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Dec 12 in Search Optimisation
Written by: Harris
Duplicate content can be a problem for many business websites.
For example the xEcommerce.com.au website sells shopping cart solutions. We have three different products;
Budget Shopping Cart – uses an existing design template
Professional Shopping Cart – fully customised solution
Catalogue only solution – no cart or on-line payments
The problem is that all three packages services share many of the same features, which are listed in point form. For example they all have inventory control, use a product slideshow, and have a built in CMS, etc.
When Google crawls these pages it’s possible it will consider all three pages as duplicates.
So What’s The Problem With Duplication
Google wants to provide their users with the best search results possible. And of course no one using the Google service would be impressed if they were served a search results page full of identical information.
When faced with duplicate content, Google has to decide which page is the authoritative page. To do this it probably uses its standard ranking algorithms. The preferred page will then be indexed while the others are largely ignored.
Avoiding Duplicate Content
Although it’s not always easy to do, business owners have no choice. If you want a page to rank now and into the future it has to have unique content.
In the case of xEcommerce’s duplicate pages. A paragraph has been added to each product page that is completely unique. Also, I have tried to make subtle changes to the features list. The feature is the same, but uses synonyms.
Tags:
business owners, business websites, cms, design template, google, Search Optimisation, seo, shopping cart solutions, synonyms
About the author
I have been in the Internet industry since 1994, when I was one of the directors and owners of Cyberloom Pty Ltd - an early ISP based in Sydney, NSW. Cyberloom was sold in 2001. That's when I started X Pty Ltd as a website development company. xEcommerce.com.au is now my primary focus. xEcommerce.com.au builds small business sites on two platforms - Magento & Wordpress. One day I would like to operate the business from the Greek Island of Meganisi - and why not? The Internet is everywhere! ;)
