How To Avoid Duplicate Content On Your Ecommerce Website

Google released the Panda update back in February 2011 and this was an attempt by the search engine to get rid of web spam and link farms. However, in its aftermath, a huge majority of those hit, apart from the link farms were legitimate ecommerce websites. Largely, it was because of the duplicated nature most ecommerce platforms were designed which made them susceptible to the changes in the Google algorithms.

These platforms give ecommerce sites so many pages which offer nothing new, valuable or unique. These were some of the main reasons ecommerce sites lost up to 90% of their search traffic when the Panda was rolled out. If your site was hit by the Panda update, the following are some of the things you can do to recover your rankings.

Adding content to product pages:

The Panda update targeted or devalued pages that had thin content. Most product pages on ecommerce sites have no content and if they have, then the content is mere product photos. There are different ways to add content to product pages and one of the most effective one is writing product reviews for product pages. As long as the content you add to each product page is unique and useful , the page can regain the rankings fast.

Duplicate content checker PlagSpotter:

This is a great instrument you can use to check for duplicate content on your website to ensure it’s not blacklisted by Google. This site has a tool that will enable you determine the health of your ecommerce website and devise the means to save it from the Panda update.

Using variations to cut the number of product pages:

The number of valueless pages on many ecommerce platforms is often high and as a ecommerce SEO, you can decide to reduce these pages. Congregating similar pages in broader categories is one way you can employ to reduce the number of similar pages. Having a rolling cat with different collectible products on the same page can also help you improve performance,conversions and sales on the page.

Removing poorly performing pages:

Naturally, the Google Panda update hated so many pages on the website. If you have an ecommerce website with products that are not performing or getting attention, the Panda also feels they are useless. The best way to deal with these pages is to look at them in the main dashboard of the Google analytics and removing. This will leave your site with pages that are valuable and hence boost online presence and performance.

Removing product pages:

Product pages are some of the worst pages on the ecommerce website because in most cases,they are duplicates or add no value to the searchers. This means that all the shallow pages are reduced or at least removed from the website to pave way for the valuable, sharable and performing pages.

No index tag on the product pages:

The other way of dealing with negative product pages is by protecting them from the Google index. These ones can be shielded from indexing with the no index tag on the top pages.