E-Commerce for All

E-Commerce Tips, Tricks and Tribulations
Sunday
November 2, 2008
12:11 pm

Does My Online Store have Duplicate Content?

Google is all over duplicate content, your site will suffer for it. But what exactly is duplicate content? The biggest problem is, Google doesn’t always tell you there is a problem, you can set up Google Alerts on your domains and addresses, but that’s no help for code, and template duplication. So I will try to cover the most popular ways to get pages excluded from main search for duplicate content.

  1. Your site uses both plain http://website and http://www.website URL protocol. Use a redirect or mod rewrite to fix this. This canonical redirect will help Google understand that the www & non-www are NOT 2 separate pages. You see, urls are like phone numbers, unique for every user… So Google thinks these 2 versions of your domain’s urls are in fact different numbers, so to speak.
  2. Your site has no standardized handling method for the entry page, or default indexing. This means the index/default/main page can be viewed live & independently of the www.mysite.com. You fix this with a 301 or permanent redirect. For example /index.html is exactly the same page as your domain url.
  3. If you use a template, this dramatically increases th opportunity for content duplication by using dynamic site elements across many or all pages.  To combat this, when page specific text is added, it must be ENOUGH text to make that page stand out and be unique from the other templated pages.
  4. Change your Meta tags and page titles for every page. This one is 100% easy and highly important. Use the <head> elements to properly describe the page and you will be fine.
  5. If you are going to share files across domains, link them ….yes even your own stuff can be duplicate content.
  6. In your Google Webmaster Tools it is advisable the you choose a preferred domain under the diagnostic tab, and by all means while you are there check out your content analysis for duplicate information Google has found in your site.
  7. The #1 duplication issue I see amoung the stores we analyze is product description duplication. You MUST write great unique product descriptions for your product to be successful. Using the manufacturers description creates content that is duplicate in whole or partially with every other distributer… Many time the supplier as well. I’m thinking your site is NOT the authority for this content and Google will not display your products for search.
  8. Your robots.txt WILL NOT block your page from being indexed… You must block them with a noindex, nofollow or other means to specifically DISALLOW indexing of these pages.
  9. In general when adding textual content (product descriptions), paraphrase and add rich text ….that’s really what Google wants.  Unique pages perform well… Duplicate pages never show up.
  10. Be extremely careful with content generators, most times the content is duplicate. Try paying a college student to write the copy for you… Good investment!

We theorize that 70% of your total page must be unique. Here are a few tools to help check it:

How do I know I have duplicate content in Google?

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Saturday
September 13, 2008
3:09 pm

Shopping Cart Duplication - #1 Cause

At PRO-Webs we complete a great deal of site reports, and this gives us a unique advantage for research, testing and identifying common mistakes. Today, we are going to let shop owners in on the biggest cause of content duplication we have seen to date… But first lets get in to some background and information about the less than stellar results of content duplication.

What is duplicate content?
Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Most of the time when we see this, it’s unintentional or at least not malicious in origin: forums that generate both regular and stripped-down mobile-targeted pages, store items shown (and — worse yet — linked) via multiple distinct URLs, and so on. In some cases, content is duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or garner more traffic via popular or long-tail queries.

So duplicate content very simply put, is any content which is too similar to another page’s (any page’s) content indexed in Google. Duplicate content can cause a host of headaches and is certainly not a concrete foundation for a top performing online store. Why should shop owners care about duplicate content?… Simple Google and other search engines care a great deal.

This is really one of those times when you as a business owner needs to walk a mile in Google’s shoes. Google aims to deliver the best UNIQUE content for every search… This is what Google, the business, does for their customers. As I am sure you as a shop owner want the best for your customers, you can clearly understand why Google would not want the same content in 5 different results to deliver their users. So if there is duplicate content… What does Google do about it?

In theory, when Google is presented to 2 pages which are not unique enough to rank independently, they make a decision as to which page to rank for the terms. There is very certainly a very complicated algorithmic computation Google does to determine which page to rank… But that really matters little. Generally speaking, the site which has the greatest authority for the content will rank and the other is shunned from the main search-able index. There is likely a ton of metrics used to determine authority for this purpose, but the largest factors are likely to be PageRank, relevant links, traffic and the age of the page. Seriously though… The simple truth is if you stole it and published it, you are not going to be able to rank it properly.

So back to the purpose of this post…

What is the #1 cause of content duplication in shopping carts?

Many shop owners are distributing or drop shipping the product base from their online store. The drop shipper or main distribution source will nearly always provide product information and descriptions for the products they wish you to sell. In our hast and waste to launch our new store or new product, many shop owners will use all or some large blocks of the distributors or manufacturers product information… UHOH

There are really only 2 factors of concern with regard to this type of content duplication.

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Thursday
June 19, 2008
10:06 pm

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries

So have you seen this ugly message in your Google site command results?

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ### already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

Caution Duplicate ContentWhat exactly does this daunting phrase mean? I think the key words here are “relevant” and “similar”. Google expressly wishes to display highly relevant and unique pages in their search results. This blog post from Google is a MUST read to help you understand duplicate content.

This is a 2 part problem… The first part is fairly simple, if the page has no value to a search user then block it from indexing. Pages in your store such as shipping, conditions, contact pages etc present no end value to a searcher and thus should not be allowed to be indexed. As with anything else there are a few ways to accomplish this, with the dynamic nature of most e-commerce shops blocking them in your robots.txt is both easy and highly effective.

Part 2… Duplication is far more complicated as the duplicate content can come from a variety of sources. The first step is to understand what duplicate content is and why Google finds it less than useful to the main index.

Duplicate Content: 2 pages within the search engine’s index which are substantially similar in their content.

You see there are in fact many different ways to end up with duplicate content… Here are some common ones we see in the shops.

  • Using manufacturers descriptions which are likely to be indexed already on other sites.
  • Allowing your session IDs to be crawled and thus indexed.
  • Creating a different product page for different styles/colors/etc of products and using the same text for the most part.
  • Canonical duplication and lack of a proper default index page.
  • Not creating enough product/category unique copy within the template to allow them to be unique from each other.

The problem with duplicate content is that it puts Google in the drivers seat instead of you. When Google determines a page is too duplicate they will make a decisions from the available versions as to which one is most appropriate. There is much theory and discussion as to how much duplicate content causes a page to be dumped from the main search results. I honestly think this number is around 25-30% duplicate.

The duplication is for the WHOLE page, not just the part you are entering for a product description for example. Let’s say for example you are creating a new product and you have little or no textual content specific to that product… This page is VERY likely to be duplicate because obviously your template is pretty much the same on a per page basis. You need to have enough page specific or relevant text to set it apart, not only to prevent duplication, but to help it rank better as well.

Using straight supplier or manufacturer’s descriptions is duplicate in the same manner… Remember Google is not just comparing your pages against your own pages for quality and uniqueness. The best way to avoid this is to take a minute and write some good copy.

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