Duplicate page titles and Content in Woocommerce
-
Hi Guys,
I'm new to Moz and really liking it so far!
I run a eCommerce site on Wordpress + WooCommerce and ofcourse use Yoast for SEO optimalisationI've got a question about my first Crawl report which showed over 600 issues! I've read that this is something that happens more often (http://moz.com/blog/setup-wordpress-for-seo-success).
Most of them are categorized under:
1. Duplicate Page Titles or;
2. Duplicate Page Content.Duplicate Page Titles:
These are almost only: product category pages and product tags. Is this problem beeing solved by giving them the right SEO SERP? I see that a lot of categories don't have a proper SEO SERP set up in yoast! Do I need to add this to clear this issue, or do I need to change the actual Title? And how about the Product tags?Another point (bit more off-topic) I've read here: http://moz.com/community/q/yoast-seo-plugin-to-index-or-not-to-index-categories that it's advised to noindex/follow Categories and Tags but isn't that a wierd idea to do for a eCommerce site?!
Duplicate Page Content:
Same goes here almost only Product Categories and product tags that are displayed as duplicate Page content! When I check the results I can click on a blue button for example "+ 17 duplicates" and that shows me (in this case 17 URLS) but they are not related to the fist in any way so not sure where to start here?Thanks for taking the time to help out!
Joost -
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the great answer! Really helpfull.
Best,Joost
-
Hi Joost - I'll try to tackle each of the questions one by one:
- About categories, I'm not sure of the specifics, but you'll definitely want to find a category variable that just pulls in the category name for you. What that variable is, I am not sure off the top of my head.
- The way I'd look at it - you don't want to end up with a "category" that's so deep or specific it only have a couple products in it. You may as well rank a product page instead. So long as your categories have maybe 5+ products which makes it useful for the user, you'd be fine I think.
- I wouldn't worry about duplicate content. The "duplicate content" scare from years back is only a penalty if you are scraping content from other sites and building a whole website off of other people's content. I would just judge each page individually and aim for it being as helpful to the user as possible - in terms of trying to predict their questions, fears, doubts, etc in terms of actually purchasing the product
-
Thanks Ryan, clear as a bell!
-
There was a nice discussion here on tags: http://moz.com/community/q/wordpress-tag-pages-noindex that still applies. In general they tend to eliminate duplicate content issues when noindexed.
-
Hey Dan!
Thanks for taking the time to write back.
I found your article very helpfull! But I wasn't sure if I coud use your tips because you expressly stated that you were talking about a normal wordpress blog and not eCommerce. So really nice you took the time to look in to this matter.
It think the problem with my duplicate page titles has started when I set a template for the product categories because it's not working. I've used the template: %%ct_product_cat%% | %%sitename%% but I see a lot of product categories return: (empty) | %%sitename %%. And all of these don't have an individual SEO title set by myself. The ones that have an individual SEO title will return that one.
Just to make clear, I've done this because %%category%% is also not an option to use as template. I followed this link http://zendenwebdesign.com/woocommerce-product-category-taxonomy-with-wordpress-seo-by-yoast/
About the deepness of indexing:
With your last bulletpoint you mean that: If I have a category and within that category products for let's say sunglasses (and I target the same keyword for the category and the article as well) it depends on which will rank better (category or ind. product) for the highest index?For my individual product pages I use tabs (theme shortcodes that output tabs on frontend) I use 4:
- About (product info content optimized around keyword)
- Brand (brand info)
- Sizing
- Shipping
The Brand info and shipping tab are on a lot of product pages the same. I've got multiple products from a brand and the shipping is for every product (+300) the same. Although Yoast returns a Good SEO score (so does Scribe) do you think this can be seen as duplicate content? Is it better to load this kind of information directly in to the product page template? For less duplicate content issues? (not sure if it even will be seens as duplicate).
Best.Joost
-
Hi Joost
Dan here (I wrote that Setting Up WordPress article )
Without seeing your site, it's tough to be 100% sure, but here's what I would make sure you're doing:
- Noindex subpages of archives
- Index categories
- Noindex tags
- Set up title templates for categories so maybe they say "Browse Category Name - Sitename" (something call to action like for eCommerce)
The key with how "deep" you index categories may depend on:
- search volume
- how many extra pages per level that causes to get indexed etc
- where it starts competing with actual products that could rank instead
I find it's good to hit that sweet spot where you don't get a ridiculous amount of pages indexed, but are deep enough in the categories with search volume to not miss out on any traffic.
-
Ok very clear. I will determine per category if I want to index them or not. And keep in mind the uniqueness and potential rank.
I indeed don't have to be way too focused on the results from the crawl. But our categories rank really
Bad (so then the first guess is; maybe because of duplicate content moz is telling me).Or because they are actually "empty" pages with products that are categorized in it. But that goes for every ecommerce site, right? Maybe I need to write a short description per category and style it with HTML to make it more attractive and give it more content.
How are your thoughts on tags?
-
Right. It's kind of a combination of categories you want to rank for and ones that are populated and active enough to rank. Brand C Shirts would be fine, but Brand C Short Sleeve shirts could be too diluted. You're on the right track.
Also, there are some instances where the Moz tool just doesn't align with what you would not consider duplicate content and in those cases feel free to ignore it, especially if those pages are ranking well and performing well in terms of conversion / funnel. Cheers!
-
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for clearing this out for me! Sounds like a good appraoch! With top level you mean the parents categories? Or categories that I want to rank for?
For example we have a webstore and sell clothing from Scandinavian cloting brands. If I should index only the parents I get: tshits/pants/sweaters/jackets etc (these are to general imo). But the sub-categories which display the brands are much better to rank because they get a lot more search volume for example.
This is the structure we use:
Shirts:- Brand A (url is /product-category/shirts/branda-shirts) <- these are keywords that our target audience use when they search for shirts from that brand! high potential for us
- Brand B (url is /product-category/shirts/brandb-shirts)
- Brand C (url is /product-category/shirts/brandc-shirts)
Let me know what your thoughts are.Joost
-
Hi Joost. The reasoning behind noindexing category and tag pages is because they have a high tendency to show up as duplicate content--as you've just experienced. People like to keep them as part of their site due to user friendliness but often these pages on their own are a reshuffling of content and can be highly repetitive from a search engine perspective. Ideally you keep your top level categories that are unique within the index and noindex the rest. Feel free to keep links within your site as followed. Cheers!
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
-
Duplicate page content
Hi Crawl errors is showing 2 pages of duplicate content for my clients WordPress site: /news/ & /category/featured/ Yoast is installed so how best to resolve this ? i see that both pages are canonicalised to themselves so presume just need to change the canonical tag on /category/featured/ to reference /news/ ?(since news is the page with higher authority and the main page for showing this info) or is there other way in Yoast or WP to deal with this & prevent from happening again ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Duplicate Content?
Hi All, I have a new client site, a static site with navigation across the top, and down the left side. Two of the menus from the top navigation are replicated in the navigation structure on the left hand side. They have the exact same url structure, they are in fact the same exact page, listed on the site in two areas. My question is - is this a case of duplicate content, or, as they urls are the exact same, will they be seen as a single page? A canonical tag on one would be replicated on the other by the CMS - so do I leave it, or try to get them to re-structure removing one of the links? (I doubt they will do this as its a brand new site they just has developed). Many thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | Webrevolve0 -
Duplicate content "/"
Hi all, Ran my website through the SEOMOZ campaigns and the crawl diagnostics give me a duplicate error for these urls http://www.mysite.com/cat1/article http://www.mysite.com/cat1/article/ so the url with the "/" is a duplicate of the one without the "/" Can someone point me out to a solution to solve this ? regards, Frederik
On-Page Optimization | | frdrik1230 -
I have one page on my site... but still get duplicate name and content errors.
i have only the index.html page. my domain has a permanent 301 to the root. why am i getting duplicate problems? i only have one page the index .html???
On-Page Optimization | | one4u2see0 -
Duplicate content on area specific sites
I have created some websites for my company Dor-2-Dor and there is a main website where all of the information across the board is on (www.dor2dor.com) but I also have area specific sites which are for our franchisees who run certain areas around the country (www.swansea.dor2dor.com or www.oxford.dor2dor.com) The problem is that the content that is on a lot of the pages is the same on all of them for instance our faq's page, special offers etc. What is the best way to get these pages to rank well and not have the duplicate content issues and be ranked down by search engines? Any help will be greatly received.
On-Page Optimization | | D2DWeb0 -
Crawl error: duplicate title for home page
I'm seeing a duplicate title for the home page, both the static file name and the domain. like: http://domain.com
On-Page Optimization | | joshcanhelp
http://domain.com/index.cfm I know how to set this in Google Analytics but how would I make sure this isn't seen as an error? It's accounting for both a duplicate title and duplicate content. Thanks!0 -
Page titles and descriptions
A website has several wigets to show Each wiget with its own page The wigets mostly just vary in size How would you suggest titles be done? Example: Wiget 1ft Wiget 2ft Wiget 3 ft an so on........ Would this trigger a duplicate content issue given “Wiget” leads in the page title?
On-Page Optimization | | APICDA0 -
Main Page title change.
Hi, For some reason every week or two I am changing the title tag of my main page. Each change takes place because I find new version better than the old one. Does this have any impact on my SEO results (I'm keeping the main keywords each time) ? If it has an impact is it positive or negative ? And should I stick to one title and not change it under any circumstances for long periods of time ? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | lolskizz0