Duplicate versions of pages on my site are getting indexed by Google...I think...

[sophycolbert]

Hello,

Our site has a very high bounce rate, which in part is down to a slightly old fashioned design, and also because we are a retailer and I imagine many visitors are simply quickly comparing prices and then leaving.

However, having had a look in Google Analytics, I think that there is another issue that is contributing to a very high bounce rate. When I look in Content > Top Content, and order the pages in order of Bounce Rate, high to low, there are hundreds of instances of pages with just one or two visits in the last month, and a 100% bounce rate.  The links are the same as our home page or pages on our website, but with extra letters and numbers at the end of the url.

We have an affiliate scheme, which provides our affiliates with unique codes for the products they want to link to, and my guess is that these urls are getting indexed. I've looked at a few other links, and they go to translated versions of a page from our website, generated by Google. Other urls seem to have been generated by search results from our own search on the website.

What worries me is that there are lots and lots of versions of the same page, with slightly different urls. I am by no means an SEO expert - I work for a very small company and am basically learning as I go - but I know that duplicate content is bad news. If the pages were on our own site, we could use 301s to redirect, but what about translated versions, or urls generated by affiliate schemes, or search results?

Many thanks,

Sophy

[RampUpInteractive]

use the canonical tag

The links are the same as our home page or pages on our website, but with extra letters and numbers at the end of the url.

Those are most likely affiliate links getting indexed to prevent this use the canonical tag this will prevent the Affiliate links from being indexed and creating duplicate content where adding the affiliate ID in the URL is obligatory.

[sferrino]

Hello Sophy.

A comments.

1. Use the rel='canonical' on all your pages (more on this below),
2. create a robots.txt file
3. I'm seeing a lot of keywords in your Meta Keywords, (which does nothing) but you are missing the Meta Description, which is important.

In regards to the canonical, even if they come in with an affiliate link this will reduce or eliminate your duplicate page issue. If you have any way for a page to have duplicate content, use a canonical, if you have a page that is generated dynamically, figure out the best url for it and create a canonical for it.

If your having a high bounce rate, I'd look at the site, and see what people are doing. I would point more towards a

• 'Not so clear idea what to do', or
• 'doesn't offer the information we expected'

Consider using heatmaps, or using on of the survey sites that will send 30+ people to your site and fill out a form stating what they likes, didn't like, couldn't figure out, etc.

[RampUpInteractive]

This post is deleted!

[RyanPurkey]

Just to add, you won't have to worry about translated versions of your pages, as Google considers the same content in different languages unique.  For example, you could have an English version and a Spanish version of the same page and both would be unique content.  Also something to consider, Google Analytics displays 100% bounce rate for any visit that only views one page and if you'd like to get more insight into if visitors are loading videos, using Java, or downloading files in those views you'll want to incorporate event tracking: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55597

[sophycolbert]

Many thanks - this is very useful information, I will look into seeing how we can change this.