Duplicate Content Question
-
I have a client that operates a local service-based business. They are thinking of expanding that business to another geographic area (a drive several hours away in an affluent summer vacation area). The name of the existing business contains the name of the city, so it would not be well-suited to market 'City X' business in 'City Y'. My initial thought was to (for the most part) 'duplicate' the existing site onto a new site (brand new root domain). Much of the content would be the exact same. We could re-word some things so there aren't entire lengthy paragraphs of identical info, but it seems pointless to completely reinvent the wheel. We'll get as creative as possible, but certain things just wouldn't change. This seems like the most pragmatic thing to do given their goals, but I'm worried about duplicate content. It doesn't feel as though this is spammy though, so I'm not sure if there's cause for concern.
-
Most plumbing companies just can't devote the resources to rebrand. What you said was a permutation of what I said, so I can't disagree. Though getting a smaller business to rebrand is terribly difficult.
We all know the benefits. But are there any tactics you know of that would help?
-
Yes, it's a pickle. Here's what we're dealing with:
- You need a new business name for the second business.
- Unless you completely change the business name so that it's appropriate for both locations
Now that I think about it, I like option #2. It's more work, but in the long run the branding benefit of having the same name recognized in both cities will likely pay off in some way.
Regardless, let's assume #2 isn't an option. I really want it to be, but let's say a name change is off the table. Then you need 2 business names, and presumably 2 websites.
In this case, duplicate content is likely going to hurt you. Each business should be unique. Because it's essentially Local SEO, you can rely on the quality of the citation building and unique reviews.
In theory, you could get away with it if all your other SEO signals were strong, but you still have the challenge of starting all that work from scratch, and maintaining two sites.
Still, I'd rather you change the business name for both businesses, and run the entire operation from a single site with multiple location listings.
-
I hear ya. I don't know if you're from the western NY area or not, but not living too far away from there, I know that 'Seneca' means more to people than just the tiny city in NY. The first thing that comes to mind to someone in Buffalo when they hear 'Seneca' is _not _the city.
This is turning into more of a discussion about marketing in general than a discussion about duplicate content.
This particular situation is unique. It's not a franchise. It's not a company expanding into a neighbouring city. In order to _not _change the name while expanding into this secondary market, an awful lot of money would have to be invested into branding, which just isn't worth it.
-
There's a Seneca Plumbing organic on the first page for 'buffalo plumbing'. It has to be worth something. Seneca is nearly two hours away, but they have a Buffalo address and what appears to be a local number.
If it really became an issue, they could possibly rebrand. It's expensive, I know, especially for the average plumbing company mktg budget. But if it becomes evident their current brand is harming their expansion, it's something they should think about now.
It wouldn't be too hard to redirect the old domain to the new branded domain. Even though exact match domains are going down as a ranking factor, it wouldn't hurt to be XYZplumber.com/buffalo.
-
I agree with all of that, but I feel this situation is very different. If you have a company called 'Albany Plumbers', it seems kind of weird to market 'Albany Plumbers' in Buffalo. That's basically what I'm dealing with. Client has the city name in their business name. Users are not going to think the site is relevant in this secondary market they're looking to target.
-
Look at it this way, what would be an easier/more effective use of your time and your client's budget? Would it be diverting your efforts from one site, in order to support two? Whenever this particular question is asked, the prevailing answer is more or less; "Don't dilute your efforts with multiple properties when you can better achieve your goal with one property."
So in general, you would want a page dedicated to that area, rather than rewriting the entire site. When it comes to your local listings, you can likely set a service area that encompasses the targets where possible.
You should be concerned about duplicate/thin content. Why go through all of that trouble to slightly rewrite a site, just to have it come up short? Plus there are other concerns, like the domain would be brand new - so you would have to get over that hump as well.
Local Landing Pages: A Guide to Great Implementation should be helpful. Mirium kind of, sort of, knows a lot about Local. : )
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
-
Best Way to Handle Near-Duplicate Content?
Hello Dear MOZers, Having duplicate content issues and I'd like some opinions on how best to deal with this problem. Background: I run a website for a cosmetic surgeon in which the most valuable content area is the section of before/after photos of our patients. We have 200+ pages (one patient per page) and each page has a 'description' block of text and a handful of before and after photos. Photos are labeled with very similar labels patient-to-patient ("before surgery", "after surgery", "during surgery" etc). Currently, each page has a unique rel=canonical tag. But MOZ Crawl Diagnostics has found these pages to be duplicate content of each other. For example, using a 'similar page checker' two of these pages were found to be 97% similar. As far as I understand there are a few ways to deal with this, and I'd like to get your opinions on the best course. Add 150+ more words to each description text block Prevent indexing of patient pages with robots.txt Set the rel=canonical for each patient page to the main gallery page Any other options or suggestions? Please keep in mind that this is our most valuable content, so I would be reluctant to make major structural changes, or changes that would result in any decrease in traffic to these pages. Thank you folks, Ethan
Technical SEO | | BernsteinMedicalNYC0 -
When is Duplicate Content Duplicate Content
Hi, I was wondering exactly when duplicate content is duplicate content? Is it always when it is word-for-word or if it is similar? For example, we currently have an information page and I would like to add a FAQ to the website. There is, however, a crossover with the content and some of it is repeated. However, it is not written word for word. Could you please advise me? Thanks a lot Tom
Technical SEO | | National-Homebuyers0 -
Despite canonical duplicate content in WMT
Hi, 2 weeks ago we've made big changes in title and meta descriptions. To solve the missing title and descriptions. Also set the right canonical. Now i see that in WMT despite the canonical it shows duplicates in meta descriptions and titles. i've setup the canonical like this:
Technical SEO | | Leonie-Kramer
1. url: www.domainname.com/category/listing-family/productname
2. url: www.domainname.com/category/listing-family/productname-more-info The canonical on both pages is like this: I'm aware of creating duplicate titles and descriptions, caused by the cms we use and also caused by wrong structure of category/products (we'll solve that nest year) that's why i wanted the canonical, but now it's not going any better, did i do something wrong with the canonical?0 -
Duplicated content in news portal: should we use noindex?
Hello, We have a news portal, and like other newspapers we have our own content and content from other contributors. Both our content and our contributors content can be found in other websites (we sell our content and they give theirs to us). In this regard, everything seems to work fine from the business and users perspective. The problem is that this means duplicated content... so my question is: "Should we add the noindex,nofollow" tag to these articles? Notice that there might be hundreds of articles everyday, something like a 1/3 of the website. I checked one newspaper which uses news from agencies, but they seem not to use any noindex tag. Not sure what others do. I would appreciate any opinion on that.
Technical SEO | | forex-websites0 -
GWT Duplicate Content and Canonical Tag - Annoying
Hello everyone! I run an e-commerce site and I had some problems with duplicate meta descriptions for product pages. I implemented the rel=canonical in order to address this problem, but after more than a week the number of errors showing in google webmaster tools hasn't changed and the site has been crawled already three times since I put the rel canonical. I didn't change any description as each error regards a set of pages that are identical, same products, same descriptions just different length/colour. I am pretty sure the rel=canonical has been implemented correctly so I can't understand why I still have these errors coming up. Any suggestions? Cheers
Technical SEO | | PremioOscar0 -
Why are these two URLs showing in Moz as duplicate content?
Here is the first URL - http://www.flagandbanner.com/Products/FBPP0000012376.asp Here is the 2nd URL - http://www.flagandbanner.com/Products/flag-spreader.asp Granted I am new to this issue on this website, but what is Roger seeing that I'm not? A lot of our duplicate pages are just like this example.
Technical SEO | | Flaglady0 -
Duplicate Content - Just how killer is it?
Yesterday I received my ranking report and was extremely disappointed that my high-priority pages dropped in rank for a second week in a row for my targeted keywords. This is after running them through the gradecard and getting As for each of them on the keywords I wanted. I looked at my google webmaster tools and saw new duplicate content pages listed, which were the ones I had just modified to get my keyword targeting better. In my hastiness to work on getting the keyword usage up, I neglected to prevent these descriptions from coming up when viewing the page with filter parameters, sort parameters and page parameters... so google saw these descriptions as duplicate content (since myurl.html and myurl.html?filter=blah are seen as different). So my question: is this the likely culprit for some pretty drastic hits to ranking? I've fixed this now, but are there any ways to prevent this in the future? (I know _of _canonical tags, but have never used them, and am not sure if this applies in this situation) Thanks! EDIT: One thing I forgot to ask as well: has anyone inflicted this upon themselves? And how long did it take you to recover?
Technical SEO | | Ask_MMM0 -
URL Duplicate Content Issues (Website Transition)
Hey guys, I just transitioned my website and I have a question. I have built up all the link juice around my old url styles. To give you some clarity: My old CMS rendered links like this: www.example.com/sweatbands My new CMS renders links like this: www.example.com/sweatbands/ My new CMS's auto-sitemap also generates them with the slash on the end. Also throughout the website the CMS links to them with the slash at the end and i link to them without the slash (because it's what i am used to). I have the canonical without the slash. Should I just 301 to the version with the slash before google crawls again? I'm worried that i'll lose all the trust and ranking i built up to the one without the slash. I rank very high for certain keywords and some pages house a large portion of our traffic. What a mess! Help! 🙂
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0