Cant get my head around this duplicate content dilemma!
-
Hi,
Lets say you have a cleaning company, you have a services page, which covers window cleaning, carpet cleaning etc, lets say the content on this page adds up to around 750 words.
Now lets say you would like to create new pages which targeted location specific keywords in your area.
The easiest way would be to copy the services page and just change all the tags to the location specific term but now you have duplicate content.
If I wanted to target 10 locations, does this now mean I need to generate 750 words of unique content for each page which is basically the services page rewritten?
Cheers
-
That's great, Activitysuper,
Just stage the project in a reasonable manner. Your copywriter can't do it all at once, but he/she can do it over time. Good luck!
Miriam
-
Yeah I did find this very helpful, always good to know how someone has actually tackled this problem, it also reassures im not actually being silly and there is a better way of doing it.
Looks like unique for each page is the only way to go.
The only difference is I might add say 200 words for each page from start and then add 100 words more each month, I think this might make it easier to write more in each location.
I got a copywriter, which is half the battle done for me.
-
Thanks, Alan. Glad you found this helpful. I hope ActivitySuper will, too.
-
Thank you Miriam, this is excellent advice, thank you for taking the time to do it. I wish I could give you 10 thumbs up!
-
Hi ActivitySuper!
Thanks for coming to Q&A with what is actually very important question.I sympathize with your puzzlement here because I hear many local business owners saying the same thing - what am I supposed to write about?
Members here are giving you good advice - you've either got to be ready to make the effort/investment, or be satisfied with simply mentioning your services and locations and cross your fingers. If you are the only game in town, that might get you somewhere, but if you've got even 1 local competitor, such an approach will not lead to the dominance that you no doubt seek.
Here is what I do for my clients (some of who, coincidentally, are carpet cleaning companies!) This advice is given with the understanding that, like most business owners in the cleaning industries, you have one actual physical location but serve within a variety of neighboring cities. If that's correct, read on. If that isn't correct and you've got multiple physical offices, let me know.
1. Implement the major local hooks on the website for the physical location - Google is always going to see you as most relevant to your city of location, not other cities within the service radius. In addition to doing the on-site Local SEO, get the business properly listed with a violation-free Google Place Page and other local business directory listings.
2. Create a list of your 5-10 main services. Make a menu on the site of a page for each of these services, optimized for the services + your city of location. The content must be good, strong and unique.
3. Create a list of your 5-10 main service cities. Create a city landing page for each of these cities (including your city of location) creating an overview of your work in each city on each page. Make a menu of these pages on the site. Again, the content must be good, strong and unique. No cutting and pasting!
At this point you will have developed 10-20 pages of unique, creative content for your website. Depending on the competitiveness of your industry in your region, this may get you enough rankings to satisfy you and get phones ringing. However, in most cases, you will want to do more. Move on to step 4.
4. Now, create a big list of all possible combinations. This might look like:
Carpet Cleaning City A
Carpet Cleaning City B
Carpet Cleaning City C
Window Cleaning City A
Window Cleaning City B
Window Cleaning City C
Tile and Grout Cleaning City A
etc.Create a timeline for beginning to write articles over a set number of months to cover each of these phrases. You're not going to do this all at once. My clients have most typically requested that I do anywhere from 3-10 articles a month for them. A blog is terrific for this sort of thing, by the way. If the client has hired me to do 10 articles a month, in 3 months, we've covered 30 terms, in 6 months, we've covered 60 terms, etc.
The client has to participate in this. If he simply paid some penny copywriter to write a bunch of boring, generic content for this large number of terms, chances are, he wouldn't end up with a very pleasant or persuasive website. Rather, he needs to be photographing his projects in the different cities and coming to me with photos, testimonials from clients in the service cities, anecdotes and what have you. I take this, combine it with a solid knowledge of the city and the service/products used, find some other photographs and maybe maps and turn each article into a very solid piece of content. The approach is quite authentic and results in the ongoing creation of an ever-growing library of content about the client's work in each of his cities.
Remember, the whole point of this approach is to obtain secondary visibility (typically organic) for terms outside of his city of location. It should be seen as an ongoing project, and I've seen this approach work time and again for my clients.
You're at an important point of decision right now. You need to decide if you have the creativity and time to do this right on your own, hire a Local SEO-skilled Copywriter to do it for you or if you just can't do either. Sincerely wishing you luck!
Miriam -
I agree, Alan. No matter how hard you try it is going to carry some level of dup - you would be better off trying to target all 10 locations on the main services page than trying to re-spin the same 750 words. Your first suggestion is the approach I would take as well.
-
What you just said is only true if you have nothing to write about.
I should have made it clear that I only advocate doing that if you have something to say that is meaningful.
If you don't, then don't do it - If you have something relevant and useful to say, it is better than repeating the same information, whether you rewrite it or not.
Spinning the 750 word story into 10 different versions is a really bad idea, in my opinion.
-
Yeah that is a option but your now looking at creating semi-relevant content (that's even if you can find something to write about for each location that is semi-relevant).
But your reply is an option so thanks.
-
Only if you want them to be indexed.
Alternatively, you can write 150 to 200 words that apply specifically to the location and link off to the original page with 750 words of stunning content.
For example, here is an idea:
_ Window Cleaning and Carpet Cleaning in Murfreesboro _
Murfreesboro and surrounding areas sometimes presents a problem for carpet cleaners, because of the high incidence of termites. These termites..... blah blah blah.
....
Our Murfreesboro carpet cleaning crews are all locals, so they have an intimate knowledge of ... blah blah blah.
....
Read about how our carpet cleaning service fits your unique needs.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate content analysis
Hi all,We have some pages being flagged as duplicates by the google search console. However, we believe the content on these pages is distinctly different (for example, they have completely different search results returned, different headings etc). An example of two pages google finds to be duplicates is below. if anyone can spot what might be causing the duplicate issue here, would very much appreciate suggestions! Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Eric_S
Examples: https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/IFA-financial-advisor-mortgage/harborne
https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/accountant/harborne0 -
Duplicate Content on a Page Due to Responsive Version
What are the implications if a web designer codes the content of the site twice into the page in order to make the site responsive? I can't add the url I'm afraid but the H1 and the content appear twice in the code in order to produce both a responsive version and a desktop version. This is a Wordpress site. Is Google clever enough to distinguish between the 2 versions and treat them individually? Or will Google really think that the content has been repeated on the same page?
Technical SEO | | Wagada0 -
Crawl Diagnostics: Duplicate Content Issues
The Moz crawl diagnostic is showing that I have some duplicate content issues on my site. For the most part, these are variations of the same product that are listed individually (i.e size/color). What would be the best way to deal with this? Choose one variation of the product and add a canonical tag? Thanks
Technical SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
Duplicate page content
Hello, The pro dashboard crawler bot thing that you get here reports the mydomain.com and mydomain.com/index.htm as duplicate pages. Is this a problem? If so how do I fix it? Thanks Ian
Technical SEO | | jwdl0 -
Avoiding duplicate content on product pages?
Hi, I'm creating a bunch of product pages for courses for a university and I'm concerned about duplicate content penalties. While the page names are different and some of the test is different, much of the text is the same between pairs of pages. I.e. a BA and an MA in a particular subject (say 'hairdressing' will have the same subject descriptions, school introduction paragraph, industry overview paragraph etc. 1. Is this a problem? In a site with 100 pages, if sets of 2 pages have about 50% identical content... 2. If it is a problem, is there anything I can do, other than rewrite the text? 3. From a search perspective, would both pages show up in search results in searches related to 'hairdressing courses' 'study hairdressing' etc? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | AISFM0 -
How to fix duplicate page content error?
SEOmoz's Crawl Diagnostics is complaining about a duplicate page error. The example of links that has duplicate page content error are http://www.equipnet.com/misc-spare-motors-and-pumps_listid_348855 http://www.equipnet.com/misc-spare-motors-and-pumps_listid_348852 These are not duplicate pages. There are some values that are different on both pages like listing # , equipnet tag # , price. I am not sure how do highlight the different things the two page has like the "Equipment Tag # and listing #". Do they resolve if i use some style attribute to highlight such values on page? Please help me with this as i am not really sure why seo is thinking that both pages have same content. Thanks !!!
Technical SEO | | RGEQUIPNET0 -
Similar Content vs Duplicate Content
We have articles written for how to setup pop3 and imap. The topics are technically different but the settings within those are very similar and thus the inital content was similar. SEOMoz reports these pages as duplicate content. It's not optimal for our users to have them merged into one page. What is the best way to handle similar content, while not getting tagged for duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | Izoox0 -
Duplicate content, Original source?
Hi there, say i have two websites with identicle content. website a had content on before website b - so will be seen as the original source? If the content was intended for website b, would taking it off a then make the orinal source to google then go to website b? I want website b to get the value of the content but it was put on website a first - would taking it off website a then give website b the full power of the content? Any help of advice much appreciated. Kind Regards,
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0