Duplicate Content Question With New Domain

[imjonny]

Hey Everyone,

I hope your day is going well. I have a question regarding duplicate content.

Let's say that we have Website A and Website B. Website A is a directory for multiple stores & brands. Website B is a new domain that will satisfy the delivery niche for these multiple stores & brands (where they can click on a "Delivery" anchor on Website A and it'll redirect them to Website B). We want Website B to rank organically when someone types in " <brand>delivery" in Google. Website B has NOT been created yet.

The Issue

Website B has to be a separate domain than Website A (no getting around this). Website B will also pull all of the content from Website A (menus, reviews, about, etc).

Will we face any duplicate content issues on either Website A or Website B in the future? Should we rel=canonical to the main website even though we want Website B to rank organically?</brand>

[Nigel_Carr]

Great pleasure - good luck with it all!

[imjonny]

Great response Nigel and thank you so much for your insight!

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi imjonny

I'm glad you have asked around to be honest. Like I said, I would.

You are right that even if you canonicalize ultimately Google will decide whether to rank a page it deems to be important and can ignore the canonicalization. If the canonical isn't bona fide then it could call in to doubt the other canonicals on your site which would be a strong negative signal for SEO and lead to a drop in trust.

So - it depends on what you want to rank for.

Let's say you have Product A on site A and you then have an equivalent checkout page on site B. Then you can't try and rank for the term Product A because it just isn't going to happen. We've already said that we will need to canonicalize that page anyway to the equivalent page on site A.

The only thing you can hope to do is rank for 'Delivery Options', 'Branded Delivery' The Big 'Delivery Option Site'

What you can't do is try and rank for the product names, It will be impossible. But then why would you want to? Surely the important thing is to maintain rank for site A's products with site B being more of a slave site - solely functional.

Ultimately you would be canonicalizing the product pages not the whole site so maybe there are other pages that you can add. Maintenance, Technology, How to etc But frankly they would suit Site A anyway because if I am buying a product I want as much info as possible before purchase, not on the delivery page.

Oh and don't create branded content for site B because once again you will crave up site A.

I know it's a big conundrum but I haven't seen anything like you are trying to do so can only generalise on best practice.

I hope that helps!

Regards

Nigel

[imjonny]

Hi Nigel,

I got some more responses from other sources and it seems like duplicating a new site IS a bad idea.

Let's say we canonical to website A so that Google knows that the main page is on site A. Would Website B have chances to index & rank? I've heard that canonical is just a signal to Google. Google will ultimately determine which page they will want to show even if the canonical is there. Is this true?

[Nigel_Carr]

The bigger the site the bigger the potential loss. No SEO in my honest opinion would snaction what you are thinking no matter how big the site is.

Like I said - cast the question wider than here. It's shame that other SEOs haven't come on to help you with your thinking.

[imjonny]

Hi Nigel,

Thanks for the response again! I understand that you may have had sites that had shared content, but what was the scale of these websites? Do you think if Website A was a huge authority that this issue won't be as big of a deal?

We're talking millions of sessions per month.

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi

I have had sites myself with shared content and the end result was that neither of them ranked at all. They were set up in a pre-Penguin world (before 2011) and when the update really cut in September 2012 I lost 60% of my traffic in one day.

I have also worked on many sites who shared content across their own pages resulting in the same collapse in SERPS - You can read about the biggest mistake that website owners make here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/duplicate-content

In certain circumstances, you can share others' content by way of syndication. You'll see it on MOZ occasionally. They will have produced a great article and at a later date will share it across some other article sites as the authority will have been established as a MOZ article. Note that these are small'ish articles, not whole sites.

What you are talking about is basically, willingly, creating a duplicate site to site A. If you do that your rankings on site A will fall and site B will never gain any rank at all if the content pages are duplicates.

Yes, a competitor could damage your site if they were so inclined. Negative SEO is the practice of sharing your content to a number of sources thereby creating mass duplication. While Google should recognise yours as the original that is rarely the the case.

Duplicate content is at the very core of SEO. If someone is telling you differently then they are wrong.

However, it is your website and I would completely agree with your strategy of playing devil's advocate. If it was my site I would want as much corroboration as possible. So go and ask other SEOs but make damn sure they know what they are talking about and it isn't a 'bloke down the pub! because it can cost you hugely.

We probably lost £½m through our own naivete - never again!

Regards Nigel

[imjonny]

Hi Nigel,

Thanks for the response again! I have a few questions:

• Why do you think I will destroy Site A? If that logic is true, theoretically, wouldn't you be able to copy someones site 100% and cause it to get destroyed?
• Have you seen any examples of this before?

I don't mean to neglect your advice, I'm just hearing different things from different people and need an accurate response in order to make the right decision.

[Nigel_Carr]

If you use Website A content then you must canonicalize otherwise you will destroy the site (A). If you want B to rank independently then it MUST have original content.

This is how it works I'm afraid. Get help from a copywriter, or a few if that helps keep the cost down,

Regards

Nigel

[imjonny]

Hey Nigel,

Thanks for your answer! Just to give some reference, Website A is currently up and has been up for a long time. It is getting A LOT of traffic and we don't want to risk anything on website A which is ranking REALLY well. Also, Website B is being made because of legal issues (can't really get into it) but it's best if we keep them as separate entities.

Because we're looking at scale for 1000s of pages to rewrite content, that doesn't seem like an option. And yes, we will be pulling all of the content from Website A to Website B.

Is the only solution to create completely new content for Website B? Will I face any issues with Website A at all whichever strategy I choose?

[Nigel_Carr]

Hi imjonny

You are going to have a major problem trying to get these two sites listed at all in my opinion.

1. You are creating a multi-brand/store website in website A with menus reviews and about the stores & brands. 
2. When someone clicks the brand delivery on website A they will be directed to site B. - presumably, because site B handles all of the shipping and checkout processes.

If site B pulls the information from site A then you will kill both sites. I presume when you say 'pull' you mean it will also have that information on the pages?

So you are creating an unindexable monster that no amount of canonicalization, redirecting or iframe manipulation will help.

Presumably, you need to rank for site A but that is not possible if you are pulling content into site B. The only sensible thing I can think of is.

1. Canonicalize 'Store 1' on Site B to the equivalent store page on Site A. So store 1 on Site B  effectively does not exist at all.

2. Call Store B - 'Brand Delivery' and write acres of content about delivering brands on the home page and a load of supporting pages. You just won't rank for anything on the second site apart from 'Brand Delivery' and any contextually similar words.

It's a weird way of setting stuff up. If I were shopping on a site I would not want to go to a different site to check out. You will have two sites to manage presumably with the same NAP - (site ownership and address)  as well so that will not help.

The only way is to keep the two sites content mutually exclusive and use canonicals which of course can be done between different URLs.

If it was me I would keep site A and ditch the B idea but ho hum! 

Kind Regards

Nigel

[imjonny]

Unfortunately, there is no way around it

I think, imo, the best option is to just use the same domain, but that is really something we aren't able to do.

iframe sounds interesting, but we do still want the content (at least the menu of products) indexed.

Changing the content is also out of the question. Way too hard to scale with how many we would have to change.

[andy.bigbangthemes]

Hey. If you rel=canonical I don't see how these pages would rank anymore. You're basically telling google that the other pages are the better ones. Is there no going around the duplicate content? This is a really strange / problematic situation.

I think your best bet is either using some sort of iframe if that's an option (it doesn't necessarily need to look bad). Or do your best to change content.