Shopify Duplicate Content in products

[TheUpdateCompany]

Hello Moz Community,

New to Moz and looking forward to beginning my journey towards SEO education and improving our clients' sites.

Our client's website is a Shopify store. https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/

Our first Moz reports show 686 duplicate content issues. I will show the first 4 as examples.

https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/haida-eagle-teardrop-earrings

https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/haida-orca-silver-earrings

https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/silver-oval-earrings

https://spiritsofthewestcoast.com/collections/native-earrings-and-studs-in-silver-and-gold/products/haida-eagle-spirit-silver-earrings

As you can see, URL titles are unique. But I know that the content in each of those products have very similar product descriptions but not exactly. But since they have been flagged as a site issue by Moz, I am guessing that the content is 95% duplicate.

So can a rel=canonical be the right solution for this type of duplicate content?

Or should I be considering adding new content to each of 686 products to drop below the 95% threshold?

Or another solution that I may not be aware of.

Thanks in advance for your assistance and expertise!

Sean

[EricaMcGillivray]

You're welcome. Best of luck!

[TheUpdateCompany]

Thanks Erica,

Confirming that the actual page content is the issue helps me a lot. Thanks for the suggestions and now it's time to start the fixing those with the client.

Sean

[EricaMcGillivray]

The problem is definitely the actual page content is almost identical, even if the products are different. This is a very common problem for e-commerce sites. Typically, there are two solutions:

1. You write more unique content about each product. This can be daunting, but it does matter. You can also drive user reviews which are going to create user generated unique content for your products. I'd suggest doing a mix of them. (And yep, I've been there writing unique content for thousands of products, so I feel you.)

2. Instead of selling these very similar products on individual pages, you can make the different designs like e-commerce sites often show different colors. It becomes an option to choose the orca ones or the eagle ones, instead of a unique lander for each.

[mkleinrock]

I just encountered the same issue with a client on Shopify.

I did notice that shopify creates two versions of the site. One version is the HTTPS and the other is HTTP. This creates a duplicate for each page. You may want to try filtering out one version and making change suggestions. When you update it will take effect on the other.

I am still trying to figure out some of the "collection pages" and how to move forward on these.

Good Question!

Matthew