Duplicate product content - from a manufacturer website, to retailers
-
Hi Mozzers,
We're working on a website for a manufacturer who allows retailers to reuse their product information. Now, this of course raises the issue of duplicate content. The manufacturer is the content owner and originator, but retailers will copy the information for their own site and not link back (permitted by the manufacturer) - the only reference to the manufacturer will be the brand name citation on the retailer website.
How would you deal with the duplicate content issues that this may cause. Especially considering the domain authority for a lot of the retailer websites is better than the manufacturer site?
Thanks!!
-
This is one of the biggest issues I see with ecommerce sites these days. Automatic feeds of data, titles, descriptions, product info, etc. right into the store. It never ranks all that well without massive authority.
To be honest, the more you can change pre-import the better. Add something to the titles, change them up manually with an intern - whatever it takes to create unique value. For a while I was outranking Polyvore, David Jones & Amazon for the word "skirt" just because my product and category descriptions were massively different than anything on Google at the time (longer, more detailed, more useful.)
In this type of situation, don't be afraid to experiment. You're not going to outrank eBay, Amazon or the OEM for most products individually but if you try mixing things up you may find weaknesses that are easy enough to exploit. Whenever I imported, I'd alter the CSV files directly and then import. Made life so much better (and drastically improves rankings on long tail searches.)
(A small, small e-tailer won't do this but a mid size to large one always should be.)
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 strategy to SEO Discontinued Products on Ecommerce Sites?
RebelsMarket.com is a marketplace for alternative fashion. We have hundreds of sellers who have listed thousands of products. Over 90% of the items do not generate any sales; and about 40% of the products have been on the website for over 3+ years. We want to cleanup the catalog and remove all the old listings that older than 2years that do not generate any sales. What is the best practice for removing thousands of listings an Ecommerce site? do we 404 these products and show similar items? Your help and thoughts is much appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JimJ3 -
Do content copycats (plagiarism) hurt original website rankings?
Hi all, Found some websites stolen our content and using the same sentences in their website pages. Does this content hurt our website rankings? Their DA is low, still we are worried about the damage about this plagiarism. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Moving content form Non-performing site to performing site - wihtout 301 Redirection
I have 2 different websites: one have good amount of traffic and another have No Traffic at all. I have a website that has lots of valuable content But no traffic. And I want to move the content of non-performing site to performing site. (Don't want to redirect) My only concern is duplicate content. I was thinking of setting the pages to "noindex" on the original website and wait until they don't appear in Google's index. Then I'd move them over to the performing domain to be indexed again. So, I was wondering If it will create any copied content issue or not? What should i have to take care of when I am going to move content from one site to another?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Are online tools considered thin content?
My website has a number of simple converters. For example, this one converts spaces to commas
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ConvertTown
https://convert.town/replace-spaces-with-commas Now, obviously there are loads of different variations I could create of this:
Replace spaces with semicolons
Replace semicolons with tabs
Replace fullstops with commas Similarly with files:
JSON to XML
XML to PDF
JPG to PNG
JPG to TIF
JPG to PDF
(and thousands more) If somoene types one of those into Google, they will be happy because they can immediately use the tool they were hunting for. It is obvious what these pages do so I do not want to clutter the page up with unnecessary content. However, would these be considered doorway pages or thin content or would it be acceptable (from an SEO perspective) to generate 1000s of pages based on all the permutations?1 -
Should You Link Back from Client's Website?
We had a discussion in the office today, about if it can help or hurt you to link back to your site from one that you optimize, host, or manage. A few ideas that were mentioned: HURT:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David-Kley
1. The website is not directly related to your niche, therefore Google will treat it as a link exchange or spammy link.
2. Links back to you are often not surrounded by related text about your services, and looks out of place to users and Search Engines. HELP:
1. On good (higher PR, reputable domain) domains, a link back can add authority, even if the site is not directly related to your services.
2. Allows high ranking sites to show users who the provider is, potentially creating a new client, and a followed incoming link on anchor text you can choose. So, what do you think? Test results would be appreciated, as we are trying to get real data. Benefits and cons if you have an opinion.2 -
20-30% of our ecommerce categories contain no extra content, could this be a problem
Hello, About 20-30% of our ecommerce categories have no content beyond the products that are in them. Could this be a problem with Panda? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Tricky Decision to make regarding duplicate content (that seems to be working!)
I have a really tricky decision to make concerning one of our clients. Their site to date was developed by someone else. They have a successful eCommerce website, and the strength of their Search Engine performance lies in their product category pages. In their case, a product category is an audience niche: their gender and age. In this hypothetical example my client sells lawnmowers: http://www.example.com/lawnmowers/men/age-34 http://www.example.com/lawnmowers/men/age-33 http://www.example.com/lawnmowers/women/age-25 http://www.example.com/lawnmowers/women/age-3 For all searches pertaining to lawnmowers, the gender of the buyer and their age (for which there are a lot for the 'real' store), these results come up number one for every combination they have a page for. The issue is the specific product pages, which take the form of the following: http://www.example.com/lawnmowers/men/age-34/fancy-blue-lawnmower This same product, with the same content (save a reference to the gender and age on the page) can also be found at a few other gender / age combinations the product is targeted at. For instance: http://www.example.com/lawnmowers/women/age-34/fancy-blue-lawnmower http://www.example.com/lawnmowers/men/age-33/fancy-blue-lawnmower http://www.example.com/lawnmowers/women/age-32/fancy-blue-lawnmower So, duplicate content. As they are currently doing so well I am agonising over this - I dislike viewing the same content on multiple URLs, and though it wasn't a malicious effort on the previous developers part, think it a little dangerous in terms of SEO. On the other hand, if I change it I'll reduce the website size, and severely reduce the number of pages that are contextually relevant to the gender/age category pages. In short, I don't want to sabotage the performance of the category pages, by cutting off all their on-site relevant content. My options as I see them are: Stick with the duplicate content model, but add some unique content to each gender/age page. This will differentiate the product category page content a little. Move products to single distinct URLs. Whilst this could boost individual product SEO performance, this isn't an objective, and it carries the risks I perceive above. What are your thoughts? Many thanks, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SoundinTheory0