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
-
Identify hidden content + Question of impact
I have a client that had a web agency which systematically implemented hidden content. Is there a tool that will compare source content vs what is readable on from the browser? Otherwise, can you recommend articles that focus on doing this? What are the impact on hidden content these days? Another client had hidden content on the first page and when we took over them they were ranking nr 2 with the home page on their brand name (nr 1 with a sub page). We have checked the link profile with Majestic, Ahrefs and Moz and nothing spammy comes up so I doubt it is Penguin related.
Technical SEO | | OscarSE0 -
How to fix HTTP/HTTPS duplicate content
I recently installed an SSL certificate on the site: https://libertywholesalesupply.com Moz is now reading thousands of duplicate content pages because it is reading both http and https. I set up the configuration in Magento to auto-redirect the base URL, created a permanent redirect for the URL in the SEO settings, and adjusted the canonical settings. What am I missing??
Technical SEO | | adamxj20 -
Joomla: content accesible through all kinds of other links >> duplicate content?!
When i did a site: search on Google i've noticed all kind of URL's on my site were indexed, while i didn't add them to the Joomla navigation (or they were not linked anywhere on the site). Some examples: www.domain.com/1-articlename >> that way ALL articles are publicly visible, even if they are not linked to a menu-item... If by accident such a link get's shared it will be indexed in google, you can have 2 links with same content... www.domain.com/2-uncategorised >> same with categories, automatically these overview pages are visible to people who know this URL. On it you see all the articles that belong to that category. www.domain.com/component/content >> this gives an overview of all the categories inside your Joomla CMS I think most will agree this is not good for your site's SEO? But how can this be solved? Is this some kind of setting within Joomla? Anyone who dealt with these problems already?
Technical SEO | | conversal0 -
Would Google Call These Pages Duplicate Content?
Our Web store, http://www.audiobooksonline.com/index.html, has struggled with duplicate content issues for some time. One aspect of duplicate content is a page like this: http://www.audiobooksonline.com/out-of-publication-audio-books-book-audiobook-audiobooks.html. When an audio book title goes out-of-publication we keep the page at our store and display a http://www.audiobooksonline.com/out-of-publication-audio-books-book-audiobook-audiobooks.html whenever a visitor attempts to visit a specific title that is OOP. There are several thousand OOP pages. Would Google consider these OOP pages duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | lbohen0 -
Duplicate page content
Hello, The pro dashboard crawler bot thing that you get here reports the mydomain.com and mydomain.com/index.htm as duplicate pages. Is this a problem? If so how do I fix it? Thanks Ian
Technical SEO | | jwdl0 -
Errors - 7300 - Duplicate Page Content..Help me..
Hi, I just received the crawl report with 7300 errors of duplicate page content. Site built using php. list of errors will be like this.. http://xxxxx.com/channels/ http://xxxxx.com/channels/?page=1 http://xxxxxx.com/channels/?page=2 I am not good in coding and using readymade script for this website. could anyone guide me to fix this issue? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | vilambara0 -
Duplicate Content Issue within the Categories Area
We are in the process of building out a new website, it has been built in Drupal. Within the scan report from SEOMOZ Crawl Diagnostics and it look like I have a duplicate content issue. Example: We sell Vinyl Banners so we have many different templates one can use from within our Online Banner Builder Tool. We have broken them down via categories: Issue: Duplicate Page Content /categories/activities has 9 other URLS associated this issue, I have many others but this one will work for an example. Within this category we have multiple templates attached to this page. Each of the templates do not need their own page however we use this to pull the templates into one page onto the activities landing page. I am wondering if I need to nofollow, noindex each of those individule templates and just get the main top level category name indexed. Or is there a better way to do this to minimize the impact of Panda?
Technical SEO | | Ben-HPB0 -
Solution for duplicate content not working
I'm getting a duplicate content error for: http://www.website.com http://www.website.com/default.htm I searched for the Q&A for the solution and found: Access the.htaccess file and add this line: redirect 301 /default.htm http://www.website.com I added the redirect to my .htaccess and then got the following error from Google when trying to access the http://www.website.com/default.htm page: "This webpage has a redirect loop
Technical SEO | | Joeuspe
The webpage at http://www.webpage.com/ has resulted in too many redirects. Clearing your cookies for this site or allowing third-party cookies may fix the problem. If not, it is possibly a server configuration issue and not a problem with your computer." "Error 310 (net::ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS): There were too many redirects." How can I correct this? Thanks0