Duplicate content, is it ever ok?
-
I am building a large site for a client who sells physical products. I am using WordPress as my CMS (as a piece of background information). There are a few products that need to be listed in the sites hierarchy in multiple locations as such:
-
Parent A
-
Child 1
-
Parent B
-
Child 2
-
Child 3
-
Parent C
-
Child 1
I am concerned that having a product exist in multiple instances will cause indexing problems for that product. I can't be the only person to come across this issue, would love some feedback on the best practices for such an issue.
Thanks in advance
-
-
Hey Jeseph,
I'd concur with Chris and Peter here
I would either structure your site so that individual products aren't in folders: e.g. yoursite.com/product-name; or if that's not possible use rel-canonical to indicate your preferred URL.
Thanks
Hannah
-
We have a similar structure in our web-store. However we don't use WordPress, our company has the same concerns. To use your example we also have a "Child 1" problem, at least as far as our thoughts about duplicate content are concerned. Our experience is that Google has NEVER marked our "Child 1" as duplicate. However our "Parent A" through "Parent C" categories have been marked as duplicate. So we have made changes in or categories to try and stem the issue.
After doing some research on Google duplicate content, they specifically say they only consider duplicate content when the content is similar when the base URL's come from two different sources. What this means to me is that: www.site1.com\Parent-A\Child-1 is a duplicate content to www.site2.com\something-new\Child-1
Where www.site1.com\Parent-A\Child-1 and www.site1.com\Parent-C\Child-1 are not considered duplicate content.
-
Hi Jeseph
Yes, duplicate content can be an issue especially if your sites has lots of it, plus you will get the situation where Google will only index one instance of each page.
The best way around is in your situation though is to have one instance of each product, but to use that instance in multiple locations from a browsing point of view. If done correctly, each product will have a unique URL, but the page it is on can be referenced from a variety of locations/categories.
So, for example, a page about a shiny blue pen could be linked to from a pens category and also a gifts category, but the URL of the shiny blue pen page can be the same, e.g. yourdomain.com/blue-shiny-pen.html so one page and not a duplicate.
In terms of the facilities within Wordpress to make that happen I am not a Wordpress expert but I know there are many on this forum who are, so I am sure someone will give you some guidance on that.
Peter
-
rel=canonical was made for just such a thing so there is not really an excuse, sure you won't have all of them indexed but at the same time it wont bring your whole site down. As long as the user can find that product (even if its in one instance) via Google then I presume that's good for you,.rel="canonical" wouldn't affect their (user) site navigation.
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 fix duplicate content for homepage and index.html
Hello, I know this probably gets asked quite a lot but I haven't found a recent post about this in 2018 on Moz Q&A, so I thought I would check in and see what the best route/solution for this issue might be. I'm always really worried about making any (potentially bad/wrong) changes to the site, as it's my livelihood, so I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. Moz, SEMRush and several other SEO tools are all reporting that I have duplicate content for my homepage and index.html (same identical page). According to Moz, my homepage (without index.html) has PA 29 and index.html has PA 15. They are both showing Status 200. I read that you can either do a 301 redirect or add rel=canonical I currently have a 301 setup for my http to https page and don't have any rel=canonical added to the site/page. What is the best and safest way to get rid of duplicate content and merge the my non index and index.html homepages together these days? I read that both 301 and canonical pass on link juice but I don't know what the best route for me is given what I said above. Thank you for reading, any input is greatly appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | dreservices0 -
Duplicate Issue
Hello Mozzers! We have a client going through a website revamp. The client is The Michelangelo Hotel, and they are part of Star Hotels. Star Hotels plans to create a section on their site for The Michelangelo, as opposed to maintaining a stand alone site. They will then take the michelangelohotel.com domain, and point it to the corresponding pages on the Star site. The guest will key in www.michelangelohotel.com, and will see the same content that can be found on www.starhotel.com/en/michelangelo-hotel-new-york. The problem we have is this: Essentially the same content will be indexed twice, once on starhotels.com and once on michelangelohotel.com. This would seem to cause a duplicate content issue. What are your thoughts? Edit: I apologize, because I was not nearly clear enough here. The Star Hotels site will have 5 pages dedicated to The Michelangelo Hotel. The content will sit solely on that server as those 5 pages. Those 5 pages will each be indexed as 2 URLs. www.michelangelohotel.com <-> www.starhotels.com/en/michelangelo/ www.michelangelohotel.com/accommodations <-> www.starhotels.com/en/michelangelo/accommodations And so on. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | FrankSweeney0 -
How to deal with duplicate content when presenting event and sub-events information?
Hi, I'm have a sport event calendar website.
On-Page Optimization | | ahotu
It presents events that may have multiple races.
The event has its own page as well as the races. example :
Event: /event/edinburgh-marathon-festival Races:
/race/emf-half-marathon
/race/emf-10-km
/race/edinburgh-marathon
/race/emf-5-km The pages may have a lot of information in common (location, date, description) and they all link to each other.
What would be the best practices to avoid having the pages considered duplicate content by Google? Thanks0 -
How to get rid of those duplicate pages
Hi eveyone Just got my first diagnostics report and i got 220 duplicate page titles and 217 duplicate content pages. I know why this has happened it is because i did play about a bit and did originally have:- www.mydomainname.com/index.php/alpha Then i change the page path to:- www.mydomainname.com/alpha Then i change the page path to:- www.mydomainname.com/category/alpha So now when i get crawled i have 3x duplicate page titles, descriptions and page content. Even when i have put 301 redirects to my preferred domain path. Which is hurting my seo, right? How do i stop theold domains from giving me these bad reports? The site is on Joomla Thanks guys Oujipickle
On-Page Optimization | | oujipickle0 -
Article on site and distribution, is it duplicate content?
I was always taught to place all original articles on site, let them get indexed by Google, then put out for distribution through various press release outlets. With the latest penguin update, how does this practice work out concerning duplicate content? In theory, I wrote the article so I should get credit for it on my site first, then push through various distribution outlets to get it out to my targeted audience in my niche field. Typing out loud I would tend to think if the article is on my site first then I would get credit and any others following would be hit by duplicate content if in fact google considered it a dupe violation. Any input on this? Am I on track or am I heading for a train wreck.
On-Page Optimization | | anthonytjm0 -
Offer landing page, duplicate content and noindex
Hi there I'm setting up a landing page for an exclusive offer that is only available (via a link) to a particular audience. Although I've got some specific content (offer informaiton paragraph), i want to use some of the copy and content from one of my standard product pages to inform the visitors about what it is that i'm trying to sell them. Considering I'm going to include a noindex on this page, do i need to worry about it having some content copied directly from another page on my site? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | zeegirl0 -
Is is it true that Google will not penalize duplicated content found in UL and LI tags?
I've read in a few places now that if you absolutely have to use a key term several times in a piece of copy, then it is preferable to use li and ul tags, as google will not penalise excessive density of keywords found in these tags. Does anyone know if there is any truth in this?
On-Page Optimization | | jdjamie0 -
Should H1s be used in the logo? If they are and it is dynamic on each page to relate to the page content, is this detrimental to the site rather than having it in the page content?
On some sites, the H1 is contained within the logo and remains consistent throughout the site (i.e. the company name is in the of the logo). If the h1 in a logo is dynamic for each page (i.e. on the homepage it is company name - homepage) is this better or worse to have it changed out on the logo rather than having it in the page content?
On-Page Optimization | | CabbageTree0