Mister Denial Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Hello, how are you guys handling the potential duplicate content issue of the short description being repeated on the product detail page, and on the category listing page where that product shows up? Many templates feature product listings that show excerpts or full short descriptions for products, which is good to boost your content vs. code ratio, but bad if Google considers this to be duplicate content. How do you guys handle this? Thanks for your input and advice! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ciseur Posted November 23, 2013 Share Posted November 23, 2013 Excerpts are not what Google calls duplicate content. Duplicate content is the fact to have the same document with different URLs. I recommend you to use category description in order to have a specific content on your category page and avoid to construct category page only based on your product. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Denial Posted November 25, 2013 Author Share Posted November 25, 2013 Okay, I understand that. But let's say my short descriptions are 2-3 sentences long. And on my product listing page there are 12 products. Google will see that the first 2-3 sentences are from (product detail) URL 1, the next 2-3 sentences are from URL 2, the next sentences from URL 3 and so on... even if I have a short introductory text on the category page, a lot of the content will already be present on other pages of my website. How does Google rate that? Duplicate content? Potential penalties? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ciseur Posted November 25, 2013 Share Posted November 25, 2013 Google simply says it does not want to index "result pages". A listing page may be considered as a result page if it does not offer specific content. You won't get real "penalties" but you have few chance to see your category pages high ranking. This is why I recommend to publish a category description and reduce as much as possible the product content on category page. Your product list may change but not your category description. This will create a "permanent" content on this page. This content will help your category pages to rank on targeted keywords. Obviously more this "permanent" content is long better it may rank (depending on your content of course). Hope it helps, Ciseur Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Denial Posted December 20, 2013 Author Share Posted December 20, 2013 Hi Ciseur, thanks for your feedback. The problem I see is that if you publish a long category description, it will bump the actual content, the products, down on the page and not immediately in the eye of the customers. Also many PS templates use the category description as mouse-over text for the category links, which look rather strange when you have this huge text bubble opening when hovering over links. I think I might however have found a solution to this problem, for example how about listing the short product description on the category page, and removing it from the product detail page, only keeping the long description on the product page? That way the category pages would all have unique content, including pages 2,3,4 and so on. This should also improve the text to html ratio on the category pages. What do you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ciseur Posted February 24, 2014 Share Posted February 24, 2014 Different things : - The fact your description will bump your product list : adapt your design to make it useful and great for user. The best e-commerce website does it for a simple reason : it works. Some website does it well (have a looks to sport time, they do it well : a small description with keywords and useful information without troubling users [it's not the best example but it's the best I have now]) - The title attribute on the category link : Better changing your theme to remove the description from the title attribute of the links... Using short description of product on a category page is a good thing mostly for your user. Regarding to search engines, you won't be able to have a different description for each category your product is.. So which keyword would you use ? It's not the best solution... Transforming your hub pages to good landing pages with high ranking is a strong issue for SEO and the best solution remains in dedicated content. ps: Sorry for this late answer, I have been quite busy last weeks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister Denial Posted February 24, 2014 Author Share Posted February 24, 2014 Hi Ciseur, thanks for your reply and time! I really like the example website, it is a clever design, sleek, intuitive and you are right, the category description does not clot the page, it integrates seamlessly. I also like how the short product description only shows when hovering on the + icon - and just as I was thinking of doing, they do not repeat the short description on the main product page. Just like I was thinking of doing. I hoep 1.6 releases soon, I really need to get a new template and make some significant changes to my website, make it better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amiral D. Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 Shorten short description (or remove them) could be a good response no ? I really have trouble to make some of my categories pages ranked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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