news articles. They want to create a Press page on their site with links to each article, but they want viewers to remain within the site and not be redirected to the press sites themselves. The other issue is some of the articles have been removed from the original press sites where they were first posted. I want to avoid duplicate content issues, but I don't see how to repost the articles within the client's site. I figure I have 3 options: 1. create PDFs (w/SEO-friendly URLs) with the articles embedded in them that open in a new window. 2. Post an image with screenshot of article on a unique URL w/brief content. 3. Copy and paste the article to a unique URL. If anyone has experience with this issue or any suggestions, I would greatly appreciate it. Jaime Brown
Technical SEO | | JamesBSEO0