7 Tips on How to Avoid Duplicate Content Issues on Your Magento Site

Are you struggling with duplicate content? Are you getting bothered with plagiarized content and worried that it will affect your Magento site? Well, the good news is that you are not the only one and yes, there are ways to beat the blues of duplicate content.

But, first, let’s know more facts about duplicate content especially in Magento.

• Duplicate content occurs commonly on the internet and cannot be avoided.
• Google is quite liberal and does not penalize the site for duplicate content.
• It is a fact that Google decides which of the two pages (original and duplicate) with the identical content it will present to the user. The second page remains invisible.
• However, the dire consequences are that it will hamper the effort of maximizing your site’s potential to produce organic traffic from Google
• It is impossible to stop duplicate content on Magento, but there are methods to control and minimize it.

What is the definition of duplicate content in Google?

According to Google, identical content which is similar in all aspects in two or more pages are duplicate content. Identical headings (H1 – H6) and title tags too certify that the content is duplicate. Again, those which carry same or slightly similar meta tags and meta alts, all qualify for the category of duplicate content.

If these are the criteria are matched, Google considers it as duplicate content.

So, the next question is- how to solve the issue of duplicate content? But there can be no simple solution without knowing the cause; and so now we will discuss with the reason and the solution.

1. Your Pages Are Presented at Both yourstore.com and www.yourstore.com

It is a fact that Google treats every domain as a separate website, this is the reason why the Magento is not strictly to be blamed as if you fail and do not make sure you have a 301 redirect, Magento will show Google both the “www” version and the “bare” version of the site which results in duplicate content.

The solution is to add both the sites to the Google Search Console and do not forget to add proper http:// or https:// designation to help Google identify with it.

2. The Magento itself creates the duplicate content along with the search results

Though it is classified as minor issues, it can create trouble and interfere with the efforts of the website owner to eliminate the duplicates.

3. There are multiple products in the same category.

Magento is generally used for e-commerce websites and so the search engines get confused with the same products in multiple categories. This is something very risky and can result is generating duplicate content. The ideal way to avoid such situation is to use one category for one product. But this quite tricky as it requires a lot of effort and time to get the job done.

4. Google Indexes Your Magento Store at Both HTTP and HTTPS

For both Magento 1 & 2, the solution is simple. make sure that you use rel=canonical to indicate which page has more weight and needs to display first. Rel=canonical will also help by allowing you to combine both HTTP and HTTPS pages and result in removing the duplicates.

5. You have posted the Short Product Descriptions in Magento are either copied or Duplicates

This is crazy as Magento offers the admin to fill the description with both long and short types. These descriptions of products need to be updated and crafted uniquely every time as the effort is worth and it definitely pays back.

6. Your Magento Multistore Hosts plenty of Duplicate Content

Did you divide your store for an audience from different parts of the world like UK, OR US? Then, wait, even though you created content for different countries, there is a possibility of same-language content in any of the single store.

To avoid the, let your creativity go to the next step and beyond the metrics. Let the long description discuss the product and details for it; the short ones can lure in clients to buy them.

7. You Have failed to Remove Trailing Slashes in Magento Store URLs

There are issues with your web server setup which can result in your Magento store to either default to site.com/link1/ or site.com/link1 URL.

However, as the owner of the website, you need to know that both these URLs are unique for Google. This discrepancy will lead to duplicate content and surely link the juices resulting in distorting relation between multiple URLs.

There is plenty of literature discussed on how to deal with the issue, but most of them are useless. The most common ones are to alter the core Magento files which are fatal. The best way to deal with the situation is to use the 301 redirect and use the new and efficient way to rewrite the site link.

One more important thing is not to rewrite the same stuff again and again anywhere in the site (the high possibility s in the product description) as it is a huge possibility to get caught with duplicate content. Also, be consistent with your links and never deviate with your pick and go for other options.

Now what?

With the tips above you can run the Magento site easily without getting to hear the common cry- foul with duplicate content. We suggest you checking the status and find out if you are not following or committing the same mistakes and blunders.

Running a Magento site is not difficult, all you need to know is the details about it running it efficiently. a Magento site has the peculiar quality of running seamlessly one day and the next day it can display the strange and of course the 404 errors.

These tips are definitely very helpful and do solve most of the issues. Get to know your weak spots and solve them fast as for any e-commerce website, delay means huge loss of time and effort and providing the competitors a chance to win.

Author Bio

Justin Kemp is working as a Jr. content writer and blogger with Ethane Technologies. He can be seen blogging about digital marketing, SEO, SMO, PPC, etc.