Avoiding duplicate content on product pages?
-
Hi,
I'm creating a bunch of product pages for courses for a university and I'm concerned about duplicate content penalties.
While the page names are different and some of the test is different, much of the text is the same between pairs of pages. I.e. a BA and an MA in a particular subject (say 'hairdressing' will have the same subject descriptions, school introduction paragraph, industry overview paragraph etc.
1. Is this a problem? In a site with 100 pages, if sets of 2 pages have about 50% identical content...
2. If it is a problem, is there anything I can do, other than rewrite the text?
3. From a search perspective, would both pages show up in search results in searches related to 'hairdressing courses' 'study hairdressing' etc?
Thanks!
-
Normally if two pages have similar content, you can use canonical tag to tell Google about your preferred page. But if you want to keep them both without using canonical then Google will randomly decide on of the 2 similar page.
Similar content is an issue for sure. though recently Google's algo has become complex and it can recognize type of the site like it seems to be OK for many eCommerce sites to have similar content.
But if you can reduce the percentage from 50 % to bit lower, it will be better I guess.
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
-
Page content not being recognised?
I moved my website from Wix to Wordpress in May 2018. Since then, it's disappeared from Google searches. The site and pages are indexed, but no longer ranking. I've just started a Moz campaign, and most pages are being flagged as having "thin content" (50 words or less), when I know that there are 300+ words on most of the pages. Looking at the page source I find this bit of code: page contents Does this mean that Google is finding this and thinks that I have only two words (page contents) on the page? Or is this code to grab the page contents from somewhere else in the code? I'm completely lost with this and would appreciate any insight.
Technical SEO | | Photowife1 -
Pages with duplicate meta descriptions
We have around 17 pages have underscores in the URL. From the 17 pages, we have changed 3 pages URL for example if the url is test_sample_demo.html, we have changed as test-sample-demo.html After the updates, we have made redirect as follows Redirect 301 test_sample_demo.html test-sample-demo.html Presently google webmaster tool shows as "Pages with duplicate meta descriptions" & "Pages with duplicate title tags" for changed pages How to fix this. Please help us
Technical SEO | | Intellect0 -
How to remove the duplicate page title
Hi everyone, I saw many posts related to this query.But i couldnt find a solution for my error.. Here is my question I got 575 Duplicate page title & 600 duplicate page content errors. My site is related to realestate. I created a page title like same sentence differs with locality name Eg: Land for sale - kandy property Land for sale - Galle property Likewise Locality name only differs..I have created meta title & Content like this. Can anyone let me know how to solve this error ASAP ?
Technical SEO | | Rajesh.Chandran0 -
Duplicate Content - Mobile Site
We think that a mobile version of our site is causing a duplicate content issue; what's the best way to stop the mobile version being indexed. Basically the site forwards mobile users to "/mobile" which is just a mobile optimised version of the original site. Is it best to block the /mobile folder from being crawled?
Technical SEO | | nsmith7870 -
SEO MOZ report showing duplicate content pages with without ending /
Hello the SEOMOZ report is showing me I have a lot of duplicate content and then proceeds listing almost every page on my site as showing with a URL with an ending "/" and without. I checked my sitemap and only one version is there, the one with "/". I have a Wordpress site. Any recommendations ? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | dpaq20110 -
Forget Duplicate Content, What to do With Very Similar Content?
All, I operate a Wordpress blog site that focuses on one specific area of the law. Our contributors are attorneys from across the country who write about our niche topic. I've done away with syndicated posts, but we still have numerous articles addressing many of the same issues/topics. In some cases 15 posts might address the same issue. The content isn't duplicate but it is very similar, outlining the same rules of law etc. I've had an SEO I trust tell me I should 301 some of the similar posts to one authoritative post on the subject. Is this a good idea? Would I be better served implementing canonical tags pointing to the "best of breed" on each subject? Or would I be better off being grateful that I receive original content on my niche topic and not doing anything? Would really appreciate some feedback. John
Technical SEO | | JSOC0 -
Different TLD's same content - duplicate content? - And a problem in foreign googles?
Hi, Operating from the Netherlands with customers troughout Europe we have for some countries the same content. In the netherlands and Belgium Dutch is spoken and in Germany and Switserland German is spoken. For these countries the same content is provided. Does Google see this as duplicate content? Could it be possible that a german customer gets the Swiss website as a search result when googling in the German Google? Thank you for your assistance! kind regards, Dennis Overbeek [email protected]
Technical SEO | | SEO_ACSI0 -
50+ duplicate content pages - Do we remove them all or 301?
We are working on a site that has 50+ pages that all have duplicate content (1 for each state, pretty much). Should we 301 all 50 of the URLs to one URL or should we just completely get rid of all the pages? Are there any steps to take when completely removing pages completely? (submit sitemap to google webmaster tools, etc) thanks!
Technical SEO | | Motava0