Duplicate Content Due to Pagination

[josh330]

Recently our newly designed website has been suffering from a rankings loss.  While I am sure there are a number of factors involved, I'd like to no if this scenario could be harmful...

Google is showing a number of duplicate content issues within Webmaster Tools. Some of what I am seeing is duplicate Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions for page 1 and page 2 of some of my product category pages. So if a category has many products and has 4 pages, it is effectively showing the same page title and meta desc. across all 4 pages.

I am wondering if I should let my site show, say 150 products per page to get them all on one page instead of the current 36 per page. I use the Big Commerce platform.

Thank you for taking the time to read my question!

[MattJanaway]

This should help you out Josh:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2109932/Google-Introduces-New-Pagination-Tags-Pushes-View-All-Pages

You need to set up pagination correctly.

Alternatively, altering how many products are on the page might help but don't do this if you think it might effect your customers experience (although unlikely).

[StreamlineMetrics]

Here are some great articles offering several different solutions to your problem -

http://www.ayima.com/seo-knowledge/conquering-pagination-guide.html

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/pagination-best-practices-for-seo-user-experience

[josh330]

I will read all of those articles. I do know, based on some other issues we're having, that the things I may have access to edit in BigCommerce are limited. Hopefully these articles have some information I can use.

[josh330]

This article makes complete sense Matt.  I don't have the ability, that I'm aware of, to edit the canonical tags used by Big Commerce. They automatically generate those for all products and categories.  Funny as it seems, they do NOT have the canonical tag in the home page which is a separate can of worms I am dealing with.

[MattJanaway]

Ah, sounds like that could be an issue. Unfortunately I'm not too familiar with Big Commerce. I have used it a couple of times but not in detail. I tend to use Magento or OSCommerce for large eCommerce projects and sometimes Wordpress (using something like WooCommerce) for smaller projects.

It's definitely worth shouting up to Big Commerce though to see if they can help.

[josh330]

Thank you Matt!

They (BC) are not a ton of help and there seems to be multiple issues. The last two techs, no joke, have said "listen, if I were an SEO expert I wouldn't be sitting here"... what kind of service is that?

I am going to talk to the developer that built the site (Madwire Media) and see what they can do, if anything.

[MattJanaway]

Did you invest much into the new design? If so, it might be too late to consider moving platforms. Service levels like that belong in the 1900's!!!

I'd recommend giving Madwire Media a shout if they developed it for you. They MIGHT be able to help. Feel free to pop them my email address if they get lost, I could be of some help possibly.

[josh330]

Will do, thanks Matt. We have quite a bit in this new design, so we are staying with the platform. BC is great as far as uptime, etc. We actually left Volusion after 6 years to move here.