Are the duplicate content and 302 redirects errors negatively affecting ranking in my client's OS Commerce site?
-
I am working on an OS Commerce site and struggling to get it to rank even for the domain name. Moz is showing a huge number of 302 redirects and duplicate content issues but the web developer claims they can not fix those because ‘that is how the software in which your website is created works’. Have you any experience of OS Commerce? Is it the 302 redirects and duplicate content errors negatively affecting the ranking?
-
Hi Chris,
There are 1259 temporary (302) redirects (the web designer has a problem changing them to 301 redirects and so has left the site like that). These redirects all point to the same page - the log-in page - (as one can not write reviews on products unless logged in). I am concerned that this may look like spam behavior and may be negatively affecting ranking.
I feel it is up to the web designer to complete the site (and remove the 302s) however the web designer considers their job complete. I am trying to decide weather to take on the challenge and try to sort out the site in osCommerce (of which I have no experience) or weather it is better to start a WordPress blog on a fresh domain to attract traffic until the site owner is ready to rewrite the site in a more SEO friendly format. Currently the site is indexed but will not rank for even the company name.
Thanks so much for you help.
Alison
-
I would need to know more about the nature of the redirects to be able to say whether they would cause you any problems. If they are chained, you will run into issues mentioned by Matt Cutts in this video. Google has many signals to tell which sites are considered spam, and if you use the canonical references and have good quality content, I can't imagine redirects causing any red flags for your site.
Regards,
Chris
-
Hi Chris,
That sounds great I had not seen that add on I will see if that helps. Do you think if I expend the time and effort to solve the duplicate content issues then the 301 redirects will not cause any problems or do you think they are causing Google to think the site is spammy?
Alison
-
Hi Alison,
I'm not too familiar with osCommerce but there appear to be plugins allowing for canonical tags (http://addons.oscommerce.com/info/6578) that you might want to recommend to the designer. Having the same product for different colors and sizes is a great use for the canonical tag, and my suggestion would be to designate the most popular color/size as the canonical version. As for the duplicate content issues, I'm afraid my inexperience with osCommerce prevents me from giving any additional insight into that aspect of your problem.
For the redirects, if the pages being 302 redirected do not have many links pointing to them, the 302 redirects shouldn't be a problem. You should focus on the canonical tags for now.
Regards,
Chris
-
Hi Chris,
Thanks so much for your response.
The web designer has a problem applying 301 redirects and canonicalisation in osCommerce and I have limited experience osComerce. I do not want to waste time & clients money working on SEO (link building etc) when the site will not even rank for the domain name or exact product searches. I think the problems are more fundamental and lie in the design/implementation of the site. Crawl results show pages crawled 2,732, 250 Duplicate pages (same product in different colors / sizes etc), 1259 Temporary redirects. Do you think the duplicate pages are the problem or will it be the 302 redirects? Or is it both? Should I add more quality content ie a blog to this domain in the hope of getting the rankings and traffic up or start the blog on a separate new domain away from these issues?
Any experience of SEO in osCommerce?
Alison
-
The duplicate content is an issue if there are many versions of the same page on the site. You may be able to mitigate some of the negative impact from this by designating one as the canonical version, but ideally you would want to 301 redirect the duplicate pages to the one that has built the highest pagerank.
As for the 302 redirects, I am under the impression that the redirects themselves will not hurt you, but any links to the pages that are being redirected will not pass link juice along to the redirect destination, whereas a 301 redirect would pass a large portion of that link juice (some still leaks even with a 301 redirect).
Hope that helps,
Chris Wilson
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
-
Redirect old URL's from referring sites?
Hi I have just came across some URL's from the previous web designer and the site structure has now changed. There are some links on the web however that are still pointing at the old deep weblinks. Without having to contact each site it there a way to automatically sort the links from the old structure www.mydomain.com/show/english/index.aspx to just www.mydomain.com Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
To 301 redirect or not to 301 redirect? duplicate content problem www.domain.com and www.domain.com/en/
Hello, If your website is getting flagged for duplicate content from your main domain www.domain.com and your multilingual english domain www.domain.com/en/ is it wise to 301 redirect the english multilingual website to the main site? Please advise. We've recently installed the joomish component to one of our joomla websites in an effort to streamline a spanish translation of the website. The translation was a success and the new spanish webpages were indexed but unfortunately one of the web developers enabled the english part of the component and some english webpages were also indexed under the multilingual english domain www.domain.com/en/ and that flagged us for duplicate content. I added a 301 redirect to redirect all visitors from the www.domain/en/ webpages to the main www.domain.com/ webpages. But is that the proper way of handling this problem? Please advise.
Technical SEO | | Chris-CA0 -
Duplicate content
I have two page, where the second makes a duplicate content from the first Example:www.mysite.com/mypagewww.mysite.com/mysecondpageIf i insert still making duplicate content?Best regards,Wendel
Technical SEO | | peopleinteractive0 -
Are these 'not found' errors a concern?
Our webmaster report is showing thousands of 'not found' errors for links that show up in javascript code. Is this something we should be concerned about? Especially since there are so many?
Technical SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Can I format my H1 to be smaller than H2's and H3's on the same page?
I would like to create a web design with 12px H1 and for sub headings on the page to be more like 24px. Will search engines see this and dislike it? The reason for doing it is that I want to put a generic page title in the banner, and more poetic headings above the main body. Example: Small H1: Wholesale coffee, online coffee shop and London roastery Large h2: Respect the bean... Thanks
Technical SEO | | Crumpled_Dog
Scott0 -
SEOMoz is indicating I have 40 pages with duplicate content, yet it doesn't list the URL's of the pages???
When I look at the Errors and Warnings on my Campaign Overview, I have a lot of "duplicate content" errors. When I view the errors/warnings SEOMoz indicates the number of pages with duplicate content, yet when I go to view them the subsequent page says no pages were found... Any ideas are greatly welcomed! Thanks Marty K.
Technical SEO | | MartinKlausmeier0 -
Duplicate content error from url generated
We are getting a duplicate content error, with "online form/" being returned numerous times. Upon inspecting the code, we are calling an input form via jQuery which is initially called by something like this: Opens Form Why would this be causing it the amend the URL and to be crawled?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Does 'framing' a website create duplicate content?
Something I have not come across before, but hope others here are able offer advice based on experience: A client has independently created a series of mini-sites, aimed at targeting specific locations. The tactic has worked very well and they have achieved a large amount of well targeted traffic as a result. Each mini-site is different but then in the nav, if you want to view prices or go to the booking page, that then links to what at first appears to be their main site. However, you then notice that the URL is actually situated on the mini-site. What they have done is 'framed' the main site so that it appears exactly the same even when navigating through this exact replica site. Checking the code, there is almost nothing there - in fact there is actually no content at all. Below the head, there is a piece of code: <frameset rows="*" framespacing=0 frameborder=0> <frame src="[http://www.example.com](view-source:http://www.yellowskips.com/)" frameborder=0 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0> <noframes>Your browser does not support frames. Click [here](http://www.example.com) to view.noframes> frameset> Given that main site content does not appear to show in the source code, do we have an issue with duplicate content? This issue is that these 'referrals' are showing in Analytics, despite the fact that the code does not appear in the source, which is slightly confusing for me. They have done this without consultation and I'm very concerned that this could potentially be creating duplicate content of their ENTIRE main site on dozens of mini-sites. I should also add that there are no links to the mini-sites from the main site, so if you guys advise that this is creating duplicate content, I would not be worried about creating a link-wheel if I advise them to link directly to the main site rather than the framed pages. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | RiceMedia0