Duplicate content in SEOMOZ report

[footd]

Hi guys,

The SEOMOZ report shows there is duplicate content on my Magento ecommerce: footdistrict.com

Example:

http://footdistrict.com/nike-air-royalty-386169602.html?___store=footdistrict_en

Duplicate content shown on the report:

http://footdistrict.com/marcas/puma.html?___store=footdistrict_en
http://footdistrict.com/new-balance-m400rk.html?___store=footdistrict_en
http://footdistrict.com/new-balance-gm500mbn.html?___store=footdistrict_en
http://footdistrict.com/new-balance-m400nnb.html?___store=footdistrict_en

My guess is that this is due to the fixed footer that we have set where modal windows pop up with delivery info and so on. As such, all the content within it is repeated through all the pages

What do you recommend me to remove this duplicate content?

I have read about duplicate content issues but they don't usually deal with div tag duplicate issues, modal windows and so on.

Thanks

Regards

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

I have seen the same thing in a number of Magento shops I track, but while Magento can be a bit of a pain (those url variables oh man!) I think this is most likely due to thin product content and how the SEOmoz report decides on what is duplicate content.

The modal window content is repeated across all or most pages as you say, and since that content is the vast majority of the page's content, then the report is saying these pages look all the same. The product details are very small texts in comparison to all the generic shipping etc content you have in each page.

I see in my reports the duplicate page report numbers bouncing around all the time as the report decides one week that these 5 pages look the same and the next week a different 5 pages look the same!

I don't know the specifics of how exactly the report decides which pages to flag as duplicate or why it bounces around, but I think the main issue is that if the report is seeing the content as duplicate, then there is a good chance the search engines might as well. It is at least an indication that something is amiss.

How to fix it? Well I would suggest 2 things:

1. Add more product details to pad out the product specific texts on product pages and

2. Move the modal content window data into separate pages and then either link to them from the footer as you do now, but leading to their own page or else load the separate page data into the window using ajax or similar.

Both solutions require a bit of work, I would think the second would have the most immediate benefit in terms of the SEOmoz reports.

Hope that makes sense!

[footd]

Thanks guys for your responses.

Anyway, I don't know if I have explained myself correctly.

TextMarketing - I know the report shows parameters

Page

http://footdistrict.com/nike-air-royalty-386169602.html?___store=footdistrict_en

Duplicate content shown on the report:

http://footdistrict.com/marcas/puma.html**?___store=footdistrict_en**
http://footdistrict.com/new-balance-m400rk.html**?___store=footdistrict_en **
http://footdistrict.com/new-balance-gm500mbn.html**?___store=footdistrict_en** 
http://footdistrict.com/new-balance-m400nnb.html**?___store=footdistrict_en**

But I don't think the parameters are the issue. The page and their duplicates don't share any content except the modal windows that as I said, appear on every page. And the modal windows do not add any parameter to the URL.

If you are on page http://footdistrict.com/nike-air-royalty-386169602.html?___store=footdistrict_en and click on a modal window, the url remains the same.

RicardoLG - that change fixes the url issue but you can deal with that with the canonical tags.

www.domain.com/product1html  - Canonical

www.domain.com/product1html**?___store=footdistrict_es**

But this change is useful to remove this. However, I have two launguages on my store. I will need to see if this works.

My question is: My understanding of the report and my store shows me that this is due to the modal windows content that is repeated across all my pages.

Am I wrong?

If I am not, how can you fix this?

Thanks and regards

[RicardoLG]

Looks like this is an issue with Magento.

I found this answer in http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/60062/P15/. Didn't test that:

Open “Link.php” in app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/Block/Widget/Link.php

GOTO Line 91:

$this->_href = $this->_href . $symbol . “___store=” . $store->getCode();

And change it to:

$this->_href = $this->_href;

[TextMarketing]

hey there!
To be sure that you don't get dinged for duplicate content, you can specify these parameters under the "URL Parameters" in Google webmaster tools. This tells Google that these values don't change any of the pages content and therefore only count 1 of the pages.

Hope that helps!