How to Handle Duplicate Content on Your Ecommerce Site

Did you know that having identical or similar content on multiple site pages can cannibalize your SEO efforts?

When search engines like Google encounter duplicate content, they need clarification about which page is the most relevant for a particular search term.

This can lead to a negative website ranking, effectively hiding your products from potential customers.

What Is Duplicate Content In SEO?

In SEO, duplicate content is identical or similar to multiple other sites. As a result, this creates much confusion for search engines like Google to acknowledge the most relevant content.

In addition, duplicate content does not add value to your visitors and cannibalizes the page’s ranking.

Image Source: Sitechecker

There are two main types of duplicate content:

1. Internal Duplicate Content: This content appears on multiple pages within your websites. This mostly happens when many product descriptions or keywords on the page match, poorly managed blog posts, or some technical issue with the page.
2. External Duplicate Content: External duplicate content occurs when you or someone else copies the content of another web page for your page.

How Duplicate Content Impacts SEO

Duplicate content can significantly impact SEO in several negative ways:

Confusing Search Engine:

Duplicate content confuses the search engine and causes problems when choosing relevant content.

• Lowered Rankings for All Duplicate Pages: To avoid favoring the wrong page, search engines may demote all the duplicates, reducing their visibility.’
• Indexing the “Wrong” Page: Search engines might index a less optimized version of the content, hindering your SEO efforts because the best version isn’t shown.

Cannibalizing Your Rankings

The same keywords and content can cannibalize the content of your page. This can weaken your SEO ranking and make it difficult for the page to rank.

According to Moz, websites with duplicate content can see an average of 30% decrease in organic traffic compared to those with unique and optimized content.

Wasting Crawl Budget:

Search engines allocate a “crawl budget” to determine how many pages they will visit and analyze on your site. If your site contains a lot of duplicate content, the search engine may waste a significant portion of its crawl budget on these redundant pages.

This limits the ability of the search engine to discover and index your unique and valuable content, which is more important for improving your SEO.

Dilution of Link Equity: 

The other page link to your page builds up your brand and enhances your business. But if multiple pages on your website get the same content, the link power gets split and disturbed. This division makes each page less powerful and less authoritative in the eyes of search engines.

How To Avoid Duplicate Content

Websites with good-sized product catalogs or those that generate content dynamically frequently have duplicate content. It happens when identical or similar content appears on several unique URLs, perplexing engines like Google and degrading your SEO efforts.

To ensure that your internet site gives awesome and worthwhile content to search engines like Google and customers, follow these pointers for dealing with replica content:

301 Redirects

301 redirects is the permanent redirection that sends users and search engines from one URL to another. This redirects to the new page you want to visit, which was on the old one.

According to Sourcepoint, implementing the right 301 redirects can lead to a 30% increase in organic traffic by consolidating link equity.

Image Source- Blue Frog Marketing 

Canonical Tags

A canonical tag is the HTML code that tells the search engine which URL is the original version of the page with duplicate content. This is ideal for web pages with product listings or printer-friendly versions.

In short, the canonical tags help the search engine to know which page to focus on, helping to keep your SEO strong.

Image Source- Moz

Meta Robots Noindex

The meta robots noindex guide search engines in not indexing a specific page. This is useful for pages like login forms, “thank you” pages after form submission, or duplicate content you don’t want search engines to rank.

Using meta robots noindex, you can ensure that your crawl budget is not used on these pages. This is the limited time and resources search engines spend crawling and indexing your website.

Image Source- Moz

Sitemaps

A sitemap is a file that lists all the important pages on your website and provides additional information about each page. For example, the last modified date.

Related: E-commerce Sitemap Best Practices

Submitting sitemaps to search engines like Google and Bing can help them discover and index the content more efficiently.

In addition, search engines can prioritize your unique and valuable pages with the help of a well-structured sitemap, even if it does not directly address duplicate content.

Image Source- Semrush

Other methods to fix and prevent duplicate content

Here are some additional strategies to keep your websites free of duplicate content:

Implement Effective Content Syndication Strategies

When sharing your content on other websites, ensure proper attribution and use canonical tags to indicate the source. This helps prevent search engines from seeing syndicated content as duplicates.

Improved Internal Linking Structure:

Write Unique Content:

Always create original and valuable content for your website. Unique content avoids duplication problems, enhances user experience, and boosts your SEO rankings.

According to Semrush, original content can improve organic traffic by 26% compared to websites with the most duplicate content.

Report Duplicate Content:

If you find other websites copying your content without permission, report it to search engines using tools like Google’s DMCA complaint form. This helps protect your content and maintain your site’s authority.

Conclusion

Handling duplicate content on your e-commerce site is crucial for maintaining and improving your SEO. Duplicate content confuses search engines, leading to lower ranking and reduced visibility, significantly impacting your site’s performance.

Implementing 301 redirect, canonical tags, and meta robots noindex tags can help manage duplicate content effectively.

In addition, creating unique content, improving internal linking, and using sitemaps can further enhance your SEO.

FAQs

• How to avoid duplicate content on a website

Ensure each page has unique and valuable content to avoid duplicate content on a website. Use canonical tags to indicate the preferred vision of the page when similar content exists across multiple URLs. Implement 301 redirects for duplicate pages and avoid publishing near-identical pages or product descriptions.

Regularly update and diversify content, and avoid copying large chunks of text from other websites.

• How to find duplicate content on an e-commerce website?

Using programs like Copyscape, Siteliner, and Screaming Frog is one way to perceive reproduction content on an e-trade internet site. These tools can crawl your internet site and locate replica content on pages, title tags, and meta descriptions. Look for parallels in blog posts, class pages, and product descriptions. Google Search Console is every other tool for identifying replica content material problems. Audit your internet site often and maintain an eye for common e-commerce sources of duplication, including filtered product listings, paginated content material, and comparable product pages.

• How do I remove duplicate content from my website?

To remove duplicate content, first identify it using tools like Google Search Console, Copyscape, or Screaming Frog. Then, use 301 redirects to consolidate duplicate pages into a single, authoritative version. Implement canonical tags to specify the preferred version of a page. Edit and rewrite duplicated content to make it unique. Manage URL parameters effectively to avoid creating multiple versions of the same page. Finally, remove or noindex low-value or thin content that might be causing duplication issues.

• How can we prevent duplicate data?

Preventing duplicate data involves implementing validation checks during data entry to ensure uniqueness, such as using primary keys or unique database constraints. Use data cleaning tools to check for and merge duplicate records regularly. Employ deduplication software to identify and remove duplicates. Standardize data entry formats and enforce consistency through input masks and drop-down lists. Regularly audit your database to identify and correct duplicate entries and educate users on the importance of accurate and unique data entry.