Ok... I will try to explain as clear as possible. This issue is regarding close to 5000 'Warnings' from our most recent seomoz pro crawl diagnostic test. The top three warnings have about 6000 instances among them: :
1. Duplicate Page Title
2. Duplicate Page Content
3. 302 (Temporary Redirect)
We understand that duplicate titles and content are "no-no's" and have made it top priority to avoid duplication on any level. Here is the issue lies... we are using the Volusion eCommerce solution and they have a variety of value add shopping features such as "Email A Friend" and "Email Me When Back In-Stock" on each product page.
If one of these options is clicked, you are then directed to the appropriate page. Now each page has a different url with the sole variable of each individual product code. But with it being a part of Volusion's ingrained functionality... the META title is the same for each page. It takes from the title of our store homepage. Example below:
Online Beauty Supply Store | Hair Care Products | Nail Care | Flat Irons
http://www.beautystoponline.com/Email_Me_When_Back_In_Stock.asp?ProductCode=AN1PRO7130
Online Beauty Supply Store | Hair Care Products | Nail Care | Flat Irons
http://www.beautystoponline.com/Email_Me_When_Back_In_Stock.asp?ProductCode=BI8BIOSI34
The same goes for the duplicate content warnings. If you click on one of these features, it directs you to a page with pretty much the same content except for different product. Basically each page has both duplicate content and duplicate title.
SEOMOZ description is
Duplicate Title:
Content that is identical (or nearly identical) to content on other pages of your site forces your pages to unnecessarily compete with each other for rankings.
Duplicate Page Content:
You should use unique titles for your different pages to ensure that they describe each page uniquely and don't compete with each other for keyword relevance.
Because I know SEO is not an exact science, the question here is does Google recognize that although they are duplicates, it actually is generated from a feature that makes us even more of a legitimate eCommerce site? Or, from seomoz description, if duplication is bad only because you do not want your pages to be competing with each other... should I not worry because i could care less if these pages don't get traffic. Or does it effect my domain authority as whole?
Then as for a solution. I am still trying to work out with Volusion how we can change the META title of the pages. It's highly unlikely but we'll see. As for the duplicate content, there is no way to change one of these pages. It's hard coded.
Solution... so if it is bad (even though it shouldn't be) would it be worth it to disable these features. I hope not. Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of Google trying to provide the most legitimate, value add sites to searchers?
As for the 302 (Temporary Redirect) warning... this is only appearing on all of our shopping cart pages. Such as the "Email A Friend" feature, there is a page for every product. For example:
http://www.beautystoponline.com/ShoppingCart.asp?ProductCode=AN1HOM8040
http://www.beautystoponline.com/ShoppingCart.asp?ProductCode=AN1HOM8050
The description semoz provides is:
302 (Temporary Redirect):
Using a 302 redirect will cause search engine crawlers to treat the redirect as temporary and not pass any link juice (ranking power). We highly recommend that you replace 302 redirects with 301 redirects.
So the probably solution... I do have the ability to change to a 301 redirect but do I want to do this for my shopping cart? Does Google realize the dead end is legitimate? Or... does it matter if link juice is passed through my shopping cart? And again, does it impact my site as a whole?
It is greatly appreciated if anyone could help me out with this stuff
Thank you