Duplicate content w/ same product in different categories?

6 replies
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I am working with a company where they have a site with category pages. They have products listed on the category pages, but DO NOT have individual product pages.

They have items where one item meets different applications, and they just copy and paste the description over multiple categories when needed.

For example. Lets say there is a Nike Air Shoe. That shoe is in women, men and kid sizes. When that shoe is listed in each category, they just change men, women and kids, but leave everything else the same. Is that really bad for SEO? If so, how bad?

Also, how do you list an item over multiple categories and change the description enough to get unique content?

Thanks
#categories #content #duplicate #product #w or
  • Profile picture of the author Georgie593
    I think that if you had other unique items on these pages you would not have much to worry about. I think that if the website is genuine and for the users you should be fine.
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  • Profile picture of the author Google.me
    still sounds like duplicate content even thou the words are switched around. They probably thinking of trying to get more queries for serps doing it this way.

    Bad - cant see a penalty there just a potential for omitted results

    "Also, how do you list an item over multiple categories and change the description enough to get unique content?"

    Its like grinding stone - grit, grade, structure, bond,
    And use different synonyms and mixture of paragraphs
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  • I ran the site through an in-site Dupe content checker and this is what it says:

    Similarity Check: FAILED
    Google indicates that it has "omitted some entries very similar" to the top 1000 pages on your site. This similarity is a duplicate content penalty preventing these pages from being considered uniquely valuable in Google's index.”


    I'm not really sure it matters how many pages are ranked. But, are those non indexed pages bringing the rest of the site down? That is my question.
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  • Profile picture of the author JFVJ
    If i understood right your question, I think that 301 redirects would work here. Following your example, you could put the product on the kids category, then if you want to put it on women and men category, all you would have to do is redirect those links to the product that is in the kid category. It is not perfect, but it´s a solution to help prevent duplicate content.
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    • Profile picture of the author abarton
      Originally Posted by JFVJ View Post

      If i understood right your question, I think that 301 redirects would work here. Following your example, you could put the product on the kids category, then if you want to put it on women and men category, all you would have to do is redirect those links to the product that is in the kid category. It is not perfect, but it´s a solution to help prevent duplicate content.
      This isn't a bad idea if you could just establish on one of the "Nike Air Shoe" product page that it comes in mens ,womens and kids, so you basically have one product page for that shoe. Just redirect the links from say the womens and kids section to the same product page you would find in the mens.

      But that may not be up to you.

      If changing it to one product page isn't an option, i still think you will be fine as long as its user friendly and doing it for the right reasons, you shouldn't be penalized.
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    • Originally Posted by JFVJ View Post

      If i understood right your question, I think that 301 redirects would work here. Following your example, you could put the product on the kids category, then if you want to put it on women and men category, all you would have to do is redirect those links to the product that is in the kid category. It is not perfect, but it´s a solution to help prevent duplicate content.
      This is interesting. I have a few ecommerce sites, but have never thought about that.
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