Over 700+ duplicate content pages -- help!

[Santaur]

I just signed up for SEO Moz pro for my site. The initial report came back with over 700+ duplicate content pages. My problem is that while I can see why some of the content is duplicated on some of the pages I have no idea why it's coming back as duplicated. Is there a tutorial for a novie on how to read the duplicate content report and what steps to take?

It's an e-commerce website and there is some repetitive content on all the product pages like our "satisfaction guaranteed" text and the fabric material... and not much other text. There's not a unique product description because an image speaks for itself. Could this be causing the problem?

I have lots of URLs with over 50+ duplicates.

Thx for any help.

[DarinPirkey]

It sounds like a canonical issue.  It can also be because SEOMoz is not an index but simply a crawler.  It will report nofollow and noindex pages too and those can lead to duplicate content.  But, my guess is that it may be a canonical issue.

Can you post a link to your site and we'll take a look at it.

There was a great article by Hannah Smith in 2011 regarding duplicate content and some of its issues.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/information-architecture-faceted-navigation-duplicate-content-oh-my

[ContactOnline]

Hi Antonee,

Just thought I'd chime as I know just having one response sometimes leaves some doubt, I agree with Darin that it sounds very much like a canonical issue or a crawler one.

In the past we've had some issues similar to what you're experiencing that have been mostly fixed by this approach, but if it's not that it can potentially get quite technical to try and work out why it's happening.

So go with the canonical fix first and if that doesn't work come back and post your findings/results and maybe we or someone else can help more from there.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Antonee,

There are many, many different reasons for duplicate content and while Darin's comments about Roger not discounting pages with noindex tags are spot on, my recommendation would be to read Dr Pete's epic post Duplicate Content in a Post Panda World before going any further.

You might also find some value in this overview video about the Pro Tool with Adam Feldstein.

There is also a great deal of information in the Help Hub, but if you are unsure of what your Pro Tools report is telling you, you can contact the Help Team from there.They will be able to take a look at the specific campaign for you and clarify anything that is difficult to understand.

Hope that helps

Sha