Duplicate content issue for franchising business
-
Hi All
We are in the process of adding a franchise model to our exisitng stand alone business and as part of the package given to the franchisee will be a website with conent identical to our existing website apart from some minor details such as contact and address details.
This creates a huge duplicate content issue and even if we implement a cannonical approach to this will still be unfair to the franchisee in terms of their markeitng and own SEO efforts.
The url for each franchise will be unique but the content will be the same to a large extend. The nature of the service we offer (professional qualificaitons) is such that the "products" can only be described in a certain way and it will be near on in impossible to have a unique set of "product" pages for each franchisee.
I hope that some of you have come across a similar problem or that some of you have suggestions or ideas for us to get round this.
Kind regards
Peter
-
I agree Andrew it has been a good discussion - that is the great thing about this community you can actually bounce ideas off like minded folks that have knowledge and understanding of what you are doing. I think it also shows that there are always several ways to go about things - it is like this discussion it has really got me thinking and I think that can only be a good thing! Thanks
-
good discussion Matt! and your right about creating our own kitchen content.
-
Yeah I agree with that Andrew - it is always best to work on one site and build its strength rather than lots of microsites - however lots brands that have franchises have standalone websites from the main brand and they do well with SEO. Peter stated above that new franchises will get their own website with identical content, except contact details etc, so it is still essential to work on unique content which will help gaining links and more.
Maybe Peter would consider your sub-directory suggestion as an alternative but I think as Egol says he should be demanding about those that take on a franchise creating unique content that will fit in with the brand, benefiting everyone involved.
I don't think you can get away from the fact that creating unique, decent content is the way forward with this - after all you know what they say content is king!
-
Well, if you break out a site into individual franchise sites... your relying on the individual franchises to rank for SEO. All new sites, all starting from scratch whenever they sign on as a franchise. If you use the method of one site using sub-directories.. you have the benefit of building an ongoing SEO powerhouse.
Further strengthening the franchise.
This is something to consider too, right?
-
Hi Andrew - I understand what you are referring to when you use the term skinning and I have seen several sites use this in relation to franchises. I came across this in the past when working for a motor group that had several car manufacturer franchises. However rather than use this option at the time we created unique content written by ourselves in relation to the makes and models, adding user reviews, etc. I found that we out ranked those using the skinning method. Also one question - do you mean that a menu option on your website actually takes you straight to the main manufacturer domain rather than containing information on your own page? If this is the case I think that you will be loosing out from a search point of view as there is no content to be linked to your site in relation to this kitchen refacing - essentially your site for this product is just a gateway page. If people find the kitchen refacing page from the manufacturer in the search engines they will be taken to their site and not yours - if I were you I would look at creating some content of my own as it will benefit you in the long run. Skinning doesn't allow you to control the on-page elements such as title tags etc. Keeping content on your site for instance would allow you to target a local area in the search engines in relation to this franchise - so you might have thiels kitchen refacing in (location).
-
Maybe the term "skinning" was the wrong term or process. I apologize if I've given wrong information.
Have you looked into what other franchise opportunities are doing?
I did a search for "handyman baltimore"
front page of google brought back two franchises using the idea I was trying to express.
go to www(dot)handymanmatters(dot)com and type in a few different zip codes from different states. Same website, same franchise branding, different local experience.
go to www(dot)mrhandyman(dot)com and see how they are doing it.
Also, we've just signed up with a franchise opportunity for kitchen refacing. We're a large home improvement company and are just adding this to our site. But, when you go to our menu tab for kitchen refacing you actually go to thiels(dot)com/products/cabinets/ the difference? it's our branding that appears and not thiels. This is where the idea of skinning came from... probably the wrong term for the actual process.
Those were the options I was trying to express.
-
I don't believe there is any other way round this than creating unique content - you need to remember that search engines will strip away all the fancy layouts etc. and analyse your sites on a textual basis so if all the textual content is the same then you have duplicate content in their eyes! You also need to think about the long term aim of promoting both sites - taking time and effort to produce decent unique content will be far more beneficial!
-
Thank you all for taking the time so far to provide some suggestions and comments,
Can i just double check that there is no techinical way around this other than making the content for each site as unique as possible?
-
What is skinning?
Skinning is a concept where by a program user or website visitor is given control of how the program or website they are using, looks to them, by choosing from a selection of differing pre-made designs (or skins.)
From the user point of view they are able to tailor the way a program or website appears to them according to their tastes and makes for a very interactive experience.
So how does it work?
Well if we leave programs to one side and concentrate on websites, the very basic concept is that as a web designer you create however many HTML pages of content (text and editorial images) are neded for your site and then instead of just one CSS file that governs every style and design/positioning element of the site, you create any number of seperate CSS files which will style the HTML page a different way depending on which one is loaded.
When the user chooses from a selection of skins on your site one CSS file is swapped for another and the page appears to have been instantly redesigned. (the actual content remains the same, but the way it is presented (colours, fonts, structual images) can be swapped each time a new skin is selected (CSS file is loaded.)
I just copied that from the web, but I would make one main website and allow my franchises the ability to skin the website to give it there own local flavor.
-
I would make the development of some unique marketing statements that fit the community of the franchisee a required part of the franchise application.
This will force the franchisee to learn about the business, think about how it will work, how it should be perceived by the public and do that in the unique context of their community location.
Get this information and work out of them while they are still hungry for the opportunity.
Give them a template to make it easy. Then congratulate them on developing all of the information needed for their new website.
This will benefit both you and the franchisee.
I would be demanding about them doing a great job on this.
-
peter have you thought about including some unique testimonials on the products to dilute the duplicate content on the pages of the franchise? also how about rewriting the content with a different structure to your own. there are always ways to create unique content have you read the latest artical on seomoz by gianluca - maybe an option some content curation around the subject? you could also include different unique snippets from the course on both sites to make the content different. hope these ideas help!
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
-
Same product in different categories and duplicate content issues
Hi,I have some questions related to duplicate content on e-commerce websites. 1)If a single product goes to multiple categories (eg. A black elegant dress could be listed in two categories like "black dresses" and "elegant dresses") is it considered duplicate content even if the product url is unique? e.g www.website.com/black-dresses/black-elegant-dress duplicated> same content from two different paths www.website.com/elegant-dresses/black-elegant-dress duplicated> same content from two different paths www.website.com/black-elegant-dress unique url > this is the way my products urls look like Does google perceive this as duplicated content? The path to the content is only one, so it shouldn't be seen as duplicated content, though the product is repeated in different categories.This is the most important concern I actually have. It is a small thing but if I set this wrong all website would be affected and thus penalised, so I need to know how I can handle it. 2- I am using wordpress + woocommerce. The website is built with categories and subcategories. When I create a product in the product page backend is it advisable to select just the lowest subcategory or is it better to select both main category and subcategory in which the product belongs? I usually select the subcategory alone. Looking forward to your reply and suggestions. thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cinzia091 -
Big problem with duplicate page content
Hello! I am a beginner SEO specialist and a have a problem with duplicate pages content. The site I'm working on is an online shop made with Prestashop. The moz crawl report shows me that I have over 4000 duplicate page content. Two weeks ago I had 1400. The majority of links that show duplicate content looks like bellow:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ana_g
http://www.sitename.com/category-name/filter1
http://www.sitename.com/category-name/filter1/filter2 Firstly, I thought that the filtres don't work. But, when I browse the site and I test it, I see that the filters are working and generate links like bellow:
http://www.sitename.com/category-name#/filter1
http://www.sitename.com/category-name#/filter1/filter2 The links without the # do not work; it messes up with the filters.
Why are the pages indexed without the #, thus generating me duplicate content?
How can I fix the issues?
Thank you very much!0 -
Ticket Industry E-commerce Duplicate Content Question
Hey everyone, How goes it? I've got a bunch of duplicate content issues flagged in my Moz report and I can't figure out why. We're a ticketing site and the pages that are causing the duplicate content are for events that we no longer offer tickets to, but that we will eventually offer tickets to again. Check these examples out: http://www.charged.fm/mlb-all-star-game-tickets http://www.charged.fm/fiba-world-championship-tickets I realize the content is thin and that these pages basically the same, but I understood that since the Title tags are different that they shouldn't appear to the Goog as duplicate content. Could anyone offer me some insight or solutions to this? Should they be noindexed while the events aren't active? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | keL.A.xT.o1 -
Avoiding Duplicate Content - Same Product Under Different Categories
Hello, I am taking some past advise and cleaning up my content navigation to only show 7 tabs as opposed to the 14 currently showing at www.enchantingquotes.com. I am creating a "Shop by Room" and "Shop by Category" link, which is what my main competitors do. My concern is the duplicate content that will happen since the same item will appear in both categories. Should I no follow the "Shop by Room" page? I am confused as to when I should use a no follow as opposed to a canonical tag? Thank you so much for any advise!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Lepasti0 -
Duplicate on page content - Product descriptions - Should I Meta NOINDEX?
Hi, Our e-commerce store has a lot of product descriptions duplicated - Some of them are default manufacturer descriptions, some are descriptions because the colour of the product varies - so essentially the same product, just different colour. It is going to take a lot of man hours to get the unique content in place - would a Meta No INDEX on the dupe pages be ok for the moment and then I can lift that once we have unique content in place? I can't 301 or canonicalize these pages, as they are actually individual products in their own right, just dupe descriptions. Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20101 -
Advice needed on how to handle alleged duplicate content and titles
Hi I wonder if anyone can advise on something that's got me scratching my head. The following are examples of urls which are deemed to have duplicate content and title tags. This causes around 8000 errors, which (for the most part) are valid urls because they provide different views on market data. e.g. #1 is the summary, while #2 is 'Holdings and Sector weightings'. #3 is odd because it's crawling the anchored link. I didn't think hashes were crawled? I'd like some advice on how best to handle these, because, really they're just queries against a master url and I'd like to remove the noise around duplicate errors so that I can focus on some other true duplicate url issues we have. Here's some example urls on the same page which are deemed as duplicates. 1) http://markets.ft.com/Research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=IVPM:LSE http://markets.ft.com/Research/Markets/Tearsheets/Holdings-and-sectors-weighting?s=IVPM:LSE http://markets.ft.com/Research/Markets/Tearsheets/Summary?s=IVPM:LSE&widgets=1 What's the best way to handle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchPM0 -
Mobile site version - Is it a duplication issue?
There is a blog www.blogname.com and someone creates 2 mobile versions: iphone.blogname.com mobile.blogname.com they are the perfect copy of www.blogname.com (articles, tags, links, etc etc) How Google will manage them? Right now, my article gets backlink by three sites www.blogname.com iphone.blogname.com mobile.blogname.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Greenman0 -
How are they avoiding duplicate content?
One of the largest stores in USA for soccer runs a number of whitelabel sites for major partners such as Fox and ESPN. However, the effect of this is that they are creating duplicate content for their products (and even the overall site structure is very similar). Take a look at: http://www.worldsoccershop.com/23147.html http://www.foxsoccershop.com/23147.html http://www.soccernetstore.com/23147.html You can see that practically everything is the same including: product URL product title product description My question is, why is Google not classing this as duplicate content? Have they coded for it in a certain way or is there something I'm missing which is helping them achieve rankings for all sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss19840