Google has indexed /keyword/______ pages, makes for MANY duplicate pages for SEO

KLG

Hi guys...

For the last while I've been noticing that Google has been sending up my pictures from the /keyword/ folder instead of from the picture's actual location. The problem with this is that Google penalizes you for duplicate content, and as the picture is fully served from /keyword/ and doesn't redirect back to the main location, each picture must have a tonne of duplicates in Google's system... and Google punishes that harshly in page rank.

I notice that you have the actual /keyword/ folder blocked by robots.txt, but somehow Google has snagged the pages deeper in that folder, which are not blocked.

Is there any way I can get this fixed? Thank you very much.

A link to a google search showing 10+ pages of keyword results.

My page is www.kellyloweglass.com.

-Kelly

rainforest1155

It's by design that keyword pages are indexed as well. We do not prevent Google or other search engines from indexing them. Keywords on photos add valuable content for search engines which is why we recommend that you keyword all your photos. Especially image searches should benefit from keywords as they help search engines to categorize your photos.

So it is quite normal that if you search for your site name followed by keywords, you'll pretty much only get keyword pages. However, that's not really a search term a possible visitor would do a search for your site.

What you mention about duplicate content, to the best of my knowledge has to do with pages accessible from two different site addresses. So with content indexed for your custom domain, Google wouldn't be indexing the same content for your SmugMug nickname address (yourname.smugmug.com) and vice versa.

So all in all, there shouldn't be any issue. In fact lots of indexed keyword pages are a good thing.

KLG

rainforest1155 wrote: »

It's by design that keyword pages are indexed as well. We do not prevent Google or other search engines from indexing them. Keywords on photos add valuable content for search engines which is why we recommend that you keyword all your photos. Especially image searches should benefit from keywords as they help search engines to categorize your photos.

So it is quite normal that if you search for your site name followed by keywords, you'll pretty much only get keyword pages. However, that's not really a search term a possible visitor would do a search for your site.

What you mention about duplicate content, to the best of my knowledge has to do with pages accessible from two different site addresses. So with content indexed for your custom domain, Google wouldn't be indexing the same content for your SmugMug nickname address (yourname.smugmug.com) and vice versa.

So all in all, there shouldn't be any issue. In fact lots of indexed keyword pages are a good thing.

Thank you very much for your reply.

I did some searching and I found that the last official word from Google is that if you're going to offer duplicate content on your page there should be a rel="canonical" link element added to them to ensure that Google knows which one you consider the most important, meaning Google will offer that page in searches instead of the secondary ones (like keywords for example) ensuring that your visitor sees the item in question on the page you meant them to. They also state that by doing this you actually increase the page rank of your chosen main page, as page rank is added from duplicate pages to your chosen default page after the element is added. Is there any way to add the rel=cononical element ourselves, or is there any other way to get this done?

The problem I'm having is that even without adding the word "keyword" to the search Google still often offers the /keyword/ pages over the main picture page. (Click For Example - Porkutort is the name of an item I make.) The problem with this is that this creates a landing page for customers that is outside of the context of the rest of my site. I'd much rather see them land on the main picture page featured in a gallery I created of similar pieces, as well as the gallery description which includes information on what the piece is.

Thank you!

-Kelly

rainforest1155

KLG wrote: »

They also state that by doing this you actually increase the page rank of your chosen main page, as page rank is added from duplicate pages to your chosen default page after the element is added. Is there any way to add the rel=cononical element ourselves, or is there any other way to get this done?

No, that's not something you can manually influence. I'm sure our engineers have set things up to provide you with the best possible search engine coverage to the best of their knowledge. After all, there's a lot of (sometimes conflicting) information out there there on what one should do and the blog post you link to, while from Google, is already years old and may or may not be up to date anymore. Furthermore Google is not the only search engine out there and while it currently may be the most popular one, it may not always be. And there are other search engines we can't ignore.

The problem I'm having is that even without adding the word "keyword" to the search Google still often offers the /keyword/ pages over the main picture page. (Click For Example - Porkutort is the name of an item I make.)

Keywords are very valuable as they provide visitors with condensed results on the subject they were looking for. While this may not always be your preferred way of presenting your content, it does help keep visitors on your site if they can easily find not only one photo that fits what they were looking for, but in fact a gallery with just those photos keyworded with the word they were looking for.
If they're interested in digging deeper, there's always the "see photo in original gallery" link if they wish to view the photo in context of the gallery.

If a gallery is to a high percentage about a certain subject, you could add that keyword to the gallery keywords and / or include it as part of the gallery description. That might help in shifting Google's focus to the gallery instead of the keyword gallery.
I just wouldn't do that if there's just one photo in the gallery with that keyword as it's relatively easy to slip into the realm of "keyword spam" by adding keywords that have little to no relevance.

KLG

Smugmug has been great all these years, so I guess I can trust that your engineers know what they're doing.

Thanks for your detailed replies, I truly appreciate it.

-Kelly