Duplicate Content and Other Issues from Blog Tags and Categories
-
I have recently taken over the maintenance/redesign of our website and after setting up Moz I see many errors:
Duplicate content
Missing descriptions
Duplicate titles
etc.All are related to blog categories and tags.
My questions are: are these errors hurting us? Should I simply remove tags/categories from the sitemaps or bite the bullet and create content for every single category page?
Our site is https://financiallysimple.com/ and we are using Yoast plugin in Wordpress (if that helps)
-
Roman,
Good info here... still studying to try to make sense of how the "boxer" example (with very similar products) translates to "taxes" or "retirement" where every article is (supposed to be) very different.
Thanks again.
John -
Hi James Wolff I sent you an inbox
-
Cornerstone content
Cornerstone articles are the most important articles on your website. This is the content that exactly reflects your business. These articles should be relatively high in your site structure. In most cases, the
homepage directly links to these articles. If you could think of 4 pages you would like someone to read in order to tell them about your site or company, these would need to be the cornerstone articles. Therefore, these articles should focus on the mission or the most important products of your website or company.Taxonomies: Categories and Tags
Implementing categories and tags on your website is an important way to add structure to it. These taxonomies group content on a certain topic. When used properly, Google will understand the
structure of your site better. Categories have a hierarchical structure. There can be subcategories
within categories. Tags do not have a hierarchical structure. Think of it like this: categories are the table of contents of your website, and tags are the index.Categories and tags on your website is an important way to add structure to it. These taxonomies group content on a certain topic. When used properly, Search Engines will understand the structure of your site better. Categories have a hierarchical structure. There can be subcategories within categories. Tags do not have a hierarchical structure. Think of it like this: categories are the table of contents of your website, and tags are the index.
Duplicate content
Duplicate content means that the same content is shown on multiple locations on your site. As a reader, you don’t mind: you’ll get the content you came for. But it confuses a search engine: it has to pick
which one to show in the search results, as it doesn’t want to show the same content twice.Above that, when other websites link to your product, chances are some of them link to the first URL, and others link to the second URL. If these duplicates were all linking to the same URL, your chance of
ranking in the top 10 for the relevant keyword would be much higher. The solution for duplicate content is a so-called canonical link. A canonical link tells the search engines: yes, this content is duplicate,
and this one is the original content.Category archives are landing pages
Your category archives are more important than individual pages and posts. Those archives should be the first result in the search engines. That means those archives are your most important landing pages. Thus, they should also provide the best user experience. The more likely your individual pages are to expire, the more this is true. In a shop your products might change, making your categories more important to optimize. Otherwise, you’d be optimizing pages that are going to be gone a few weeks/months later.2 Categories prevent individual pages from competing
If you sell boxers and you optimize every product page, all those pages will compete for the term ‘boxers’. You should optimize them for their specific brand and model, and link them all to the ‘boxers’ category page. That way the category page can rank for ‘boxer’, while the product page can rank for more specific terms. This way, the category page prevents the individual pages from competing.
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
-
Content above the Fold, or Below
Hi, I have an ecommerce site with several categories that I consider good landing pages. In order to get better search results I add content to these pages, usually above the fold, then after the content products are listed. Example:https://www.carburetor-parts.com/Carburetor-Kits_c_568.html I worry that customers get to the page and since they don't see the products above the fold, they move on. Should I be putting content in the footer instead of the header and if so how does that effect SEO? This has been bugging me for a long time. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | MikeCarbs
Mike0 -
Potential duplicate content issue?
We have a category on our website for PVC rolls to buy as standard 50m rolls (this includes 15 products in the category). We're also releasing PVC rolls to buy per metre (10m roll/25m roll etc...), again with 15 products, which we are adding as a separate category as it makes more sense for our customers and removes the risk of having too many options. Would using the same description be bad practice for SEO? The product is exactly the same just available in different roll sizes, but we definitely do not want to combine categories as it doesn't work for our customers. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | RayflexGroup0 -
Content on product category pages - does Google care?
Hi All, I've always been unsure about the importance of content on product category pages. Nobody reads it. If you search for "living room chairs", you're just going to want to see a big list of living room chairs - not read content about living room chairs, how to choose one, etc. On virtually any ecommerce site, category pages have a paragraph or two of total bla-bla. Does this have any impact on search rankings? More specifically, will Googlebot see content on how to choose a living room chair and say "Yes! This is really helpful content"? Or, will it realize that the searcher intent on this keyword is really just to see a list of chairs, and ignore this content - or at least downplay its importance? WDTY?
On-Page Optimization | | BarryBuckman0 -
Duplicate Content - But it isn't!
Hi All, I have a site that releases alerts for particular problem/events/happenings. Due to legal stuff we keep the majority of the content the same on each of these event pages. The URLs are all different but it keeps coming back as duplicate content. The canonical tag is not right (i dont think for this) egs http://www.holidaytravelwatch.com/alerts/call-to-arms/egypt/coral-sea-waterworld-resort-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt-holiday-complaints-july-2014 http://www.holidaytravelwatch.com/alerts/call-to-arms/egypt/hotel-concorde-el-salam-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt-holiday-complaints-may-2014
On-Page Optimization | | Astute-Media0 -
Moz showing 384 description duplicates on my ecommerce store.... when I download CSV, most pages are coming from my WordPress Blog, why?
Hi, I am trying to investigate why I am getting 384 description duplicates on my ecommerce store (www.doggie-diva.com)? When I download the CSV file from MOZ, the majority of the pages they refer to are pages from my Word Press blog, which is hosted on a different server (blog.doggie-diva.com). I do have a link from my website to my Word Press blog and vice versa. Can you please explain to me why this is happening when I don't have duplicate content? Example of a page flagged from www.doggie-diva.com with duplicate content (http://blog.doggie-diva.com/tag/dog-gymnastics. Thanks, Rachel <colgroup><col width="549"></colgroup>
On-Page Optimization | | doggiedivalicious
| |0 -
Title Tag duplication.
Hi Guys/Gals, We do a lot of work in a very competitive space (personal injury) and are having an internal debate on the best way to implement title tags for new sites. We understand that keywords, title tags, etc., don't possess the power they once did, but we have yet to see conclusive proof of this in our space. The vast majority of competitors still rank very well for keyword focused content, title tags, etc., while having average link profiles and little content. We write a lot of content for our clients and want to know if someone can offer their opinion on the question that follows this example: "Top 5 Injuries Caused by T-Bone Collisions | Indiana Accident Lawyer" Would it seem repetitive or manipulative to construct title tags as shown, always placing "Indiana Accident Attorney" or "Indianapolis Accident Lawyer," or similar of at the end of each title tag? Thanks, gang!
On-Page Optimization | | Wayne760 -
Is duplicate content harmful? Example from on my site
I'm not talking about content copied from another site but content unique to a site being used on several pages. I have a delivery tab that has precisely the same content as another product page. This content is on four product pages and the dedicated delivery page. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Brocberry0 -
How woud you deal with Blog TAGS & CATEGORY listings that are marked a 'duplicate content' in SEOmoz campaign reports?
We're seeing "Duplicate Content" warnings / errors in some of our clients' sites for blog / event calendar tags and category listings. For example the link to http://www.aavawhistlerhotel.com/news/?category=1098 provides all event listings tagged to the category "Whistler Events". The Meta Title and Meta Description for the "Whistler Events" category is the same as another other category listing. We use Umbraco, a .NET CMS, and we're working on adding some custom programming within Umbraco to develop a unique Meta Title and Meta Description for each page using the tag and/or category and post date in each Meta field to make it more "unique". But my question is .... in the REAL WORLD will taking the time to create this programming really positively impact our overall site performance? I understand that while Google, BING, etc are constantly tweaking their algorithms as of now having duplicate content primarily means that this content won't get indexed and there won't be any really 'fatal' penalties for having this content on our site. If we don't find a way to generate unique Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions we could 'no-follow' these links (for tag and category pages) or just not use these within our blogs. I am confused about this. Any insight others have about this and recommendations on what action you would take is greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | RoyMcClean0