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 : domain alias issue
Hello there ! Let's say my client has 2 webshops (that exists since long time, so many backlinks & good authority on both) : individuals.nl : for individuals (has 200 backlinks, let's say) pros.nl : exact same products, exact same content, but with a different branding intended to professionnals (has 100 backlinks, let's say) So, both websites are 99% identical and it has to remain like that !!! Obviously, this creates duplicate content issues. Goal : I want "individuals.nl" to get all ranking value (while "pros.nl" should remain accessible through direct access & appear on it's own brand queries). Solution ? Implement canonical tags on "pros**.nl**" that goes to "individuals.nl". That way, "individuals.nl" will get all ranking value, while "pros.nl" will still be reachable through direct access. However, "individuals.nl" will then replace "pros.nl" from SERP in the long-term. The only thing I want is to keep "pros.nl" visible for its own brand queries -> it won't be possible through organic search result, so, I'm just gonna buy those "pros" queries through paid search ! Put links on all pages of pros.nl to individuals.nl (but not the other way around), so that "pros.nl" will pass some ranking value to "individuals.nl" (but only a small part of the ranking value -> ideally, I would like to pass all link value to this domain). Could someone advise me ??? (I know it sound a bit complicated... but I don't have much choice ^^)
Technical SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Duplicate content through product variants
Hi, Before you shout at me for not searching - I did and there are indeed lots of threads and articles on this problem. I therefore realise that this problem is not exactly new or unique. The situation: I am dealing with a website that has 1 to N (n being between 1 and 6 so far) variants of a product. There are no dropdown for variants. This is not technically possible short of a complete redesign which is not on the table right now. The product variants are also not linked to each other but share about 99% of content (obvious problem here). In the "search all" they show up individually. Each product-variant is a different page, unconnected in backend as well as frontend. The system is quite limited in what can be added and entered - I may have some opportunity to influence on smaller things such as enabling canonicals. In my opinion, the optimal choice would be to retain one page for each product, the base variant, and then add dropdowns to select extras/other variants. As that is not possible, I feel that the best solution is to canonicalise all versions to one version (either base variant or best-selling product?) and to offer customers a list at each product giving him a direct path to the other variants of the product. I'd be thankful for opinions, advice or showing completely new approaches I have not even thought of! Kind Regards, Nico
Technical SEO | | netzkern_AG0 -
Noticed a lot of duplicate content errors...
how do I fix duplicate content errors on categories and tags? I am trying to get rid of all the duplicate content and I'm really not sure how to. Any suggestions, advice and/or help on this would be greatly appreciated. I did add the canonical url through the SEO Yoast plugin, but I am still seeing errors. I did this on over 200 pages. Thanks for any assistance in advance. Jaime
Technical SEO | | slapshotstudio0 -
Cross domain shared/duplicate content
Hi, I am working on two websites which share some of the same content and we can't use 301s to solve the problem; would you recommend using canonical tags? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | J_Sinclair0 -
Hosted Wordpress Blog creating Duplicate Content
In my first report from SEOmoz, I see that there are a bunch of "duplicate content" errors that originate from our blog hosted on Wordpress. For example, it's showing that the following URLs all have duplicate content: http://blog.kultureshock.net/2012/11/20/the-secret-merger/ys/
Technical SEO | | TomHu
http://blog.kultureshock.net/2012/11/16/vendome-prize-website/gallery-7701/
http://blog.kultureshock.net/2012/11/20/the-secret-merger/sm/
http://blog.kultureshock.net/2012/11/26/top-ten-tips-to-mastering-the-twitterverse/unknown/
http://blog.kultureshock.net/2012/11/20/the-secret-merger/bv/ They all lead to the various images that have been used in various blog posts. But, I'm not sure why they are considered duplicate content because they have unique URLs and the title meta tag is unique for each one, too. But even so, I don't want these extraneous URLs cluttering up our search results, so, I'm removing all of the links that were automatically created when placing the images in the posts. But, once I do that, will these URLs eventually disappear, or continue to be there? Because our blog is hosted by Wordpress, I unfortunately can't add any of the SEO plugins I've read about, so, wondering how to fix this without special plugins. Thanks!
Tom0 -
Caps in URL creating duplicate content
Im getting a bunch of duplicate content errors where the crawl is saying www.url.com/abc has duplicate at www.url.com/ABC The content is in magento and the url settings are lowercase, and I cant figure out why it thinks there is duplicate consent. These are pages with a decent number of inbound links.
Technical SEO | | JohnBerger0 -
Duplicate content error from url generated
We are getting a duplicate content error, with "online form/" being returned numerous times. Upon inspecting the code, we are calling an input form via jQuery which is initially called by something like this: Opens Form Why would this be causing it the amend the URL and to be crawled?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Duplicate Content Issue
Hello, We have many pages in our crawler report that are showing duplicate content. However, the content is not duplicateon the pages. It is somewhat close, but different. I am not sure how to fix the problem so it leaves our report. Here is an example. It is showing these as duplicate content to each other. www.soccerstop.com/c-119-womens.aspx www.soccerstop.com/c-120-youth.aspx www.soccerstop.com/c-124-adult.aspx Any help you could provide would be most appreciated. I am going through our crawler report and resolving issues, and this seems to be big one for us with lots in the report, but not sure what to do about it. Thanks
Technical SEO | | SoccerStop
James0