Duplicate product content/disclaimers for non-e-commerce sites
-
This is more a follow-up to Rand's recent Whiteboard "Handling User-Generated & Manufacturer-Required Duplicate Content Across Large Numbers of URLs." I posed my question in the comments, but unsure it will get picked up.
My situation isn't exactly the same, but it's similar:
Our site isn't an e-commerce site and doesn't have user reviews yet, but we do have maybe 8 pages across 2 product categories featuring very similar product features with duplicate verbiage. However, we don't want to re-write it because we want to make it easy for users to compare apples-to-apples to easily see which features are actually different. We also have to run disclaimers at the bottom of each page.\
Would i-framing the product descriptions and disclaimers be beneficial in this scenario, with the addition of good content? It would still be nice to have some crawlable content on those pages, so the i-framing makes me nervous unless we compensate with at least some above-the-fold, useful content that could be indexed.
Thanks, Sarah
-
Good points David, and I'd agree. If the duplicate content issues are relatively small-scale, I'd generally opt to have that content accessible to the engines, and would work simply to add my own, unique content/value/features to those pages to help make them unique (you may already be doing this through design/UX/etc).
-
Hi Sarah,
I wouldn't recommend using iframes to deliver the product descriptions. From my experience, sites with small-scale duplicate content issues will consistently perform better than sites with little to no content (which your site ultimately would be if content was delivered via iframe)
There are a few variables that effect things, most importantly the volume of the duplicate content. If it's 8 pages, then I wouldn't consider this a high-risk problem. The solution would be to add as much valuable additional content as you can to these pages, whilst keeping the core (descriptions) content in place.
If I've misunderstood and the scale is much bigger, it may be worth considering an alternative solution. Rather than using alternate content delivery methods, I'd recommend putting your focus on adding additional unique content. Once of the simplest ways of doing this is encouraging (or manually adding) user generated reviews of the two similar products. This way your customers can compare apples with apples in regards to the descriptions, but there's plenty of unique and helpful information on the page too.
I hope that helps
Cheers
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
-
Htaccess redirect, from /year/month to /blog
I am trying to make some redirects so we don't lose that SEO juice. I am trying to move our blog structure from:
On-Page Optimization | | opiates
http://www.domain.com/2015/09/title-of-blog to:
http://www.domain.com/blog/title-of-blog I need to do redirects in htaccess from the old structure to the new structure but I can't seem to get it working properly. Here is what I have thus far. <code>RewriteEngine on RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^(.0-9)\/^(.0-9)\$ $1/ [R=301,L]</code> Any suggestions?0 -
Multi channel product descriptions & dupe content issues
Hi When filling in inventory files to upload to the likes of Amazon clients will usually be copying and pasting the product descriptions from the website product descriptions into the Amazon product description field Should they really be re-written to avoid dupe content issues ? I presume not since it is the official description of the product. Please note that i'm talking here about the manufacturers website/product descriptions and their own Amazon shop descriptions. So theirs is the original authoritative description. Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Duplicate Content on Event Pages
My client has a pretty popular service of event listings and, in hope of gathering more events, they opened up the platform to allow users to add events. This works really well for them and they are able to garner a lot more events this way. The major problem I'm finding is that many event coordinators and site owners will take the copy from their website and copy and paste it, duplicating a lot of the content. We have editor picks that contain a lot of unique content but the duplicate content scares me. It hasn't hurt our page ranking (we have a page ranking of 7) but I'm wondering if this is something that we should address. We don't have the manpower to eliminate all the duplication but if we cut down the duplication would we experience a significant advantage over people posting the same event?
On-Page Optimization | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
How to avoid keyword stuffing on e-Commerce Category pages
Hi, I'm optimizing a large, consumer electronic e-commerce superstore. Based on client's choice of keywords, I'm using product category pages as my target urls. Because of the proprietary CMS structure, product names and titles, featured on my landing pages (product category pages) create a keyword overkill, affecting various ranking factors. For example, one of the target urls / landing pages, dedicated to a specific product category, mentions the keyword over 190 times because of so many product titles in the "body" section. Would inline "rel="canonical" help? If yes, what part of the website should it "canonize"? If rel="canonical" is not the answer, what strategies would you suggest? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | dimanyc0 -
Mobile vs Website Duplicate Data / Meta
SeoMoz is reporting duplicate content, title tags, and other meta information and seems to be showing that my mobile site (located on m.website.com) is a duplicate of website.com I was figuring I could add "Mobile SiteName" to the title to avoid the duplicate title but am a little confused as to how to approach the duplicate content side of it
On-Page Optimization | | Check_City0 -
How to avoid duplicate content on ecommerce pages?
I am currently building the site architecture for a very large ecommerce site. I am wondering how I should build it out if I have products that I want to include in multiple categories within my site. For example: Lets say I sell fitness equipment and I have categories for things such as: Treadmill, Exercise Bike, Stair Stepper, Weight Benches etc. But then I also have specific brand category pages such a: Precor, Life Fitness, Hammer, Body Solid So my question is how do I structure this so I am building this correctly? If I sell a Precor Treadmill I will want to include that product under the "Treadmill" category page as well as under the "Precor Equipment" category page. Can I get some advice for the best way to structure this? It's obviously something I want to avoid at all costs of doing improperly and having to fix later. Thank you Jake
On-Page Optimization | | PEnterprises0 -
Should we create separate product descriptions for our customers' web sites?
Still got my SEO learner plates on, but I'm trying to help a small e-commerce site which makes and sells baby products . They have upwards of 150 independent retailers also selling their products. Mindful of the fact that many of these retailers are copying the same product descriptions to use on their own web sites, I wondered if there was any value in creating separate sets of product descriptions, one for our web site and one for all their trade customers, in order to minimise the amount of duplicated content devaluing our site. In theory Google ought to know that ours is the original source of the content, but some testing has shown customers ranking higher for the same product descriptions. We have a separate area on the site for trade, which contains lots of media information they can use, and we could include a set of product descriptions in this area for trade customers to download, keeping a unique set of product descriptions for ourselves. We won't stop duplicate content entirely, I realise - but do you think it's worth the effort of trying to implement? Our web developer thinks it's a total waste of time and not worth bothering with for the miniscule benefit he thinks we'll gain. Grateful for any pointers.
On-Page Optimization | | Mandy_Cochrane0 -
Google Page Rank of my site has dropped from 4/10 to 3/10
Google Page rank of my website has been dropped after Panda Update. Can anyone help me out to tell me the possible reasons about the same. We have tried to make our website more lively and user friendly. We have indulged some graphics to make it more attractive. But it seems it backfired us. my site is http://www.myrealdata.com as well as Google page ranking of my Quickbooks hosting page has been dropped as well. It would be great if someone can help me out with expert suggestions.
On-Page Optimization | | SangeetaC1