What Can E-Commerce Sites Do to Avoid Duplicate Content Issue?

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E-Commerce sites often face the difficulty of getting affected by duplicate content issue because of the presence of similar products with same descriptions or ingredient list. This happens because the same products are being sold on many sites. So, what are the possible ways through which we can avoid Google seeing the content as duplicate so that it passes value to the website and ranks it higher among a similar set of results.

Rel=canonical Tags

If the site is having product pages divided on the basis of color, sizes or other variations then it is recommended to use a rel=canonical tag.

More help can be found here:- https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/1224784?hl=en

Pagination Tags

If the site displays product lists across multiple pages then use the pagination tags to tell Google that your content is spread across multiple pages and that should be treated as one page.

Rich Snippets

Implementing rich snippets on the product pages are a great way to let Google know about the price and other specifications of the individual products. Rich snippets are a great way to provide users with additional data. Although rich snippets do not help in resolving duplicate content issue directly but it can a great hint to properly analyze the contents of the page. Also adding ratings and reviews rich snippets enables users to add comments on the individual product pages and you can get valuable unique content for your individual product pages.

Some more help:- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/172705?hl=en
http://www.seosandwitch.com/2012/08/rich-snippets-in-google.html

Use Unique Content

Probably the best way to make your site stand apart is by adding unique content on every page. This will take time and effort but it is the best strategy to follow in the long run. Have a look at the video of Matt Cutts below:-