Can having similar content on my company's two sites hurt our rankings?
-
We have a very successful website that has been up for a number of years (www.comellaortho.com). We rank high in the natural rankings for that site.
A few months ago, we started seeing patients in another nearby city. I purchased a new domain name, www.dansvilleortho.com, and had our web company duplicate the website under the new domain name. The reality is that the content on these two sites are nearly identical. Some of the pages are different; for example, there are fewer pages on the new site. But the pages that do exist are nearly identical.
My question is: Can having similar content on my company's two sites hurt our rankings?
Based on what I've read thus far, I believe the answer is "Yes". However, I'm curious how bad this may hurt us.
I'm not as worried about the new site (dansvilleortho.com) because our competition in that city is slim to none. But I AM worried about harming the original site/business (comellaortho.com).
Which site(s) rankings may be affected by this, and if so, how bad?
Thank you.
-
Thanks! The problem is, the businesses have two completely different names/branding/logos, etc. I'm trying to create a seamless & separate experience for both cities.
Would an alternative (albeit less desirable) option be to re-write the content on the duplicate site? Or at least change it enough to not be so identical?
-
Absolutely can cause a penalty. I would take down the dupe site immediately.
Also two sites are against Google TOS. Instead of having a second site, create city/state pages for your main site and get those ranked instead.
-
Rewriting or repurposing the content wouldn't hurt you. Thumb rule is to never have identical content on any two pages on the web.
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
-
Is there harm in publishing too much content, at once?
We are working on catching up with some competition, who has done a much better job over the last few years with content creation. We normally publish 1 article a day but are looking at scaling that up to 3 to 4 articles a day so we can get our content out there to compete with the other websites, in keyword space we currently aren't in. Is there a negative impact on publishing too much content at once? Is there a negative impact on publishing too much content at once? Besides the probable inability to market all of it, I don't see any issues since we will be getting our articles indexed and out there for Google to start building value on them. However, some team members are apprehensive about doing too much at once. What are your thoughts Moz Community?
Content Development | | GoAbroadKP0 -
What should my strategy be if I want to rank my website to be like psychologytoday.com?
Hi, I run a psychology blog for millennials and I recently started using MOZ trial. I'm looking for a general blueprint or questions I should be answering as I try to boost my search engine traffic to match up with psychologytoday.com Aside from link building and writing quality content, what are some other strategies that I can implement?
Content Development | | Psych2Go0 -
My first Guest post. Well, it's about quality!
I've started my new blog two months ago. I thought about two things: quality and authority. So, I started with high-quality content and let me tell you that based on my own experience, quality is the queen of all this. Now, my new blog reaches roughly 270 unique users each day that generate 811 daily page views (1% from Google, %0.3 from other search engines, 56% from social media, 28% from links, 14% direct, 0.7% spammy sites). Alexa Global: 1,238,771 Then I've started the author journey trying to write guest posts on high-quality blogs. I found that there're two options to do guest blogging. Writing an article medium-quality and keep the high-quality content for my blog. Or, providing a high-quality content under any post that comes with my name. I found a high-quality blog which may accept my article. So, I thought about the two options and then I decided to provide a very high-quality content and I did. The message which I received about my article was so amazing. I had some grammars mistakes and they said literally: "We didn't mind as much doing the editing since you put so much effort into providing our readers with excellent content!" I'm so happy really and based on this experience I recommend you to think about the authority more than the link. What will make you provide high-quality content under your name instead of keeping it only for your blog. Have an experience with guest blogging? Why don't you share it with us to help others as well?
Content Development | | Eslam-yosef2 -
Recommendations Content / Copywriter
We are based in the UK & have used alot of content / copywriters & so far have struggled to find someone we feel meets our needs? Can anyone recommend a content writing company or freelancer? Thanks
Content Development | | webguru20140 -
How can we dynamically populate content on our website based on a visitor's web history?
Recently, I have tried looking into options that would allow us to dynamically populate content (specifically images to be used at CTAs on our blog in wordpress) to different users based on their web history on our website. We would want to be able to dynamically populate images based on the number of visits in the past 60 days and the inferred industry based on pages hit. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find anything as a standalone tool - I believe HubSpot may have something like this but it is rolled into their blogging platform. Does anyone know of one?
Content Development | | SMPoulton0 -
How can I influence my colleagues to write blog articles for my company?
Hi, I am trying to get my colleagues work in different department to write an article about their expertise area. They are not aware that what type of benefits they would get if they become an online author. I am trying to make a list of reason why they should participate. I was wondering anyone else would also make any recommendation what i should tell them. So far, my points are: Wider your online presence beyond Facebook and LinkedIn Go extra mile and share your thoughts **Show your expertise ** Reach nationwide readers Thanks!
Content Development | | Rubix0 -
Typepad.com blog migration & duplicate content
I've migrated a typepad.com blog with a bunch of content (but little traffic) onto a hosted WordPress site under my own domain name (the way I should've done it in the first place). Now I don't want to confuse Google that the new site is duplicating content from the other site, so would I be better off with: 1) meta-refresh redirecting each typepad.com post to the same post on the new blog, or 2) just killing the typepad.com blog entirely so Google will not find duplicate posts anywhere. In favor of #2 is the fact that these posts get very little traffic today. I figure I will lose more traffic from duplicate content ranking penalties than from losing the posts themselves in the original blog. What do you think?
Content Development | | chriscrabtree0 -
For a consumer facing blog, how often do you recommend updating content to develop good rankings? I understand that it's really dependent upon the niche/competition, but what are some best practices? Content is expensive. Thanks
For a consumer facing blog, how often do you recommend updating content to develop good rankings? I understand that it's really dependent upon the niche/competition, but what are some best practices? Content is expensive. Thanks
Content Development | | CSOD19990