Woocommerce SEO & Duplicate content?

[marcandre]

Hi Moz fellows,

I'm new to Woocommerce and couldn't find help on Google about certain SEO-related things.

All my past projects were simple 5 pages websites + a blog, so I would just no-index categories, tags and archives to eliminate duplicate content errors.

But with Woocommerce Product categories and tags, I've noticed that many e-Commerce websites with a high domain authority actually rank for certain keywords just by having their category/tags indexed.

For example keyword 'hippie clothes' = etsy.com/category/hippie-clothes (fictional example)

The problem is that if I have 100 products and 10 categories & tags on my site it creates THOUSANDS of duplicate content errors, but If I 'non index' categories and tags they will never rank well once my domain authority rises...

Anyone has experience/comments about this? I use SEO by Yoast plugin.

Your help is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance.

-Marc

[danwebman]

canonical links is what you need, so that duplicate pages link to the most relevant page.

I'm afraid I'm no Woocommerce expert, but if it's worth it's weight in salt it will have canonical link capability.

A less important duplicate page should have the following in the header of the page to promote the more relevant page.

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.website.com/most-relevant-product" />

What this will do is promote your one page in Google and the like above the others which may not even get listed.

What it does mean is you will be seen above other sites. I dare say that the number of canonical links will add to your importance saying to google not only do I have this great page but lots of others which point to it, but I only want to take up your resource listing one.

[gowebsol]

I am keenly interested in your question as I've been working with WooCommerce a LOT lately. I'm an avid Wordpress SEO by Yoast user as well.

Have you considered using Yoast's SEO for WooCommerce plugin? They have a paid version specifically for WooCommerce. One route is to buy the plugin and get support from them on this.

Also, Joost de Valk from Yoast has an extensive guide on duplicate content on his site. I wasn't able to go through the whole thing, but will definitely be coming back to it. He may well have addressed this question in the guide. Either way, I'd go that route. Yoast really knows this space.

Looking forward to what others say about this.

[simonbarnett]

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I have received a number of errors from MOZ on this and not sure what to do. Moz also states to use Canonical but I already am, so this is a tad confusing.

VWo2btZ

[c2g]

Same thing happening for me. Interested in this as well.