ECommerce product listed in multiple places, best SEO practice?
-
We have an eCommerce site we have built for a customer and the products are allowed to appear in more than one product category within the web site.
Now I know this is a bad idea from a duplicate content point of view, But we are going to allow the customer to select which out of the multiple categories the product appears in will be the default category.
This will mean we will have a way of defining what the default url is for a product.
So am I correct in thinking all the other urls where the product appears we should add a rel canonical to these pages pointing to the default url to stop duplicate content?
Is this the best way?
-
Site is still in testing but as an example the products are for cars and the same product can fit multiple cars, hence why it may be in more than one place
-
Short answer: using rel="canonical" to point to the default URL for each product will solve the product-related duplicate content issue.
As for the "best" way to solve this problem, I actually prefer using a robots meta tag with "noindex, follow" attributes on each duplicate product page.
Since the duplicate URLs only exist for navigational purposes, I'd prefer to keep them out of the search engine indexes altogether.
Once you have this issue squared away, be sure to read through these resources for other important eCommerce considerations:
-
Another option i thought of would be that the other pages I simply add a no index meta tag to so it only indexes the one url.
The reason I say this as from experience of how seomoz crawls sites and some pages which i know are not duplicate content yet i have had many pages for many sites get tagged for duplicate content simply because there isn't enough of a difference on the page.
The product pages wouldb e very much the same as really all that would be different is the breadcrumb trail and possibly some other links 95% of the pages would be the same as they are the same product.
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
-
Best Practices for Title Tags for Product Listing Page
My industry is commercial real estate in New York City. Our site has 300 real estate listings. The format we have been using for Title Tags are below. This probably disastrous from an SEO perspective. Using number is a total waste space. A few questions:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-Should we set listing not no index if they are not content rich?
-If we do choose to index them, should we avoid titles listing Square Footage and dollar amounts?
-Since local SEO is critical, should the titles always list New York, NY or Manhattan, NY?
-I have red that titles should contain some form of branding. But our company name is Metro Manhattan Office Space. That would take up way too much space. Even "Metro Manhattan" is long. DO we need to use the title tag for branding or can we just focus on a brief description of page content incorporating one important phrase? Our site is: w w w . m e t r o - m a n h a t t a n . c o m <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Turnkey Flatiron Tech Space | 2,850 SF $10,687/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Gallery, Office Rental | Midtown, W. 57 St | 4441SF $24055/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Open Plan Loft |Flatiron, Chelsea | 2414SF $12,874/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| Tribeca Corner Loft | Varick Street | 2267SF $11,712/month | <colgroup><col width="405"></colgroup>
| 275 Madison, LAW, P7, 3,252SF, $65 - Manhattan, New York |0 -
Which is the best SEO plugin for joomla
Hey there, can any one please tell me the Best plugin i can choose For joomla?? I am going use sh404ref & 2nd one i am thinking is EFSEO. If besides This do u know any Good One, Please Help to choose Best Thanx in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | poojaverify060 -
Guest Blog post best practice considering time/energy
Good morning Moz community 🙂 What do you guys think would be the best practice as a starting blogger offering guest articles to other 3rd party blogs when it comes to building up my own website's SEO points (assuming I have a link in the guest article to my website). 1. If I have the opportunity to post the guest article on two+ different blogs, should I go for it? -OR- 2. Only post the article on one specific blog and write a different one for the others? In a world with unlimited resources, the latter option would prevail, but considering that it takes time to write, what would you recommend if I am trying to build my websites SERPs? Carlos
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 90miLLA0 -
Best practices on setting up multi country Magento store
We run Magento and we're in the process of redesigning our site. We want the site to have separate storefronts for different countries, however we won't have the site language translated initially. We're thinking we'll use the Magento multi-store feature and have sites like /fr, /de /en-us, /en-au, etc. Is the best practice to use hreflang and for the non-english stores which haven't yet been translated? For example set them as, for French users: Essentially saying, the page is aimed at French people, but is in English. The separate storefronts will have things like currency and tax localised to each country and will gradually be getting translated, especially the more generic stuff like "Add to Cart", "Checkout" etc. Or, should it be targeted at French language and country, despite not all being translated into French? Or is there a better way to do this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
How would I be able to make sure Google lists search results as a combined listing opposed to a single listing/
I am slightly confused about how to let Google know to index our site as a complex listing opposed to individual page listing. Our site is well established and has over 3500 indexes. Does this have to do with the Sitemap or is it something else? Is there a way to expedite Google to list our site like the example below. Thank you for your help! Whole Foods Market <cite>www.wholefoodsmarket.com/</cite>Owns and operates chain of natural foods supermarkets which sell meat and poultry free of growth hormones and antibiotics, unprocessed grains and cereals, ... | ### Stores Hours: Open 8am to 10pm Seven Days a Week. Note Holiday ... | ### Online Ordering welcome find a store healthy eating about our products ... |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | olive13
| ### Coupons Here they are: printable coupons from the latest issue of our in ... | ### Recipes This boldly flavored casserole is an excellent way to use leftover ... |
| ### Careers Hiring Process - Job Fairs and Events - Career Paths - ... | ### Lamar Located just blocks from where Whole Foods Market began as ... |
| More results from wholefoodsmarket.com » |0 -
What are best practices for anchor text diversification in a post-penguin world?
There is growing concern for this topic as the best white-hat tactics generally allow you to choose your own anchor text (eg. guest posting and infographics)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LaunchAStartup0 -
Domain Name Change - Best Practices?
Good day guys, We got a restaurant that is changing its name and domain. However they are keeping the same server location, same content and same pages (we are just changing the logo on the website). It just has to go a new domain. We don't want to lose the value of the current site, and we want to avoid any duplicate penalties. Could you please advise of the best practices of doing a domain name change? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael-Goode0 -
Best Service for optimizing google product feed?
We're looking for a company that can help us optimize our google product feed. Does anyone have any recommendations or suggestions? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eric_since1910.com0