What's the best way to manage content that is shared on two sites and keep both sites in search results?
-
I manage two sites that share some content. Currently we do not use a cross-domain canonical URL and allow both sites to be fully indexed. For business reasons, we want both sites to appear in results and need both to accumulate PR and other SEO/Social metrics. How can I manage the threat of duplicate content and still make sure business needs are met?
-
Does a duplicate content penalty impact specific pages or entire sites? If I wanted to test using the cross-domain canonical on a certain section of my site, would the impact be visible? Or would I need to put cross-domain canonicals on everything appearing on both sites in order to see the results?
-
Changing the articles or even page titles is not an option.
That's too bad. What Irving suggested has the potential for HUGE wins.
I'd find a way if that was my site.
-
Sure, that is a solution, but then rankings for the additional dupe sites went away because you basically suggested to Google "this URL on this site should not rank, because it is a copy of this article on this site, so give that site credit not me"
I believe that Jon has not been hit yet and wants both sites to rank, but is unable to change the content on either site to be unique. Any additional code you can insert in between the articles to create less similarity between both pages should help lessen the chance of getting hit but not a guarantee.
-
Irving, I had a client who had been hit with a manual penalty for Doorway Pages. They weren't Doorway Pages, they were just pages on various domains (that he owned) with a lot of duplicate content on them. We got him reinstated when we implemented cross-domain canonicals and filed a re-inclusion request. Sounds similar to this case?
Just wondering if anyone had heard of sites being hit like that for dupe content?
-
LOL true.
With all due respect, 301, noindex or cross-canonicalizing is as much of a solution as saying delete your second site. My suggestion of breaking up the content or appending additional content will possibly help you avoid a dupe content filter being triggered.
Duplicate content is not a penalty, it's a filter so the worst that happens is the main site that was bringing you the majority of traffic gets filtered and loses rankings to the secondary site.
I think a good question to ask at this point would be for you to clarify your first sentence: "I manage two sites that share some content" can you define what "some" means? are they main conversion pages or secondary blog posts, and what percentage of the site is dupe content?
BTW, hope you're not interlinking your two sites
keep them as separate as possible.
-
Try this post for more info:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html
-
Sounds like you don't need to manage the threat of duplicate content; you are producing the duplicate content yourself. You are instead wanting to minimize the effect duplicate content has from one site to the next. The only way I know of to get eliminate the risk of duplicate content penalties is to noindex, 301 redirect, or provide canonical URLs.
Since you want both sites to continue being indexed, you can either keep doing what you're doing (and hope you don't get hit) or use canonical URLs and pick which site is best for each page.
Hope this helps.
-
If I used the cross-domain canonical, would that mean that one site would stop appearing in search results?
-
You can append additional content to the bottom of the page on the more important site, or break up the article by adding content and or ads between the paragraphs (which will probably result in article fragmentation) but if you're not a news source it's not a big deal.
-
I'm no technical expert but it sounds like you're playing with fire. I've seen more than one site penalised for exactly this. If it looks like you're trying to rank the same piece of content twice, at least one of the URLs is at risk of filtering or a penalty. Isn't this exactly what the cross-domain canonical was created for?
-
Changing the articles or even page titles is not an option.
-
Paraphrase the articles on the highest traffic pages to your secondary site and/or tweak the keyword targets
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
-
We are switching our CMS local pages from a subdomain approach to a subfolder approach. What's the best way to handle this? Should we redirect every local subdomain page to its new subfolder page?
We are looking to create a new subfolder approach within our website versus our current subdomain approach. How should we go about handling this politely as to not lose everything we've worked on up to this point using the subdomain approach? Do we need to redirect every subdomain URL to the new subfolder page? Our current local pages subdomain set up: stores.websitename.com How we plan on adding our new local subfolder set-up: websitename.com/stores/state/city/storelocation Any and all help is appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO.CIC0 -
Site: inurl: Search
I have a site that allows for multiple filter options and some of these URL's have these have been indexed. I am in the process of adding the noindex, nofollow meta tag to these pages but I want to have an idea of how many of these URL's have been indexed so I can monitor when these have been re crawled and dropped. The structure for these URL's is: http://www.example.co.uk/category/women/shopby/brand1--brand2.html The unique identifier for the multiple filtered URL's is --, however I've tried using site:example.co.uk inurl:-- but this doesn't seem to work. I have also tried using regex but still no success. I was wondering if there is a way around this so I can get a rough idea of how many of these URL's have been indexed? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GrappleAgency0 -
What to do when all products are one of a kind WYSIWYG and url's are continuously changing. Lots of 404's
Hey Guys, I'm working on a website with WYSIWYG one of a kind products and the url's are continuously changing. There are allot of duplicate page titles (56 currently) but that number is always changing too. Let me give you guys a little background on the website. The site sells different types of live coral. So there may be anywhere from 20 - 150 corals of the same species. Each coral is a unique size, color etc. When the coral gets sold the site owner trashes the product creating a new 404. Sometimes the url gets indexed, other times they don't since the corals get sold within hours/days. I was thinking of optimizing each product with a keyword and re-using the url by having the client update the picture and price but that still leaves allot more products than keywords. Here is an example of the corals with the same title http://austinaquafarms.com/product-category/acans/ Thanks for the help guys. I'm not really sure what to do.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aronwp0 -
Best way to implement canonical tags on an ecommerce site with many filter options?
What would be the best way to add canonical tags to an ecommerce site with many filter options, for example, http://teacherexpress.scholastic.com? Should I include a canonical tag for all filter options under a category even though the pages don't have the same content? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Two Sites Similar content?
I just started working at this company last month. We started to add new content to pages like http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/t/49/-/181/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. This is their main site. Then i realized it also put the new content on their sister site http://www.jakewilson.com/t/52/-/343/1137/Bridgestone-Motorcycle-Tires. the first site is the main site and I think will get credit for the unique new content. The second one I do not think will get credit and will more than likely be counted as duplicate content. We are changing this so it will no longer be the same. However, I am curious to see ways people think we could fix this issues? Also is it effecting both sits for just the second one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoRM0 -
Will pages irrelevant to a site's core content dilute SEO value of core pages?
We have a website with around 40 product pages. We also have around 300 pages with individual ingredients used for the products and on top of that we have some 400 pages of individual retailers which stock the products. Ingredient pages have same basic short info about the ingredients and the retail pages just have the retailer name, adress and content details. Question is, should I add noindex to all the ingredient and or retailer pages so that the focus is entirely on the product pages? Thanks for you help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArchMedia0 -
Best way to view Global Navigation bar from GoogleBot's perspective
Hi, Links in the global navigation bar of our website do not show up when we look at Google cache --> text only version of the page. These links use "style="<a class="attribute-value">display:none;</a>" when we looked at HTML source. But if I use "user agent switcher" add-on in Firefox and set it to Googlebot, the links in global nav are displayed. I am wondering what is the best way to find out if Google can/can not see the links. Thanks for the help! Supriya.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SShiyekar0 -
Mobile Site - Same Content, Same subdomain, Different URL - Duplicate Content?
I'm trying to determine the best way to handle my mobile commerce site. I have a desktop version and a mobile version using a 3rd party product called CS-Cart. Let's say I have a product page. The URLs are... mobile:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grayloon
store.domain.com/index.php?dispatch=categories.catalog#products.view&product_id=857 desktop:
store.domain.com/two-toned-tee.html I've been trying to get information regarding how to handle mobile sites with different URLs in regards to duplicate content. However, most of these results have the assumption that the different URL means m.domain.com rather than the same subdomain with a different address. I am leaning towards using a canonical URL, if possible, on the mobile store pages. I see quite a few suggesting to not do this, but again, I believe it's because they assume we are just talking about m.domain.com vs www.domain.com. Any additional thoughts on this would be great!0