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At this time, I started to built e-commerce project. I am new to SEO and never dealing with it before. I've been read some article about SEO and made me feel confused about avoiding duplicate content caused by URL path. I do not want to redesign my application in the future too much, as it will take extra time to rebuild the application. So, I put my question here.

In my application, I have a travel package. Each package can be accessed via 2 or more different categories. The URL structure looks like this:

Airport Transfer / Direction / Packages
Zone / Region / Packages
Activity / Region / Packages

As I know, the structure will make Google think that I have duplicate content on my sites. How to avoid that? Should I only follow and index one of them? Thanks.

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    The URL is not an indicator of duplicate content - content is. However, there may be some help In can give in this answer: webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/74633/… This may help to understand how to format the URL for search. There is more to the subject, however, this answer may be enough of what you are looking for. Let me know if this helps. Cheers!! – closetnoc May 18 '16 at 19:42
  • @closetnoc: Thank you for you response. The link you provided is very useful to me, so many things I don't know yet about SEO. However, it does not answer the question. even though I managed to create a beautiful URL with the right keyword, Google and other search engines still considers as duplicate content. Let's just say, the package has region as well as activities. If i put activities as the sub-category and region as main category, there will be the possibility of replicating the region and vice versa. – Mdkusuma May 19 '16 at 1:02
  • And the URL is not about search. This leads to the web functionality. It is related about the basics of my web activity. I want to deliver the right content to the right user. For example, if a user wants to get somewhere, it will show the right plan for them. If the user wants a particular activity, what packages are suitable for them. Just like that. And for the search, I consider to not index the search results, it will bring new problems related to the content duplication. – Mdkusuma May 19 '16 at 1:14
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    Here is a partial explanation of how duplicate content is detected: webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/88955/… I get some of what you are asking. Here is more on how much is too much: webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/79291/… Here is information on canonical tags: support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en Look for: Indicate the preferred URL with the rel="canonical" link element – closetnoc May 19 '16 at 2:37
  • Glad you got it. I'm sorry, my english are very poor. I think the second link is the answer of my question. Thanks. – Mdkusuma May 19 '16 at 4:17
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You want to indicate the preferred URL with <link rel="canonical" href="https://blog.example.com/AirportTransfer/Direction/Packages" /> on all versions of the page that are the same in the <head>

Google has an excellent article on this here, https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en.

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  • Thank you for the response. I have read the link you provided. based on my knowledge, if I am right, I have to choose one page as canonical and the others as non-canonical. After that, I have to put the canonical <link /> on the non-canonical page, right? The other question, is it necessary to put <link /> canonical into the canonical page? what if I put robots meta to the non-canonical page as "followed, noindex"? Will the search engines treats my page the same as I put <link /> on my non-canonical page? If yes, it would be much simpler. – Mdkusuma May 19 '16 at 1:39
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    It is better to put the <link/> rel=canonical on both the canonical and non-canonical pages. That way Google knows that it is on the canonical page when it hits it, without having to find the non-canonical pages. also, I would avoid using the followed, noindex because the canonical links do a similar thing in this case but are more clear. – Ben Hoffman May 19 '16 at 19:38

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