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startup_tutorial_and_checklist:usability_configuration:seo:reduce_duplicate_content
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Reducing Duplicate Content
If you are getting "duplicate content warnings" within your Google Webmaster Tools there are a few features within the software to reduce them. The first is to reduce the duplicate content involving the listing details page and the other is to affect the sorting links within your site.
Listing Details Page
With the sub-domain feature of the geographical navigation filter and other features you can reach any listing within the software using multiple different urls. This can cause an issue with search engines detecting duplicate content. To reduce this issue you can place a canonical url setting within the page that provides the search engine the "base" and only url it should use when referencing that information. The "canoncial url meta tag" is something you would place within the html head of your listing details page. The canonical url meta tag needs the url to place within it and the software provides that within the following listing details page placement tag:
{listing field='canonical_url'}
That in turn could be placed within the canonical url meta tag like so:
<link rel="canonical" href="{listing field='canonical_url'}" />
You would then place that canonical url meta tag within the html head of the listing details page. Within the current default design that is within the following template:
/main_page/listing_page.tpl
The above template is the page template used by default on the listing details page and contains the html head where that tag would be placed. The listing details template does not contain the html head for that page and therefore isn't where you would place that tag by default. So just look to place that tag somewhere between the <head> and </head> tags of your site. If you have made html code changes within the listing details page just make sure that tag goes into the html head of your custom template design.
There can be multiple links to the same listing details page if you use the sub domain feature within the software. The same listing can be in more than one region and all the urls for the regions that listing can appear in are different yet lead to the same exact content.
Category Browsing Sort By Links
The sort by links within the category browsing feature produce urls that are different but the general content on those "sorted pages" is essentially the same content but with a different order to them. Many clients do don't want these "sort by links" followed by the search engines. If so you only need to check the following box in the admin tool and click the save button at the bottom of the same page:
SITE SETUP > GENERAL SETTINGS > Add noindex to sorted pages
That will add the "noindex" attribute to those links so the search engines will not follow or index those links.
Adding NoFollow on Browsing View Pages
This section will describe a way to insert "robots noindex,nofollow" into the "non default" browsing views of your site. Within the software you have the ability to view the category browsing contents in different views and those different views have virtually the same content as the default browsing view page you have. It doesn't have the exact same content but enough to raise some fears of clients concerned with SEO and having "duplicate content penalties" from search engines.
The idea is that clients have wanted to add "noindex,nofollow" tags within the pages of the alternate browsing views so they would not be indexed by search engines. Basically when the client first goes to a category browsing page they see the listings in the default view. Within our demos that is the grid view. If that client clicks to view using the gallery or list views they are essentially seeing the same content but in a different format for them to view them. So clients have expressed an interest in a way to add the "noindex,nofollow" meta tag to their non-default views. The code below should explain how.
This code should only be used within the page template that affects the page template used on the category browsing feature page. Within the default design that is the following template of your custom template set:
/main_page/category_page.tpl
To insert "nofollow" within the gallery view insert the following between the <head> and </head> tags of the above template:
{if $smarty.get.browse_view eq "gallery" and $smarty.get.a eq 5}
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
{/if}
To do the same for the "list" browsing view insert:
{if $smarty.get.browse_view eq "list" and $smarty.get.a eq 5}
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
{/if}
To do the same for the "grid" browsing view insert:
{if $smarty.get.browse_view eq "grid" and $smarty.get.a eq 5}
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
{/if}
There are many different schools of thought on SEO and the above is a reaction to client requests and by no means the definitive view to stop duplicate content or that the above will have an effect on duplicate content or that duplicate content is even an issue. We provide this as service if that is your belief.
As a further to the above you may actually insert all 3 of the above sections of code into your html head. Basically the code above reacts to the "browse_view" within the query string of the url of the category browsing feature. That variable is only in the query string if ANY browse view button is clicked so inserting all of the above bits of code would insert that into page if any of those browsing view buttons are clicked. That still leaves the original content to be "indexed and followed" by search engines and not any different urls that may have the same content. Just a thought.
Use this code at your own risk and we make no promises to it's effect on your "SEO purposes".
Printer Friendly Pages
The content within the listing details page and the printer friendly listing details page are the same. You are just displaying differently in the printer friendly page so it's more readable on a printed page. So it may be in your best interest to tell the search engines to ignore that page altogether as they "see" the same in the listing details page. To do that look to add the following code:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" />
to the following template(s) depending on your edition of the software:
/main_page/listing_classified_printer_friendly.tpl /main_page/listing_auction_printer_friendly.tpl
Front Page
Place something like the following:
<link rel="canonical" href="index.php" />
within the following template only:
/main_page/front_page.tpl
Which will cover duplicate urls like:
http://example.com/index.php http://example.com/
startup_tutorial_and_checklist/usability_configuration/seo/reduce_duplicate_content.txt · Last modified: 2015/09/09 14:08 by geojames
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