Duplicate product description ranking problems (off-site duplicate content)
-
We do business in niche category and not in English language market. We have 2-3 main competitors who use same product information as us. They all do have same duplicate products descriptions as we. We with one competitors have domains with highest authority in this market. They maybe have 10-20% better link profile (when counting linking domains and total links).
Problem is that they rank much better with product names then we do (same duplicate product descriptions as we have and almost same level internal optimisation) and they haven't done any extra link building for products. Manufacturers website aren't problem, because these doesn't rank well with product name keywords. Most of our new and some old product go to the Supplemental Results and are shown in "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ... already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.".
Unique text for products isn't a option. When we have writen unique content for product, then these seem to rank way better. So our questions is what can we do externaly to help our duplicate description product rank better compared to our main competitor withour writing unique text?
How important is indexation time? Will it give big advantage to get indexed first? We have thought of using more RSS/bing services to get faster indexation (both site will get products information almost at same time). It seems our competitor get quicker in index then we do.
Also are farmpages helpful for getting some quick low value links for new products. We have planed to make 2-3 domains that would have few links pointint to these new products to get little advantage right after products are launched and doesn't have extranl links.
Sitemap works and our new product are shown on front pages (products that still mostly doesn't rank well and go to Supplemental Results). Some new product have #1 or top3 raking, but these are only maybe 1/3 that should have top3 rankings.
Also we have noticed problem that when we index products quickly (for example Fetch as Google) then these will get good top3 results and then some will get out of rankings (to Supplemental Results).
-
There's no easy answer, I'm afraid, and if an answer looks too easy, I'd stay away from it. Building low-quality links might help in the short-term, but it's too high-risk in the long-term. Plus, if you're combining it with duplicate content, you've got multiple quality issues in play (at least, in Google's eyes - I'm not making a judgment calling about using product descriptions, which is very common).
You say that unique text is proven to have worked, and yet it isn't an option. Why? If it's a matter of time/cost, I'd strongly consider not only the long-term ROI but the possibility of investing selectively. For example, you don't have to write unique text for every product you sell (or re-sell) - you could pick the top 10% of products (which may account for 90% of sales) and start with those. Even the top 1% would be a start. Small investments in the right places could yield large returns here.
The other option that people don't like to hear but really is powerful is to consider more carefully focusing your link equity on a smaller number of products. The more products you list, the more duplicates you have, and some of those products are probably very poor sellers or have very poor profit margins. What if you focused your site architecture on 25% of the total products? You'd focus your authority more and each page would be stronger, relative to your competitors.
One easy win is to make sure you're not dealing with any internal duplicate content (product options pages, search filters, etc.). If you're compounding external duplication with internal duplication, it's only going to make all of your problems worse. The internal duplication is much easier to solve.
-
Thank you for your answer. When comparing DA and PA then ours are little bit better 48 vs 49 (DA), and also our front page PA is better. But actually Open Site Explorer data (DA and PA) isn't really good when we look international market like us. Ahrefs gets better link profiles here. But as we have such a little difference when comparing backlinks then it's little bit strage that they can get so much better results.
It's small international market so customer reviews isn't option. Nobody doesn't give these here. We have reviews possibility already but nobody doesn't submit these.
So also my main qiestions is what factors Google look when they rank same duplicate products. Like we know that they count DA, PA.. and as I understand also who get indexed first. Does anybody know what else?
-
The reason your competitor is ranking better could be the value of their DA and their PA. Without looking specifically it would be hard to say. Google isn't going to show two pages that are exactly the same, which is why they say similar pages have been omitted.
I would not suggest using a link farm. This can only bring you disaster in the long run.
Have you thought about getting customer reviews on page? Using a program that will put customer reviews on page, so that you can see them in the source code is a good way to start leveling the duplicate content out of the equation. You should also put some focus into building quality links. It isn't the quantity of links that you have, but the quality.
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
-
Why Doesn't Google Use My Title Tag and Meta Description?
Hi fellow Moz SEOs, Need your URGENT help! We set an optimised title & meta description for our client websites. These titles are approved by our clients. Before somedays, they checked on Google, noticed the title & meta description were not the same. Next moment, they notified me about this issue. The title & meta description looks fine when I checked the source code. So, why Google use title & meta description differently? For example: Title approved by client: Top Specialist Divorce & Family Lawyer - Yeo & Associates LLC
International SEO | | Verz
Google set our title: Yeo & Associates LLC: Top Specialist Divorce & Family Lawyer Title approved by client: Filing For Divorce Online in Singapore | DivorceBureau®
Google set our title: DivorceBureau®: Filing For Divorce Online in Singapore Title approved by client: Halal Buffet & Bento/Packet Meals Event Caterer Singapore | Foodtalks
Google set our title: Foodtalks - Halal Buffet & Bento/Packet Meals Event Caterer Singapore Title approved by client: Child Care Centre in Singapore| Top Preschool | Carpe Diem
Google set our title: Carpe Diem: Child care Centre in Singapore| Top Preschool Every day, they are requesting me to update Google's title with their approved title. Also, asking me these questions.
Why did this happen?
Why didn't set their recommended title? Is there any way to set our approved titles? Please, help me to find the solution. ASAP Thanks in advance!0 -
Problems with the google cache version of different domains.
We have problems with the google cache version of different domains.
International SEO | | Humix
For the “.nl” domain we have an “.be” cache..
Enter “cache:www.dmlights.nl” in your browser to see this result. Following points are already adapted: Sitemap contains hreflang tag Sitemap is moved to the location www.dmlights.nl/sitemap.xml We checked the DNS configuration Changed the Content language in de response header to : Content-Language: nl-NL Removed the cache with webmastertools Resolved serverrequest errors. Can anyone provide a solution to fix this problem? Thanks, Pieter0 -
My site is not showing on google.com ?
My website is not showing at all on google.com searches under search terms. It is showing if i search for my domain (xyz.com) but not by keywords. Searching by keywords and search terms shows my website on yahoo , bing and non US oogle as google.co.uk or google.com.pk on first page. Would appreciate any help in trying to understand why this is happening? The website is medicare.md. if you search for term "medicare doctors PG county maryland" it is #1 in bing and yahoo but not even showing on google.com first TEN pages, although not banned. Interestingly if you do that search on google.co.pk it is #4. Quite Puzzuling !! Would appreciate any help or advice . Sherif Hassan
International SEO | | sherohass0 -
Improving Search Rankings in other Countries for an existing site
Hello SEOmoz, I have a very well respected international client who ranks high in the US and for English language Google search results worldwide. However, the client's foreign language pages for specific countries do not show up on the first page of SERPs in those specific countries. The foreign nation/language pages are served on the same root domain as the main English language site it this fashion: www.client.com/france www.client.com/brazil Here are my questions: What can we do from an SEO standpoint to improve SERPs in Google.fr or other countries What is the best way to prevent duplicate content errors or prevent the wrong page from being indexed abroad. What are some best practices when using Google Webmaster tools in this regard? Thanks
International SEO | | BPIAnalytics0 -
Local SEO - My Ranking depends on City of the user - Rank tracker is failing
Hello, The search results differ completly depending on the user location. The websites yoagbarcelona.org targets poeple from barcelona: Barcelona; User location Barcelona web is on the last position on first page: http://screencast.com/t/ZsIeiCeLRM User location New York 1st. http://screencast.com/t/PzaLbwWW4xx: Also SEO MOZ rank tracker is showing me that im no 1in google.es for yoga barcelona. The problem is that this is only true for users outside the region 😞 The site has very bad ranking in google places and you need to go down to page 10 until my yoga studio shows up in the maps results. I did some hardcore citation building and signed up in almost all local directories that google pulls data from within one month and optimised the google places / plus profile. Please give me some advice how I could overcome the problem.??? Especially on what part should i focus when optimising the page. ??? Are there any other good strategies for getting into google places ??? Do I need more links from local sites or how is this local serps working ???
International SEO | | stereo690 -
Do you recommend for registering international domains (IDN) for ranking on words used in domain name?
Hi everybody, thanks for putting time to reply me 🙂 I am working on SEO of a website that its content is in Farsi. I have chosen a few rather competitive keywords (difficulty between 30-40% :thanks to KDT in seomoz!) to target. Due to the importance of keyword in domain name I was thinking about registering a few international domains that contain exactly the same Farsi words that I target. Do you recommend this as a valid approach? For each of these domains, I am going to setup a very simple 1 page site for each domain, a few lines of content and a big button linked to my primary website. How does it sound? Best regards,
International SEO | | Ashkan10 -
Sudden drop in rankings after 301 redirect
We recently merged our old webshops to one big webshop. The new webshop is mutlidomain/multilanguage so the English version is at the .com extension and the germand version at the .de extension etc. etc. We redirected the 2 best old webshops to the .com extention with a htaccess 301 redirect. The other old webshops we divided over the other extensions. We redirected the 200 most importent pages with a page to page redirect and redirected the other indexed pages to the new index page. (300K) Everything went well and the new website started indexing. All extentions are doing well and even the .com version had very good rankings for a few days. After a few days we almost lost all rankings to the .com version. We did always clean seo, had 100% unique content written by our own writers and translated by our own translators. Our old webshops have very good branche related backlinks and i can`t find anything else then the 300K redirects to the homepage that might be the problem. Hope somebody will help us, or know someone we can hire to check our webmaster account, and check everything we did.
International SEO | | snorkel0 -
What is the best way to make country specific IP redirect for only product pricng pages?
My website has 3 services and its price will be different for US/EU/Developed world and Asian/African countries.Apart from pricing page, all other things remain same. I want to use IP based redirect .I heard this thing is called cloaking and used by black-hat guys. What kind of instructions should I give to my web developer to look best to Google/Search bots and correctly show visitors the intended prices.Is there any caution to be taken care of. Thanks for your time
International SEO | | RyanSat0