Question about duplicate listings on site for product listings.
-
We list products on our site and suspect that we have been hit by Panda as we are duplicating listings across our own site. Not intentionally, we just have multiple pages listings the same content as they fall into multiple categories.
Has anyone else had the same issue and if so how did you deal with it?.. Have you seen a change in results/rankings due to the changes you made?
-
Hello Nick,
It sounds like you're talking about category pages that link to product pages. I do recommend putting unique content on category pages, as they target different phases of a buying cycle (and keywords). For example...
"Blue Widgets" is a top-level category search.
"Blue Widgets for Men" is a category search."Men's V9 Blue Widget" (not the singular use of widget) is most likely a product search.
All three pages types should have their own unique content using keywords specific to that stage of the buying cycle, and displaying content that is useful to that stage of the buying cycle. For example...
"Blue Widgets" ---> Explain how to choose a blue widget. Which sub-category should they check out? Help them decide where to go next. Help them narrow their search.
"Men's Blue Widgets" ---> Explain the difference between brands and perhaps leading models. What are their needs and budget? Which are the high-end, top-of-the-line men's blue widgets, and which are affordable and reliable options, or entry-level widgets? Educate them.
"Men's V9 Blue Widget" ---> Explain the product. What are the features that either set it apart or make it a good value for the money?
The linking strategy can work this way as well. Naturally you're going to be passing pagerank from category pages into sub-categories and into products. This happens naturally on most sites because that is the natural flow of a purchasing path and a logical taxonomy. However you should also be passing pagerank back up if you want to help category pages rank. Enhanced produce descriptions give you an opportunity to do this.
Good luck!
-
Thanks for the detailed response Tom..
We have for example
A = Listings page with brief of all products
linking to B,C,D,E,F,G etc.. which are all specific pages for those products..
The B - G's rank ok for non competitive terms on the page but page's A dont rank so well.
The problem about no indexing A is that I think the other pages will get lost and have importance taken away from them..
Canonical from second pages of A listings yes, but what I was also thinking to do is put some unique content on page A in order to make that page more unique..Any thoughts on that?
-
Hi there
There are a few options here. Both revolve around making sure only version of your product listings is instructed to be indexed, so that you can promote that version via SEO.
The first solution would be to 301 redirect any duplications to one version of your product listings. This is the quickest and most absolute solution to duplicate listings, as it ensures only version of them remains live. However, depending on your CMS, this might not be possible.
The second solution would be to add robots instructions to the duplicate listings that instructs Google not to index those pages. You can do this by either adding code to the page itself or by using a robots.txt file. The code you'd need to add to the tag on the page is - however, if your CMS is producing duplicate URLs but only using one physical page, you may want to avoid this as it could block all versions of the page. In which case, you could add each duplicate URL to your robots.txt file, specifying you'd like to block them from being indexed, such as:
User Agent: *
Disallow: /example-page-1
Disallow: /example-page-2And so on. I like this robots.txt tutorial guide to learn more about how you can do this.
Finally, you could add canonical tags to each page to specify which version of the URL is the one you want to rank and be indexed, which should prevent others from being considered as well. For example, for a product listing page like: http://www.example.com/category-1/product-page-version-1 - if you want that page to be indexed, you will want to add a canonical tag in the of the code that reads:
Now, if that is the only physical web page that exists and your CMS generates additional, duplicate URLs with how it works, you will only need to add that canonical once. However, if other webpages actually exist in your CMS and server, you will need to add the same tag to the other duplicate pages. This basically tells Google and Bing: "Hey, this page is a duplicate, ignore this one and rank this one instead". Moz has a great guide on canonical usage here.
Dr. Pete also wrote a guide guide on canonical usage and how you can use it for products that are pretty much the same, but have slight differences such as sizes, colour etc.
I hope this helps answer your question - remember, the key here is to instruct Google that you don't want them to index the duplicates and that you don't have them to manipulate rankings. You're trying to have only one version indexed, and if others exist outside of redirects, you have instructed which version should be kept and which ones ignored.
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
-
What is the best SEO way to categorize products on an ecommerce site
What is the best way for SEO to set up categories for an ecommerce site selling beauty products. I have currently built my product categories so that if a person looks under the hydration category they find our body lotion, but also if they look under the body section of products they also will find the same body lotion. Is this a problem for SEO? I think it helps the customer find the product.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kuhliff0 -
Mobile site scrolls past content straight to the products. Can this affect our seo?
As our content can be quite long at the top, we introduced js anchor scroll going straight to the products, by passing the banner and the content at the top. Can this have an issue on seo?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JH_OffLimits1 -
I have 2 Questions
what if we do the interlinking on the exact keywords? Is this comes under spam technique? For example - http://blog.payscout.com/automotive-merchant-services/ I interlink the exact keyword in the above URL. Can we use same image 2-3 times on the same website with different anchor tags? For example - http://packforcity.com/what-to-wear-in-new-orleans-in-january/ http://packforcity.com/what-to-wear-in-san-francisco-in-october/ Same image used on the website with different alt tag.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexanderWhite0 -
Tabs and duplicate content?
We own this site http://www.discountstickerprinting.co.uk/ and just a little concerned as I right clicked open in new tab on the tab content section and it went to a new page For example if you right click on the price tab and click open in new tab you will end up with the url
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson
http://www.discountstickerprinting.co.uk/#tabThree Does this mean that our content is being duplicated onto another page? If so what should I do?0 -
Duplicate content issue - online retail site.
Hello Mozzers, just looked at a website and just about every product page (there are hundreds - yikes!) is duplicated like this at end of each url (see below). Surely this is a serious case of duplicate content? Any idea why a web developer would do this? Thanks in advance! Luke prod=company-081
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart
prod=company-081&cat=20 -
Why is my site not ranked?
Hey, does enybody have an idea, why my site www.detox.si is not ranked for the KW detox in www.google.si (Slovenia). It is being indexed, but it does not rank and i have no idea why. Best, M.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spletnafuzija0 -
What is the best way to allow content to be used on other sites for syndication without taking the chance of duplicate content filters
Cookstr appears to be syndicating content to shape.com and mensfitness.com a) They integrate their data into partner sites with an attribution back to their site and skinned it with the partners look. b) they link the image back to their image hosted on cookstr c) The page does not have microformats or as much data as their own page does so their own page is better SEO. Is this the best strategy or is there something better they could be doing to safely allow others to use our content, we don't want to share the content if we're going to get hit for a duplicate content filter or have another site out rank us with our own data. Thanks for your help in advance! their original content page: http://www.cookstr.com/recipes/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta their syndicated content pages: http://www.shape.com/healthy-eating/healthy-recipes/recipe/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irvingw
http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/healthy-recipes/recipe/sauteacuteed-escarole-with-pancetta0 -
How get rid of duplicate content, titles, etc on php cartweaver site?
my website http://www.bartramgallery.com was created using php and cartweaver 2.0 about five years ago by a web developer. I was really happy with the results of the design was inspired to get into web development and have been studying ever since. My biggest problem at this time is that I am not knowledgable with php and the cartweaver product but am learning as I read more. The issue is that seomoz tools are reporting tons of duplicate content and duplicate title pages etc. This is likely from the dynamic urls and same pages with secondary results etc. I just made a new sitemap with auditmypc I think it was called in an attempt to get rid of all the duplicate page titles but is that going to solve anything or do I need to find another way to configure the site? There are many pages with the same content competing for page rank and it is a bit frustrating to say the least. If anyone has any advice it would be greatly appreciated even pointing me in the right direction. Thank you, Jesse
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WSOT0