Duplicate Contact Information

[cceebar]

My clients has had a website for many years, and his business for decades. He has always had a second website domain which is basically a shopping module for obtaining information, comparisons, and quotes for tires. This tire module had no informational pages or contact info. Until recently, we pulled this information in through iframes.

Now however the tire module is too complex and we do not bring in this info through iframes, and because of the way this module is configured (or website framework), we are told we can not place it as a sub-directory.

So now this tire module resides on another domain name (although similar to the client's "main site" domain name) with some duplicate informational pages (I am working through this with the client), but mainly I am concerned about the duplicate contact info -- address and phone.

Should I worry that this other tire website has duplicated the client's phone and address, same as their main website?

And would having a subdomain (tires.example.com) work better for Google and SEO considering the duplicate contact info?

Any help is much appreciated.

ccee bar

(And, too, The client is directing AdWords campaigns to this other website for tires, while under the same AdWords account directing other campaigns to their main site? - I have advised an entirely separate AdWords account for links to the tire domain. BTW the client does NOT have separate social media accounts for each site -- all social media efforts and links are for the main site.)

[cceebar]

Laura,

Yes thank you for your reply, this helps greatly.

Right now for the client, because they lack a good strategy for organic SEO, AdWords generates their greatest traffic. I hope to leverage this with a better organic approach for SEO, and help create a better AdWords strategy.

But all that said, I just wasn't sure about the contact info and address... now I can move on. Thanks again!

[LauraSultan]

First of all, backlinks from Adwords campaigns do not help you with organic search rankings at all.

Secondly, this kind of duplicate content issue may not be as big a problem as you think.  If Google detects two pages have the same or very similar content, it will choose the best one to display in search results and filter the other one out.  So, you may not need to do anything.

On the other hand, if you are particular about which website should appear in search results for that content, you'll want to use the rel="canonical" tag to let Google know which page you prefer. You'll find more info about the canonical tag at the two links below.

• https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
• https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization

I hope that helps!

[cceebar]

Laura,

Thanks so much for your response.

I guess what I was thinking is if online directories have duplicate info that would be expected.

But if duplicate content information, and business name, were on two different websites ((each set up as a service or consulting business)), would it look like the two websites were trying to capitalize on search results  -- especially if some outbound links (like AdWords) were coming to one site (tires, say) and also to the "main site" (brakes, and some tires).

Still you think this is OK?

ccee bar

[LauraSultan]

Having the same phone number and address on two websites is not a duplicate content issue. It's very common because of business directories all over the web. If that's the only duplicate content you're worried about, then you're fine.

[Shawn_Huber]

Subdomain is better than separate domain if you cannot have a subdirectory.

https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday

As for the duplicate content, regardless of a separate domain, subdomain, or subdirectory, I would canonical any of the duplicate pages to the authoritative content. If it's the main site, then I would canonical the other domain to it. Not sure of a reason why you would prefer the other domain to be the authoritative source, but if that is the case, then you would canonical the main site to the other domain.

https://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday