Duplicate Content Problem on Our Site?

[YNWA]

Hi,

Having read the SEOMOZ guide and already worried about this previously, I have decided to look further into this.

Our site is 4-5 years old, poorly built by a rouge firm so we have to stick with what we have for now.

Were I think we might be getting punished is duplicate content across various pages.

1. We have a Brands page, link at top of page. Here we are meant to enter each brand we stock and a little write up on that brands. What we then put in these write ups is used on each brands item page when we click a brand name on the left nav bar. Or when we click a Product Type (eg. Footwear) then click on a brand filter on the left. So this in theory is duplicate content. The SEO title and Meta Description for each brand is then used on the Brands Page and also on each page with the Brands Product on.

2. As we have entered this brand info, you will notice that the page www.designerboutique-online.com/all-clothing/armani-jeans/ has the same brand description in the scroll box at the top as the page www.designerboutique-online.com/shirts/armani-jeans/ and all the other product type pages. The same SEO title and same Meta descriptions. Only the products change from each one.

This then applies to each brand we have (at least 15) across about 8 pages. All with different URLs but the same text. Not sure how a 301 or rel: canonical would work for this, as each URL needs to point at specific pages (eg. shirts, shorts etc...). Some brands such as Creative Recreation and Cruyff only sell footwear, so technically I think??? We could 301 to the Footwear/ URL rather than having both all-clothing and footwear file paths?

This surely must be down to the bad design?

Could we be losing valulable rank and juice because of this issue? And how would I go about fixing it? I want a new site, but funds are tight. But if this issue is so big that only a new site would fix it, then maybe the money would need to come forward.

What do people make of this?

Cheers

Will

[YNWA]

Hi guys,

Lots of views but no answers, anyone help?

Thanks

Will

[Dr-Pete]

I think that scrolling box with the CSS overflow is a bad idea - it could look shady to Google, and it's very poor for users. I'd rather see you just put a single paragraph about the brand up top. You could add more to the bottom of the page, but I don't think I would. A few more keyword repetitions aren't going to work magic.

Personally, I'd drop it completely on the shirts pages, and similar pages, but you've got a few options:

(1) Don't use the same META data. You're basically trying to rank all the Armani search pages for everything, and it doesn't make sense. The shirts page doesn't have jeans, jackets, and boxer shorts. That's a bad TITLE tag, all around.

(2) Don't index the smaller search results. You could just index the main brand search and then META NOINDX the shirts, jeans, etc. These are near-duplicates at best, and are probably diluting your ranking ability.

Step (2) is a pretty minor fix, so from a cost-basis, I'd try that. Honestly, given the number of brands you have isn't huge, I don't know that this is going to make a huge difference, but narrowing your focus (from a ranking perspective) could help. Google isn't that fond of internal search pages, so it does make sense to focus your Armani ranking power on a smaller set of pages (and likewise for other brands).

[YNWA]

Hi thanks for the reply.

I agree the overflow could be dropped. And replace that with a good 4-5 lines of text about the brand.

Re 1) We have to use the same data. The site is built as such that these pages are dupliate content, which is what I know and are worried about. We didn't design it, we don't maintain the web design aspect of the site. Only the CMS. All other business needs to be paid for to edit, which we don't want to do as they built this so bad, charge through the roof and basically we want a new site rather spend doing this up on things that should have been done when it was built.

2. The NOINDX is an option, but by not indexing these pages would we be effectively taking our Armani Jeans page for Jeans out of Google? If we did this, would it be wise because we would have our Armani products ranking for us for the specific item pages rather than the shirts, footwear etc... pages?

Cheers

Will

[Dr-Pete]

(2) is a calculated risk. Yes, you'll knock the deeper pages out of contention for ranking, but they're low-value pages (in Google's eyes) and near-duplicates. So, you should boost the rnaking ability of the main Armani brand page. Net-net, I think you'll gain branded searches.

Truthfully, though, 15 brands X 8 pages isn't a ton. You may be having ranking issues beyond this. It is common for these pages to do poorly, as they're search results and tend to use copy that's used across the web (since many people sell the same brands). There's a lot of competition.