How to Deal With Duplicate Content on Ecommerce Websites?

OK folks, I understand that you want to deal with duplicate content on your website. Duplicate content is one among the common SEO problems confronted by a webmaster. I always wanted to write on this topic in our retail ecommerce blog, but never found  the time as I was engaged in meeting the daily hard-line targets for our SEO clients.  

Now, finally I am at leisure to share my insight and experience on this issue. The topic is quite vast, so I am not going to cover everything in this one post, rather you can look forward to a series of articles that will unravel the basic & crucial elements of duplicate content, myths, live examples, how to fix it effortlessly, and so on. This article is the part 1 of eCommerce duplicate content series. 

What exactly is duplicate content?

The term “Duplicate Content” refers to a large chunk or part of the same content available on different pages within a site or across different domains. Most ecommerce websites become the prey of duplicate content due to the failure of their own content management system or some issue with the site programming that uses manufacturer content, thus leading to the same content on multiple URLs. This might not be a problem initially, but in the long run it may prove unfavorable for search engine optimization purposes as the uniqueness of the content gets lost when the same content is found on diverse URLs. In some cases, ecommerce webmasters bootleg content from other sites with an intention of boosting their site’s search engine rank. 

Why do search engines pay heed to duplicate content?

Majority of the online users step into search engines to find websites that match their query, and they like to see unique information regarding their query across different URLs. Typically, users get irritated when they find the same content across sites. So, search engines strive hard to find sites that contain unique information and show them on their result pages to ensure that they meet their online surfers’ expectation. When original content is not found across distinct URLs, search engines bank on the filtering process to pick out the site which they think is more appropriate. At times, the webmasters will have to witness the less desired version of a page from their own site get indexed and shown on the SERP.

Will your site be penalized by Google for duplicate content?

The Google penalty for duplicate content has become a nightmare for many webmasters. In reality, it is just hype and there is NOTHING called as “Duplicate Content Penalty”. But, yes there might be some penalties that webmasters have to face for scraping and republishing content on their site with an intention to manipulate search engine ranking. The following are some of the tactics that will get you Google slap…

Do not create multiple pages, sub domains, or domains with duplicate content

Do not use “Cookie Cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with few or no unique content

If your site take part in an affiliate program, ensure that it has some value for the users to visit your site. 

If you are not scraping content and still face duplicate content issues, then it may be due to your CMS or site programming, and this kind of duplicate content is common in ecommerce sites and can affect your site’s performance on SERP, but it does not lead to Google penalty. 


For more information on duplicate content penalty & other site issues watch this video. 

In the next blog post we shall see “Simple ways to identify duplicate content, real examples, factors influencing duplicate content and solutions to fix it permanently.  

Subscribe now to get the upcoming posts of this series & other latest blog updates.