Duplicate Content - But it isn't!
-
Hi All,
I have a site that releases alerts for particular problem/events/happenings. Due to legal stuff we keep the majority of the content the same on each of these event pages.
The URLs are all different but it keeps coming back as duplicate content. The canonical tag is not right (i dont think for this)
egs
-
Hi, I thought as much! Thanks for that, we are actually redesigning these Alerts at the moment and each page will be specific with different content. It sounds like there is going to be nothing i can do about the historical content without working my way through it!
-
Hi there Astute Media,
Unfortunately, what you have here is the definition of duplicate content. The body text of the page is exactly the same on both pages. Even though your titles are different (and even then, not by much), Google sees that the body text is exactly the same.
It doesn't help that the page has 2 short paragraphs of text, either. These two things are big red flags to Google that a website is spam - but there are ways you can fix this.
My suggestion would be to write something specific to each page. Meaning, the second page is for a hotel rather than the resort - maybe add information about the hotel, or what general complaints have been filed. Another option would be to have 1 page with the information in your body text, and have links to pages that go to the specific resort/hotel/etc. This would require a redesign of your site's navigation, so you may wish to go with the prior rather than the latter.
Either way, I can tell you that you DO need to do something to fix the duplication. Good luck!
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
-
Should I be worried about our 'Duplicate' content
Hi guys... I've just been working through some issues to give our site a little cleanup. I'm working through our duplicate content issues (we have some legitimate duplicate pages that need removing, and some of our dynamic content is problematic. Are web developers are going to sort with canonical tags this week.) However... There are some pages that are actually different products, but are very similar pages that are 'triggering' MOZ to say we have duplicate pages. Here an example... http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/fortnight-view-filofax-personal and http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/week-to-a-view-filofax-personal They are very similar refill products, it's just the diary format is different. Question: Should I be worried about this? I've never seen our rankings change in the past when 'cleaning up' duplicate content. What do you guys think? Isaac.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
What constitutes duplicate content on a page?
I am working on SEO for a Shopify store. Their products are very similar, hence the pages are so similar that Moz shows them as duplicate content. The only difference in the product pages is the title and model number. I am going to "go for the gold" and try re-writing all the product descriptions. It's incredibly difficult due to the products being nearly identical with just a minor variation. I know I could go down the road of just creating variants --- but the customer is not down for that. Here's my question: what constitutes duplicate content? 80% of the content, 90%???? If I can going to re-write the descriptions, what should I aim for? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | steve_linn1 -
Why doesn't MailChimp use an SSL certificate on their homepage?
MailChimp, one of the biggest brands in online marketing doesn't use an SSL certificate on their homepage...Is there a simple reason for this? Wouldn't they get an SEO boost from having one?
On-Page Optimization | | WickVideo1 -
How to solve duplicate content issue???
I have 5 websites with different domain names, every website have same content, same pages, same website design. Kindly let me know how to solve this issue.
On-Page Optimization | | ross254sidney0 -
Is Google indexing something I can't see on my page title?
When I do a search for my businesses website (colourpages.com) it returns a listing which is great but the title tag includes Hull Colour Pages which is our old brand name - we changed to colourpages.com 2 years ago yet Hull Colour Pages is still pulling through on the title tag. I have checked the source and it's as follows: <title>Plumbers in Hull - Reviews - colourpages.com</title> I have attached a photo which shows the issue - http://imgur.com/Cva3001 Is Google indexing it from old history that is no longer visible or am I missing something? Cva3001
On-Page Optimization | | colourpages0 -
What is the best way to manage industry required duplicate Important Safety Information (ISI) content on every page of a site?
Hello SEOmozzer! I have recently joined a large pharmaceutical marketing company as our head SEO guru, and I've encountered a duplicate content related issue here that I'd like some help on. Because there is so much red tape in the pharmaceutical industry, there are A LOT of limitations on website content, medication and drug claims, etc. Because of this, it is required to have Important Safety Information (ISI) clearly stated on every page of the client's website (including the homepage). The information is generally pretty lengthy, and in some cases is longer than the non-ISI content on each page. Here is an example: http://www.xifaxan.com/ All content under the ISI header is required on each page. My questions are: How will this duplicated content on each page affect our on-page optimization scores in the eyes of search engines? Is Google seeing this simply as duplicated content on every page, or are they "smart" enough to understand that because it is a drug website, this is industry standard (and required)? Aside from creating more meaty, non-ISI content for the site, are there any other suggestions you have for handling this potentially harmful SEO situation? And in case you were going to suggest it, we cannot simply have an image of the content, as it may not be visible by all internet users. We've already looked into that 😉 Thanks in advance! Dylan
On-Page Optimization | | MedThinkCommunications0 -
How could I avoid the "Duplicate Page Content" issue on the search result pages of a webshop site?
My webshop site was just crawled by Roger, and it found 683 "Duplicate Page Content" issues. Most of them are result pages of different product searches, that are not really identical, but very similar to each other. Do I have to worry about this? If yes, how could I make the search result pages different? IS there any solution for this? Thanks: Zoltan
On-Page Optimization | | csajbokz0 -
Duplicate Page Titles?
I'm running a campaign report within SEOmoz & am getting 9 pages that appear on this report. They all happen to be our author pages www.example.com//author/admin We have multiple authors. Is there a proper way that I should take care of this? Also as a side note, I'm using Yoast Wordpress SEO plugin, is there a setting on their I should change that will fix this issue? Or is it an issue at all? Thanks, BJ
On-Page Optimization | | seointern0