SEO URLS and Avoiding Dupe Content

Discussion in 'Search Engine Optimization' started by Slincon, Nov 12, 2007.

  1. #1
    Ok well one of my sites I don't have htaccess, it's not a possibility and I can't move hosts for the time being. I think the structure of my urls and my navigation is hurting my SERP ratings.

    Basically I have a video site, and so google probably thinks that the pages dupe content, since every page is near identical - since it has the same navigation system, and the only thing different is that each page has a different video link code and a small blurb describing the video.

    Does anyone have any suggestions or tips on how to mix it up a bit so that Google doesn't penalize my links thinking it's dupe content of my own pages and put it in the supplementaries?

    1) Would getting some high PR links to each page cause Google to avoid penalizing it as dupe content?

    2) My current link structure (no htaccess) is http://domain.com/video.php?video=[idnumber], would changing the structure help?

    3) any other tips? I'm quite certain that this is probably the problem of my serp mystery.

    Thanks in advance, personally I think Google thinks I have multiple dupe content..I wonder how others get around this?
     
    Slincon, Nov 12, 2007 IP
  2. SunDevil

    SunDevil Peon

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    #2
    1) I would think that this would not help with the Dupe Content. Deep linking will help spiders find your back pages, and the overall indexing of the site. If dupe content is an on page factor, I don't see how an off page factor will help it.

    2) Is there anything you can do here? Other the inserting keywords where "idnumber" is.

    3) Try adding a site map to the site, and expanding the descriptions of the videos.

    Also, why are you certain that this is the only thing holding your SE rankings back?
     
    SunDevil, Nov 12, 2007 IP
  3. petyard

    petyard Well-Known Member

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    #3
    1. yes
    2. the url's are fine
    3. add more text-make the descriptions you have longer
     
    petyard, Nov 12, 2007 IP
  4. sweetfunny

    sweetfunny Banned

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    #4
    The URL's are not a big problem, Google will crawl and index them just fine. Your biggest problem is the lack of unique content on each page, so as the above poster said try and add longer descriptions.

    Also make sure your page Titles & Descriptions are unique.
     
    sweetfunny, Nov 12, 2007 IP
  5. Slincon

    Slincon Well-Known Member

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    #5
    I was just thinking that perhaps credible sites to Google would validate that it's not dupe content? As for inserting keywords - I could add stuff like &keyword (but it wouldn't actually do anything or be required so:
    http://www.domain.com/videos.php?video=34343&Sundevil
    Would Google actually accept that (especially since it's not video/343438/Sundevil/)

    any suggestions on how long, currently they're like max of 150 characters, How much more would I need, if you have any idea or approximation it would be really helpful.

    So far the titles, and descriptions on each page are unique, even the meta tags. I'm baffled at how youtube and other video hosts manage to do this so well when their pages are almost exactly alike except for the video url.

    ---
    I had a whole bunch of urls indexed by google prior to the last pr update, but now almost 90% of those hit the supplementary while the other 10% are listed.. I'm quite sure this is the main root problem - so apparently too many supplementary links can also hurt your position in the SERPS for your main non supplementary pages.
     
    Slincon, Nov 12, 2007 IP
  6. FreeTraffic

    FreeTraffic Active Member

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    #6
    FreeTraffic, Nov 13, 2007 IP
  7. Slincon

    Slincon Well-Known Member

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    #7
    I'm already a member, I'm just trying to figure out how to differentiate my pages when the videos and the description are the only thing that is different on each page. I can make the descriptions longer - but right now there about 100-150 characters, I can't make it into a paragraph. Surely there must be something to this because there's a lot of video sites that don't seem to be affected by this - YouTube or Dailymotion, etc..
     
    Slincon, Nov 13, 2007 IP
  8. petyard

    petyard Well-Known Member

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    #8
    not very sure how many natural traffic they are getting either..
    use unique titles(<title></title>) and descriptions(meta tag description) and as many deeplinks as possible and you should have a decent number of pages ranking (out of the supplemental index)
    good luck
     
    petyard, Nov 13, 2007 IP
  9. COBSolutions

    COBSolutions Well-Known Member

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    #9
    try adding few navigational links below the video blurbs along with some content describing the links as also keep changing this content in every page, it helps, it had helped me
     
    COBSolutions, Nov 13, 2007 IP
  10. Slincon

    Slincon Well-Known Member

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    #10
    sorry for sounding dumb, but could elaborate on that? What do you mean by navigational links?
     
    Slincon, Nov 13, 2007 IP
  11. SunDevil

    SunDevil Peon

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    #11
    I am a big supporter of Keywords in URLs. I don't think that the &SunDevil will hurt you. I would do some A B testing. Change 5 of the urls, leave the rest the same.

    Add the &SunDevil to the 5, but make sure that SunDevil is used in the title tag. Come back in a few weeks and look at your site: or cache: to see if anything has changed.
     
    SunDevil, Nov 13, 2007 IP
  12. Slincon

    Slincon Well-Known Member

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    #12
    thnx will definitely try it...but the biggest problem right now is avoiding supplementary index? I can't wrap my head around how to get more "unique" content on to those pages.
     
    Slincon, Nov 14, 2007 IP
  13. SunDevil

    SunDevil Peon

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    #13
    Feel free to PM me the URL...I might be able to shoot a few ideas your way
     
    SunDevil, Nov 15, 2007 IP
  14. Slincon

    Slincon Well-Known Member

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    #14
    didn't see your last post, yea I did a bit of reading and came across this great little tip that you should break down your site according to what's important in terms of code - (I'll post the link when I can find it again). But I implemented some of what everyone mentioned here and so far it's helped, I did an update on my site so I saw a drastic change and Google's loving my pages (fingers crossed).

    My only problem is getting the 90% of my site that's in the supplementary out - since it's in the supplementary it's not getting visited by Googlebot - which means it can't see the changes I've made to the page.

    If I link to the urls from another site - do you think google will visit it, or will it ignore the links because they're in the supplementary?
     
    Slincon, Nov 20, 2007 IP
  15. sweetfunny

    sweetfunny Banned

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    #15
    Getting links to Supp pages and internal pages is the best thing you can do to bring them out. Start linking. ;)
     
    sweetfunny, Nov 20, 2007 IP
  16. Slincon

    Slincon Well-Known Member

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    #16
    But will it actually index the pages, because I know once it reads the page it will most likely pull it out of the supplementary, but right now it just refuses to re-index those pages.
     
    Slincon, Nov 21, 2007 IP
  17. sweetfunny

    sweetfunny Banned

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    #17
    There's two primary things to promote page indexing, and that's backlinks and regulary updating content.
     
    sweetfunny, Nov 21, 2007 IP