2 different pages being shown as duplicate content.

[horkans]

I have a small problem with some of the pages on one of my websites. 
Pages are shown as duplicate content when they have no content the same apart from the template. But it only happens with a few products and we have well over 100 products for sale.

An example would be these which are seen as duplicate content. 
http://www.petworlddirect.ie/p/mr-johnsons-supreme-rabbit-food-15kg/106006139
http://www.petworlddirect.ie/p/dreamscape-stone-bridge/187041111

Any help would be appreciated.

[donford]

Hi John

I thought I had seen a post about what percentage it takes not to be considered duplicate content. Try as I might I did not find it. No matter, my suspicion is the amount of unique content on each page. By having your "Delivery","Returns", "Why Buy From Us" text on each of these pages you have upped the amount of the exact same text on each and every description. When you have 3 bullet points and a 2 sentence paragraph that explains the product that doesn't really make for a high percentage of deviation.

My bet is that is where you problem is. A possible solution would be to make those 3 sections links to their own pages.

Hope that helps,

Don

[MonicaOConnor]

Don is correct. If you have thin or missing content, the HTML becomes your content, which is probably why you see duplicate content errors. The way to fix that is to get some content on those pages, to help even out the text to html ratio.  User generated content, especially product reviews would really help. If you use an app, like Yotpo, make sure it is fully integrated so that the reviews show in the source code.

[Bio-RadAbs]

Absolutely, as Don and Monica have raised, your unique content is outweighed by your "duplicate" content.

Get some more rich text. For instance, put yourself in the shoes of your customer and think about content that would make you buy the product with NO DOUBTS!

• Things like testimonials/reviews will aid the user
• Why not introduce some protocols or tips to make the content different?
• More images with optimised file names and alt tags (don't just name images 187041111-370_370.jpg!)
• How about a short description of the product on top under the title and then a descriptive unique one further into the page? It helps spiders crawl your keywords early, it sells the product in a instant to users and it enriches the page.

It's no different to real world. In the real world a user might do research before making the purchase instore, why not offer that research on your page itself to re-affirm this is the product you want and in turn make your page a more optimised one?