Repairing SEO issues on Different Platforms

[BBsmyth]

I work for a car dealership in Southern California and have been tasked with a seemingly impossible task. They would like for me to remove Title Tags, Duplicate Content, Descriptions, and get all other SEO issues in order.

The concerns I have rank in this order:

1. Remove Duplicate Metadata: When the platform spits out new pages they use template Title/Description/Keywords and we are not always informed of their addition. There are also somewhere near 1K vehicles in the inventory that are being accused of duplicate content/Metadata.

The fix that I have been spit balling is adding canonical - No Follow to these pages. I am not sure that this is the best way forward, but would appreciate the feedback

2. Duplicate Content: Most of the information is supplied from the manufacturer so we have been sourcing the information back to the manufacturers site. They are showing up on random "SEO Tools" pulls as harmful to the site. Although we use the Dealers name and local area, the only way I can assume to get the heat off and possibly fix any negative ramifications is to once again use a Canonical Tag -  No Follow to these pages.

3. Clean up Issues: Most of the other issues I am finding is when the website platform dumps new pages to the site without notice and creates more then 1k pages that are coming with duplicate everything.

Please provide with any assistance you can.

[MattRoney]

Hi BBsmyth! Are you able to provide any examples for Kate?

[katemorris]

Cody has some good resources. I'll follow that up with asking for specific instances of pages that are autocreated. It sounds like the way they are made doesn't add anything to the site, so rather than using a canonical, I'd go the noindex route first, but I'd need to see these pages to be sure.

I don't think they mean removing the duplicates, but make them unique instead. What CMS are you on? Who makes these pages? And again (sorry), can we have some examples?

[BBsmyth]

Thanks Cody. It was actually supposed to say Duplicate Title Tags and other Duplicate metadata. They grab hold of 1 part of the process and drive it home as the issue. So that is why we would be removing that information.

[Cody_West]

Hello! Sounds like you've got a pretty big project ahead of you. First question, why do they want you to remove title tags, descriptions, etc? I wouldn't remove them, I would do some keyword research and target local keywords specific to your geographic area. For example, 2016 Honda Civic Orange County.

What pages are showing up as duplicate? Are they specific vehicle pages? How are they duplicate? There are better options than rel canonical in many cases. Read this article and it should provide some insight. https://moz.com/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not

Sometimes there is no way to avoid duplicate content, especially on a dealership site. Check out DriveTime's website, they do a good job on their SEO. If you filter for a specific make and model and look at the vehicle descriptions, you will find duplicate content. Compare two cars with the same make and model, but that are different colors and you will see what I mean. This type of duplicate content usually won't hurt your SEO, especially on a dealership site where your pages are constantly changing as you receive and sell vehicles.

You can always tell Google not to index specific portions of your page if you have duplicate content that provide no SEO benefit like disclaimers, warnings, etc. https://perishablepress.com/tell-google-to-not-index-certain-parts-of-your-page/

Also, check out this video by Google Webmasters. The speaker makes it pretty clear that you won't be penalized for duplicate content unless it is spammy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxWo4ttPgAc

If you can be a bit more specific with the duplicate content issues, I'll see what I can do to help.

Good luck!