Duplicate Content - What's the best bad idea?
-
Hi all,
I have 1000s of products where the product description is very technical and extremely hard to rewrite or create an unique one.
I'll probably will have to use the contend provided by the brands, which can already be found in dozens of other sites.
My options are:
-
Use the Google on/off tags "don't index
" -
Put the content in an image
Are there any other options?
We'd always write our own unique copy to go with the technical bit.
Cheers
-
-
This applies to Google Mini or Search Appliance which are custom search tools for an individual website.
They allow site owners to sculpt the indexing of their private set ups.
Adwords also has something to help indicate the important content for determining the page topic for relating ads.
However, they don't apply to Googlebot spidering as mentioned above.
-
Hi - The google on/off tags idea I got it from https://developers.google.com/search-appliance/documentation/46/admin_crawl/Preparing
| index | Words between the tags are not indexed as occurring on the current page. | fish shark
mackerel | The words fish and mackerel are indexed for this page, but the occurrence of shark is not indexed.
This page could appear in search results for the term shark only if the word appears elsewhere on the page or in anchortext for links to the page.
Hyperlinks that appear within these tags are followed. | -
I agree with Takeshi, but would also like to add that so-called "Google on/off tags" are a myth. What you have typed out would be an HTML comment (they begin with
-
If the descriptions are very technical then likely there is a fair amount of repetition in the sentence pattern, diction etc. I'd recommend playing with regex to help transform content into something original.
For instance, you could search for industry abbreviations CW and replace with long forms _**Clockwise (CW). **_Maybe they over use an adjective that you could changeto your own voice.
Also, perhaps the stock descriptions have blocks of useless content you could strip out in the mean time?
The DB probably has a few other fields (name, product attributes etc) so be sure to find a unique way of assembling the meta description, title and details.
If you find enough to change, I'd think having the description would be better then having a page that is too light on words.
Be sure to mark up with http://schema.org/Product so SE's understand the nature of the content.
EDIT: I have used the regex technique to enhance the content of a database by added inline tooltips, diagrams or figures and glossary links. However with Penguin, I would be careful with automated links. You would only want to create a handful using the same anchor text.
EDIT2: I forgot - MAKE FREQUENT BACK UPS. Regex is super powerful and can tank a database really fast. Make a backup of the original and of every successful iteration - it will take a little longer but it will save your butt when things go bad.
-
I would say use the content as is (regular text) and work on adding additional content on top of that. Most marketplaces and etailers (including Amazon) use the descriptions provided by the brands. Google understands that. The idea is to provide additional value on top of that content with things like user reviews and additional features that make your site stand out.
-
Wow, a really tough problem.
I would definitely go for the image, and then customise the copy around the image so you can still rank for those pages. If you go for noindex tags, you lose all optimisation opportunites.
Or, could you host the product description on a single domain and then link to that from all your relevant pages?
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
-
Sub domain? Micro site? What's the best solution?
My client currently has two websites to promote their art galleries in different parts of the country. They have bought a new domain (let's call it buyart.com) which they would eventually like to use as an e-commerce platform. They are wondering whether they keep their existing two gallery websites (non e-commerce) separate as they always have been, or somehow combine these into the new domain and have one overarching brand (buyart.com). I've read a bit on subdomains and microsites but am unsure at this stage what the best option would be, and what the pros and cons are. My feeling is to bring it all together under buyart.com so everything is in one place and creates a better user journey for anyone who would like to visit. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | WhitewallGlasgow0 -
Duplicate content issue on Magento platform
We have a lot of duplicate pages (600 urls) on our site (total urls 800) built on the Magento e-commerce platform. We have the same products in a number of different categories that make it easy for people to choose which product suits their needs. If we enable the canonical fix in Magento will it dramatically reduce the number of pages that are indexed. Surely with more pages indexed (even though they are duplicates) we get more search results visibility. I'm new to this particular SEO issue. What do the SEO community have to say on this matter. Do we go ahead with the canonical fix or leave it?
Technical SEO | | PeterDavies0 -
Duplicate content question...
I have a high duplicate content issue on my website. However, I'm not sure how to handle or fix this issue. I have 2 different URLs landing to the same page content. http://www.myfitstation.com/tag/vegan/ and http://www.myfitstation.com/tag/raw-food/ .In this situation, I cannot redirect one URL to the other since in the future I will probably be adding additional posts to either the "vegan" tag or the "raw food tag". What is the solution in this case? Thank you
Technical SEO | | myfitstation0 -
Https Duplicate Content
My previous host was using shared SSL, and my site was also working with https which I didn’t notice previously. Now I am moved to a new server, where I don’t have any SSL and my websites are not working with https version. Problem is that I have found Google have indexed one of my blog http://www.codefear.com with https version too. My blog traffic is continuously dropping I think due to these duplicate content. Now there are two results one with http version and another with https version. I searched over the internet and found 3 possible solutions. 1 No-Index https version
Technical SEO | | RaviAhuja
2 Use rel=canonical
3 Redirect https versions with 301 redirection Now I don’t know which solution is best for me as now https version is not working. One more thing I don’t know how to implement any of the solution. My blog is running on WordPress. Please help me to overcome from this problem, and after solving this duplicate issue, do I need Reconsideration request to Google. Thank you0 -
Hiding Duplicate Content using Javascript
We have e-commerce site selling books. Besides basic information on books, we have content for “About the book” , “Editorial Reviews”, “About the author” etc. But the content in all these section are duplicate and are available on all sites selling similar books. Our question is: 1.Should we worry about the content being duplicate?2.If yes, then will it by a good idea to hide this duplicate content using javascript or iframe?
Technical SEO | | CyrilWilson0 -
SEOMoz is indicating I have 40 pages with duplicate content, yet it doesn't list the URL's of the pages???
When I look at the Errors and Warnings on my Campaign Overview, I have a lot of "duplicate content" errors. When I view the errors/warnings SEOMoz indicates the number of pages with duplicate content, yet when I go to view them the subsequent page says no pages were found... Any ideas are greatly welcomed! Thanks Marty K.
Technical SEO | | MartinKlausmeier0 -
Question about duplicate content within my site
Hi. New here to SEOmoz and also somewhat new to SEO in general. A friend has asked me to help do some onsite SEO for their company's website. The company uses Drupal Content Management System. They have a couple product pages that contain a tabbed section for features, accessories, etc. When they built their tabs, they used a Drupal module called Quicktabs, by which each individual tab is created as a separate page and then pulled into the tabs from those pages. So, in essence, you now have instances of repeated content. 1) the page used to create the tab, and 2) the tab that displays on the product page. My question is, how should I handle the pages that were used to create the tabs? Should I make them NOINDEX? Thank you for your advice in advance.
Technical SEO | | aprilm-1890400 -
Duplicate content question with PDF
Hi, I manage a property listing website which was recently revamped, but which has some on-site optimization weaknesses and issues. For each property listing like http://www.selectcaribbean.com/property/147.html there is an equivalent PDF version spidered by google. The page looks like this http://www.selectcaribbean.com/pdf1.php?pid=147 my question is: Can this create a duplicate content penalty? If yes, should I ban these pages from being spidered by google in the robots.txt or should I make these link nofollow?
Technical SEO | | multilang0