Noindex, follow duplicate pages
-
I have a series of websites that all feature a library of the same content. These pages don't make up the majority of the sites content, maybe 10-15% of the total pages. Most of our clients won't take the time to rewrite the content, but it's valuable to their site.
So I decided to noindex, follow all of the pages. Outside of convincing them all to write their own versions of the content, is this the best method? I could also block the pages with robots.txt, but then I couldn't pass any link juice through the pages.
Any thoughts?
-
Thanks Shane - us Thomas's gotta stick together. I agree with you that my situation is not ideal, but I'd rather take some course of action rather than just let the pages sit there. I think it sends a message to Google that I am not intentionally trying to rank duplicate content, and that the pages serve a benefit to visitors regardless of it being duplicate.
Vinnie
-
Others may have a different opinion;
But as you have described it, I am not sure there is really a good "SEO" answer other than re-write the content...
Reason;
Each duplicated page is probably already not passing rank, due to it is just duplicate content of something that has already been indexed. (I am assuming) Of course this might not be the case, but unless the content is re-written, and of high quality --- These pages are probably doing nothing for the sites (SEO/SEM wise), and the "Link Juice" they are passing is probably negligible (if any).
So to answer your question;
If the clients won't rewrite the content, the pages are probably useless as it pertains to "Link Juice" or SEM strat, so personally, counting on this as an SEO asset to the site is probably a miscalculation.
Since these are all different domains/clients a canonical is probably out of the question as well. I think you are on the right track, but more along the lines of just using for User Experience, not for any SEO/SEM tactic.
Hope this helps
w00t!
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
-
I want to move some pages of my website to a folder and nav menu in those pages should only show inner page links, will it hurt SEO?
Hi, My website has a few SaaS products, to make my website simple i want to move my website some pages to its specific folder structure , so eg website.com/product1/features
Technical SEO | | webbeemoz
website.com/product1/pricing
website.com/product1/information and same for product2 and so on, the website.com/product1/.. menu will only show the links of product1 and only one link to homepage (possibly in footer). Please share your opinion will it be a good idea, from UI perspective it will be simple , but i am not sure about SEO perspective, please help thanks0 -
Landing page video scripts - duplicate content concerns
we are planning to create a series of short (<30 sec) videos for landing pages for our clients PPC campaigns. Since our clients all offer the same services (except in different geographical regions of the county) - we were planning to use the SAME script ( approx 85 words) with only the clients business name changed. Our question is : Would these videos be identified as 'duplicate content' - if we are only planning to use the videos on landing pages and only for PPC? -in other words are we in any danger of any kind of consequences from the engines for repeating script text across a series of landing pages featured only at PPC campaigns?
Technical SEO | | Steve_J0 -
Are image pages considered 'thin' content pages?
I am currently doing a site audit. The total number of pages on the website are around 400... 187 of them are image pages and coming up as 'zero' word count in Screaming Frog report. I needed to know if they will be considered 'thin' content by search engines? Should I include them as an issue? An answer would be most appreciated.
Technical SEO | | MTalhaImtiaz0 -
If my home page never shows up in SERPS but other pages do, does that mean Google is penalizing me?
So my website I do local SEO for, xyz.com is finally getting better on some keywords (Thanks SEOMOZ) But only pages that are like this xyz.com/better_widgets_ or xyz.com/mousetrap_removals Is Google penalizing me possibly for some duplicate content websites I have out there (working on, I know I know it is bad)...
Technical SEO | | greenhornet770 -
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 -
Pages noindex'ed. Submit removal request too?
We had a bunch of catalog pages "noindex,follow" 'ed. Now should we also submit removal request in WMT for these pages? Thank you! LL
Technical SEO | | LocalLocal0 -
Why do I get duplicate page title errors.
I keep getting duplicate page title errors on www.etraxc.com/ and www.etraxc.com/default.asp, which are both pointing to the same page. How do i resolve this and how bad is it hurting my SEO.
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
We are still seeing duplicate content on SEOmoz even though we have marked those pages as "noindex, follow." Any ideas why?
We have many pages on our website that have been set to "no index, follow." However, SEOmoz is indexing them as duplicate content. Why is that?
Technical SEO | | cmaseattle0