SEO finding
Two pages share most of their main content
SEO Warning Severity: Medium
Part of the audit Duplicate and competing content. Finding id: seo.overlappingContent.
What it costs you
Search engines show only one of two pages that say the same. Which one they pick is not yours to decide, and the other page earns nothing.
What to do
Give each page content of its own, or merge the two and redirect the weaker URL.
What it checks
- Nearly identical pages
- Text copied from another page
How to fix it
Merge or tell the pages apart
- Open both pages side by side and decide whether they serve different searches.
- If not, keep the page with more internal links and redirect the other one to it with a 301.
- If they do, rewrite the shared passages so each page answers its own question.
- For variants of one product (colour, size), point the canonical tag of the variants at the main product page.
How to check: Recrawl the site and run this rule again.
Fold the short page into the long one
- Open [url] and [other url]. Check that the long page really holds everything the short one says.
- If the short page has no use of its own, redirect it to the long page with a 301.
- If it has (a summary, a landing page), keep it, shorten the copy on the long page and link from there to the short page.
How to check: Recrawl the site and run this rule again.
Thresholds
| Name | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
near_duplicate_min_share | 0.8 | Two pages are near duplicates when at least this share of the main content words of each is also on the other (0 to 1). |
contained_min_share | 0.9 | A page is contained in another when at least this share of its main content words is also on the other page (0 to 1). |