Regarding rel=canonical on duplicate pages on a shopping site... some direction, please.
-
Good morning, Moz community:
My name is David, and I'm currently doing internet marketing for an online retailer of marine accessories. While many product pages and descriptions are unique, there are some that have the descriptions duplicated across many products.
The advice commonly given is to leave one page as is / crawlable (probably best for one that is already ranking/indexed), and use rel=canonical on all duplicates.
Any idea for direction on this? Do you think it is necessary? It will be a massive task. (also, one of the products that we rank highest for, we have tons of duplicate descriptions.... so... that is sort of like evidence against the idea?)
Thanks!
-
Thank you, Patrick and Kate!
-
Hi David
There is a resource I want to point you to:
Thin & Duplicate Content: eCommerce SEO (InFlow)I HIGHLY recommend it - it's been a huge help to me and it's loaded with tips and resources. Canonical tags and parameter handling in search console (for Google) will be a huge help in handling duplicate URLs.
If products are truly unique, then everything about that page should be truly unique. If URLs are causing the problems with parameters, make sure you handle that with canonicals and parameter handling.
Hope this helps! 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
-
Log-in page ranking but not homepage
Our homepage is outranked by log-in page for "primary keyword" in Google search results; for which actually our homepage was optimised. I have gone through the other answers for the same question here. But I couldn't find them related with our website. We are not over optimised. We have link from top navigation menu of blog to our homepage. Does this causing this?
Web Design | | vtmoz1 -
New ecommerce site: Close old site and full domain redirect or keep it linking to new site?
We have rebranded and are working on our new site (B). Our old site (A) has a much higher domain/page authority than our new site. Currently we have the original Site A still there, with all links/pages pointing to the new Site B when people click. I am unsure whether we'd be best to close down the Site A completely and do a full domain redirect to Site B. Site A: 10 years age and has a moderate amount of links to it.
Web Design | | ModowestNZ
Homepage - PA: 24 DA:11 Site B: 6 months age, few links
Homepage - PA: 1 DA:2 My concern with the full domain redirect is that the indexed/ranking pages would dissapear. The benefit is less brand confusion for our niche range of party accessories.0 -
Joomla Core Pages Delisted
Hey Everyone, This query may be more for a Joomla developer or someone that has had a similar issue. I'm not really looking for answers like, "check Google Search Console" or anything like that. We have a client who recently had all of their core pages delisted in Google but the blog is still being displayed in search results. For example, if you search "company name" they have a blog post that ranks #13 or so organically. I tested Google Search Console and Google is saying that the site is temporarily unavailable. We haven't made any changes or updates to Joomla's core structure so I'm unsure as to where this change is coming from. Here are some items we've checked: 1. Site searches within Google, resulted in seeing core pages are not indexed but blog pages are 2. Google Search Console - looked for manual actions (none found), looked at sitemap errors (nothing mentioned), looked at robots.txt (no issues here), attempted to fetch the site as Google (temporarily unavailable). 3. Called the hosting company (Rackspace) to discuss potential issues. They were extremely helpful but we were unable to find anything. The blog is actually a Module that was added so I'm thinking something has changed to block Google bots from the core Joomla structure but it hasn't blocked them from the blog structure. Without putting the company name or url on blast, has anyone heard of or experienced anything like this? Any help or insights would be much appreciated!
Web Design | | Leadhub0 -
What do you use for test rendering your dev site?
I'm redesigning our company ecommerce site and need to test render an infinite scroller to ensure that it is as SEO friendly as possible. My problem is that I cannot view it in Webmaster Tools since I am blocking the site from crawlers using robots.txt. I know I could simply unblock Google temporarily but I really would rather not make my dev site available to search engine crawlers.
Web Design | | bearpaw0 -
How do I identify what is causing my Duplicate Page Content problem?
Hello, I'm trying to put my finger on what exactly is causing my duplicate page content problem... For example, SEOMoz is picking up these four pages as having the same content: http://www.penncare.net/ambulancedivision/braunambulances/express.aspx http://www.penncare.net/ambulancedivision/recentdeliveries/millcreekparamedicservice.aspx http://www.penncare.net/ambulancedivision/recentdeliveries/monongaliaems.aspx http://www.penncare.net/softwaredivision/emschartssoftware/emschartsvideos.aspx As you can tell, they really aren't serving the same content in the body of the page. Anybody have an idea what might be causing these pages to show up as Duplicate Page Content? At first I thought it was the photo gallery module that might be causing it, but that only exists on two of the pages... Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | BGroup0 -
Mobile sites! Any advice or suggestions for building one?
Hello Mozland, I'm looking to have a mobile site built. We have a fair amount of traffic coming from smart phones, tablets etc and want to capture this traffic better. Do you have any advice on how to have it built properly, if/how it can be optimised, what good features to include, or anything else you think might be of help? Many thanks Martin
Web Design | | Martin_S0 -
Are tables OK in e-commerce sites?
I know that for best results with search engines, tables should not be used. However as I look to redesign our older e-commerce site, I find that not only our website but many other e-commerce sites use tables. Is it acceptable to use tables in e-commerce or am I just viewing outdated e-commerce sites. Could you recommend a good shopping cart solution? We currently use volusion. Thanks for your time and see you in Boston next week!
Web Design | | Lael0 -
Are slimmed down mobile versions of a canonical page considered cloaking?
We are developing our mobile site right now and we are using a user agent sniffer to figure out what kind of device the visitor is using. Once the server knows whether it is a desktop or mobile browser it will deliver the appropriate template. We decided to use the same URL for both versions of the page rather than using m.websiteurl.com or www.websiteurl.mobi so that traffic to either version of these pages would register as a visit to the page. Will search engines consider this cloaking or is mobile "versioning" an acceptable practice? The pages in essence are the same, the mobile version will just leave out extraneous scripts and unnecessary resources to better display on a mobile device.
Web Design | | TahoeMountain400