Duplicate content?

[petaloid]

I have a site about plants, The Seed Site. My Pagerank went down from 5 to 4 a while ago, and nothing changed when I added 100 new plants. I keep getting these SEO emails, and I'm wondering if Google is counting some of my pages as duplicate, so not including much of my information.

There is a lot of duplicate HTML code on many of my pages, as they include the same things about different plants or parts of plants. For example, I have a page identifying seeds, which lists them in alphabetical order, which is almost the same as the one about seedlings, or seedpods. Anyone looking at the actual page could see they're different, but a computer looking at code, especially if it's only a bit of code, might see them as all the same.

Individual photos of different parts of plants are also on other pages, in different contexts. There is always a heading on each page, indicating what is on the page, but I've read that Google doesn't always look at this.

I don't want to add ALT to all the pictures, as that would result in a lot more code, and a lot of my visitors come from countries where internet connection is probably slow, but obviously I want Google to include all my pages.

I did look on Google help forums, and I wonder if I need to make a Sitemap (which I don't at present know how to do).

Can someone tell me (a) whether it is probable that Google is counting some of my pages as duplicates, and (b) if they are, how can I get round that? If it comes to a choice, I'd rather please my visitors than Google.

[ClickyB]

I have a site about plants, The Seed Site. My Pagerank went down from 5 to 4 a while ago, and nothing changed when I added 100 new plants.

Page rank is all about backlinks... Adding new pages and content will not normally affect it, except that adding a large quantity of new pages will often reduce your PR because the "link juice" coming into your site (from links on external sites) will get split between more pages.

I keep getting these SEO emails,

What do you mean by "SEOemails"?

There is a lot of duplicate HTML code on many of my pages, as they include the same things about different plants or parts of plants. For example, I have a page identifying seeds, which lists them in alphabetical order, which is almost the same as the one about seedlings, or seedpods. Anyone looking at the actual page could see they're different, but a computer looking at code, especially if it's only a bit of code, might see them as all the same.

I did look on Google help forums, and I wonder if I need to make a Sitemap (which I don't at present know how to do).

Can someone tell me (a) whether it is probable that Google is counting some of my pages as duplicates, and (b) if they are, how can I get round that? If it comes to a choice, I'd rather please my visitors than Google.

Duplicate code on every page will not be treated as duplicate content... All Content Management System run sites tend to produce similar pages (duplicate code), Google is looking at content, not code (when it comes to duplicate content).
Having said that, the ideal way to find out is to register with Google Webmaster Tools... Whether you submit a sitemap or not, you will get information about site errors and weaknesses.

I don't want to add ALT to all the pictures, as that would result in a lot more code, and a lot of my visitors come from countries where internet connection is probably slow, but obviously I want Google to include all my pages.

I would recommend adding alt tags, they are useful for seo purposes and they use very little code.

Again, don't read anything into a drop in PR, that will be a result of backlinks losing value (ALL webpages lose PR on an ongoing basis as the www grows... the only way to keep ahead of the game is to keep adding links).

[bruce99]

I agree with a lot the last guy said ..

that said, putting a lot of similar pages up in a directory or shop isnt going to boost your PR any or bring more or less people to the site.

It will just be seen as a larger directory. Duplicate content is usually an issue when you have a lot of text on a page that is the same as another page under something like an articles tab, when you are intentionally trying to pass off the same article as something else just to build a site up.

The worst that will happen for similar plant and seed pages in a directory, is that it will have no effect on increasing your site's authority. They might not index the page.

While getting good links, and doing alt tags is a no-brainer, you might consider writing decent length genuine advice articles with images etc that will entice both visitor and google. Having a big directory is great, original content articles will cap it off for your site, otherwise you might be seen as just another cut and paste site.

[petaloid]

Thank you for all the replies. You have reassured me that Google isn't counting my similar pages as duplicate pages. I did check and they seem to be counting 800+ pages, so that must be all of them! Obviously, one of my problems is that growing plants from seed is a bit of a niche area, so the number of good links is always going to be small. I do have what I consider good articles, and I have got links from Kew, RHS, BBC, USDA, Edexcel. Everything on The Seed Site is my own work. I don't do cut and paste.

I don't have a shop either. My site is more of an information/education site, and I have a lot of visitors from schools, colleges and universities looking for botanical information, as well as ordinary gardeners wanting to check on particular plants. Because I'm trying to convey information that can be used by people anywhere, I use a lot of photographs and use Latin names. I have visitors from 140 countries, only around 30% of them in the US.

As well as Google, I now and again check on Alexa, and I'm unable to identify my site from what they write. They say the average visitor is a middle-aged female with no higher education, apparently searching for information about small yellow weeds and honeysuckle seeds.

According to my stats, the most popular search keywords for my site are classification of plants, seed dispersal, and life cycle of a plant, which surely indicates teachers or students, not uneducated middle-aged women? Alexa also say I have 350 links from other websites, none of which appears in my stats, and most of which seem to be rubbish.

Should I conclude the Alexa stats are based on the opinion of uneducated women in the US who happen to have installed the Alexa toolbar, and does this indicate I need a Sitemap which might encourage them to look further into my website, which might result in a more accurate report on my site?

Another point from my stats is that I have quite a lot of searches for utf-8. Is this likely to be search engines looking for a Sitemap?

[DarrenHaye]

What is your site? If you could give two examples of pages you think might be duplicate content then we could really tell you for sure if you have a problem, or hopefully not.

[petaloid]

What is your site? If you could give two examples of pages you think might be duplicate content then we could really tell you for sure if you have a problem, or hopefully not.

It's called The Seed Site, 'cos it's about seeds!

The first page with pictures of seeds is theseedsite.co.uk/allseeds1.html and the rest of that section has more pages about more seeds.

The first page with pictures of seedpods is theseedsite.co.uk/allpods1.html and there are more similar pages with pictures of more seedpods.

Then there's another section on seedlings starting at theseedsite.co.uk/sdg1.html.

The code is almost identical but the pictures aren't.

[DarrenHaye]

It's called The Seed Site, 'cos it's about seeds!

The first page with pictures of seeds is theseedsite.co.uk/allseeds1.html and the rest of that section has more pages about more seeds.

The first page with pictures of seedpods is theseedsite.co.uk/allpods1.html and there are more similar pages with pictures of more seedpods.

Then there's another section on seedlings starting at theseedsite.co.uk/sdg1.html.

The code is almost identical but the pictures aren't.

Firstly I don't know anything about seeds or gardening, but it looks like you have a ton of detailed information and your site is a real resource, so well done on that.

(All though the site could probably do with some updating aesthetically)

Unfortunately people seems to be stealing your content, searching random paragraphs from your site in quotes shows whom.

http://blog.ub.ac.id/firdausauliya/2012/04/27/mid-exam-bahasa-inggris/

^ all though they do give a link to you, I would ask them to remove whole pages of stolen text

Your site also needs some basic SEO done on it.

Your homepage has canonical issues, the link to your homepage from other pages goes to

http://www.theseedsite.co.uk/index.html

You can also use

http://theseedsite.co.uk/

http://www.theseedsite.co.uk/

You need to fix that by settling on one of the above.

Searching

site:www.theseedsite.co.uk

google says theres about 77 results

searching

site:www.theseedsite.co.uk

googles says theres about 816 results..

Your best links also seem to go to the non www. version..

So If I were you I would settles on using

http://theseedite.co.uk

Set that in your htaccess and change your internal homepage linking to that, instead of the /index.html version.

Also you need alt tags on your images ideally.

You have done the hard part, something most people can't do which is make a really fantastic resource of a site, you just need to do some basic optimization finally .

[nehanishu]

Page Ranks has no relation with increasing pages on your website. It increases on gaining the more and more links to that particular page.