Duplicate Content Due to Pagination
-
Recently our newly designed website has been suffering from a rankings loss. While I am sure there are a number of factors involved, I'd like to no if this scenario could be harmful...
Google is showing a number of duplicate content issues within Webmaster Tools. Some of what I am seeing is duplicate Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions for page 1 and page 2 of some of my product category pages. So if a category has many products and has 4 pages, it is effectively showing the same page title and meta desc. across all 4 pages.
I am wondering if I should let my site show, say 150 products per page to get them all on one page instead of the current 36 per page. I use the Big Commerce platform.
Thank you for taking the time to read my question!
-
Will do, thanks Matt. We have quite a bit in this new design, so we are staying with the platform. BC is great as far as uptime, etc. We actually left Volusion after 6 years to move here.
-
Did you invest much into the new design? If so, it might be too late to consider moving platforms. Service levels like that belong in the 1900's!!!
I'd recommend giving Madwire Media a shout if they developed it for you. They MIGHT be able to help. Feel free to pop them my email address if they get lost, I could be of some help possibly.
-
Thank you Matt!
They (BC) are not a ton of help and there seems to be multiple issues. The last two techs, no joke, have said "listen, if I were an SEO expert I wouldn't be sitting here"... what kind of service is that?
I am going to talk to the developer that built the site (Madwire Media) and see what they can do, if anything.
-
Ah, sounds like that could be an issue. Unfortunately I'm not too familiar with Big Commerce. I have used it a couple of times but not in detail. I tend to use Magento or OSCommerce for large eCommerce projects and sometimes Wordpress (using something like WooCommerce) for smaller projects.
It's definitely worth shouting up to Big Commerce though to see if they can help.
-
This article makes complete sense Matt. I don't have the ability, that I'm aware of, to edit the canonical tags used by Big Commerce. They automatically generate those for all products and categories. Funny as it seems, they do NOT have the canonical tag in the home page which is a separate can of worms I am dealing with.
-
I will read all of those articles. I do know, based on some other issues we're having, that the things I may have access to edit in BigCommerce are limited. Hopefully these articles have some information I can use.
-
Here are some great articles offering several different solutions to your problem -
http://www.ayima.com/seo-knowledge/conquering-pagination-guide.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pagination-best-practices-for-seo-user-experience
-
This should help you out Josh:
You need to set up pagination correctly.
Alternatively, altering how many products are on the page might help but don't do this if you think it might effect your customers experience (although unlikely).
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
-
How to stop /tag creating duplicate content - Wordpress
Hi, I keep getting alert for duplicate content. It seems Wordpress is creating it through a /tag https://www.curveball-media.co.uk/tag/cipr/ https://www.curveball-media.co.uk/tag/pr-agencies/ Something in the way we've got Wordpress set up?
Technical SEO | | curveballmedia0 -
Duplicate content : domain alias issue
Hello there ! Let's say my client has 2 webshops (that exists since long time, so many backlinks & good authority on both) : individuals.nl : for individuals (has 200 backlinks, let's say) pros.nl : exact same products, exact same content, but with a different branding intended to professionnals (has 100 backlinks, let's say) So, both websites are 99% identical and it has to remain like that !!! Obviously, this creates duplicate content issues. Goal : I want "individuals.nl" to get all ranking value (while "pros.nl" should remain accessible through direct access & appear on it's own brand queries). Solution ? Implement canonical tags on "pros**.nl**" that goes to "individuals.nl". That way, "individuals.nl" will get all ranking value, while "pros.nl" will still be reachable through direct access. However, "individuals.nl" will then replace "pros.nl" from SERP in the long-term. The only thing I want is to keep "pros.nl" visible for its own brand queries -> it won't be possible through organic search result, so, I'm just gonna buy those "pros" queries through paid search ! Put links on all pages of pros.nl to individuals.nl (but not the other way around), so that "pros.nl" will pass some ranking value to "individuals.nl" (but only a small part of the ranking value -> ideally, I would like to pass all link value to this domain). Could someone advise me ??? (I know it sound a bit complicated... but I don't have much choice ^^)
Technical SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Duplicate content
Hello mozzers, I have an unusual question. I've created a page that I am fully aware that it is near 100% duplicate content. It quotes the law, so it's not changeable. The page is very linkable in my niche. Is there a way I can build quality links to it that benefit my overall websites DA (i'm not bothered about the linkable page being ranked) without risking panda/dupe content issues? Thanks, Peter
Technical SEO | | peterm21 -
Duplicate Content
Hello guys, After fixing the rel tag on similar pages on the site I thought that duplicate content issue were resolved. I checked HTML Improvements on GWT and instead of going down as I expected, it went up. The duplicate issues affect identical product pages which differ from each other just for one detail, let's say length or colour. I could write different meta tags as the duplicate is the meta description, and I did it for some products but still didn't have any effects and they are still showing as duplicates. What would the problem be? Cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Rel=canonical overkill on duplicate content?
Our site has many different health centers - many of which contain duplicate content since there is topic crossover between health centers. I am using rel canonical to deal with this. My question is this: Is there a tipping point for duplicate content where Google might begin to penalize a site even if it has the rel canonical tags in place on cloned content? As an extreme example, a site could have 10 pieces of original content, but could then clone and organize this content in 5 different directories across the site each with a new url. This would ultimately result in the site having more "cloned" content than original content. Is this at all problematic even if the rel canonical is in place on all cloned content? Thanks in advance for any replies. Eric
Technical SEO | | Eric_Lifescript0 -
Fixing Duplicate Pages Titles/Content
I have a DNN site, which I created friendly URL's for; however, the creation of the friendly URL's then created duplicate page content and titles. I was able to fix all but two URL's with rel="canonical" links. BUT The two that are giving me the most issues are pointing to my homepage. When I added the rel = "canonical" link the page then becomes not indexable. And for whatever reason, I can't add a 301 redirect to the homepage because it then gives me "can't display webpage" error message. I am new to SEO and to DNN, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | VeronicaCFowler0 -
Duplicate Content based on www.www
In trying to knock down the most common errors on our site, we've noticed we do have an issue with dupicate content; however, most of the duplicate content errors are due to our site being indexed with www.www and not just www. I am perplexed as to how this is happening. Searching through IIS, I see nothing that would be causing this, and we have no hostname records setup that are www.www. Does anyone know of any other things that may cause this and how we can go about remedying it?
Technical SEO | | CredA0 -
Duplicate Content
We have a main sales page and then we have a country specific sales page for about 250 countries. The country specific pages are identical to the main sales page, with the small addition of a country flag and the country name in the h1. I have added a rel canonical tag to all country pages to send the link juice and authority to the main page, because they would be all competing for rankings. I was wondering if having the 250+ indexed pages of duplicate content will effect the ranking of the main page even though they have rel canonical tag. We get some traffic to country pages, but not as much as the main page, but im worried that if we remove those pages and redirect all to main page that we will loose 250 plus indexed pages where we can get traffic through for odd country specific terms. eg searching for uk mobile phone brings up the country specific page instead of main sales page even though the uk sales pages is not optimized for uk terms other than having a flag and the country name in the h1. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | -Al-0