Best practice for franchise sites with duplicated content
-
I know that duplicated content is a touchy subject but I work with multiple franchise groups and each franchisee wants their own site, however, almost all of the sites use the same content. I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites and does not penalize them for the following issues.
All sites are hosted on the same server therefor the same IP address
All sites use generally the same content across their product pages (which are very very important pages) *templated content approved by corporate
Almost all sites have the same design (A few of the groups we work with have multiple design options)
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Again
Aaron
-
I fully agree. We have notified them all and let them know its in their best interest to modify the content throughout the site. Unfortunately most of them don't and the copy remains templated.
Thanks for your answers
-
If the search is for Company product or service, You can take little advantage by doing local listing of each franchisee. Except This content rewriting is only option as per my knol.
-
Maybe part of the literature describing your program can include the point that to be really effective the franchisee's will have to write their own content. It all depends on your business model, whether you want to make them aware that they have 100-5,000 competitors from your company alone.
-
I fully agree with you EGOL "There is another problem - maybe bigger than Google's desire for unique content."
We give each franchisee the opportunity to expand on the content and make it their own, however I would say 90% of them don't make any changes.
I don't think that either the franchisee or corporate would want to pay the $$$ it would cost to have our Copywriters write unique copy for each site. (50-100+ products/services) per site or franchisee.
-
I wish we could redo the strategy but we aren't talking about small franchises here. We are talking franchises anywhere from 100 stores all the way up to 5,000 stores.
The products/services they offer are described very well and unfortunately the only thing we add into each product page is maybe a few location identifiers and a company name.
I don't want to use the canonical solution because each site has to be seen as a stand along site.
-
Each Franchise has their own domain.
Each Product/Service has a single description - Each franchisee has to use the same corporate approved logo.
All Images are named the same thing so it can matter.
I like your suggestions though...you are going the same route we have in the past.
-
Information about Google using OCR... Use this link to see an example of how google extracted and highlighted "wrigley swim" from this newspaper scan.
Google can determine the color of an image... image files are actually characters and google can extract the colors. If you go into image search there is an option limit the results by color. Some of that is done via context (such as words in the file name or words near the image), however, some is done by extracting data from the image file.
-
Here we are all giving advices based on their own knowledge. So i personally think Google cannot read images or what a specific image relates to. If I'm wrong and I hope I'm not ... can i get more details EGOL
Thanks.
-
...Google cannot read images or colors...
Are you willing to bet a month's pay on that?
-
I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites...
I don't think that there is an inexpensive way to get this done and have high quality results. If you want unique content you gotta pay the price... but you could consider.
Hire several writers to reauthor the content - will cost a lot less than starting from scratch.
Get an article spinner program - that will be cheap but you will probably not like the results.
Make a enthusiastic sales pitch to each franchisee with incentives to write their own content.
...templated content approved by corporate...
There is another problem - maybe bigger than Google's desire for unique content.
Good luck.
-
You may want to re-think your strategy of franchising the product and the content. If the content is the same the only way to eliminate the duplicate content problem is to point to one of them as the canonical version, and that would very much impact the performance of the other versions of the other sites.
-
I suggest your give the products (franchise) use their own sort of domain(logo) but add franchise [your logo].
1. Their Own Domain
2. Their own product description even if it's the same product (maybe add your logo to make sure people recognizes the brand.
3. Design does not matter (urls, title, description, content etc counts) as Google cannot read images or colors
Hope it helps.
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
-
Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?
Visitors often copy and paste my content and post it elsewhere... on Facebook, on Tumblr, on forums and sometimes on competing websites... but they don't link to me. How does Google treat this duplicated content? What is the best way to handle it? File DCMA claims or ask them for a link?
On-Page Optimization | | brianflannery0 -
What are the Best On-Site SEO Practices before an E-commerce Site Goes Live?
Hello, I’m working on a client’s E-commerce website. This website is not live yet. Before the site goes live, I am curious to know what the best practices of On-site SEO are. Please let me know from which factor should I start analyze? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | TopLeagueTechnologies0 -
Boat broker - issues with duplicate content and indexing search results
Hello, I have read a lot about optimising product pages and not indexing search results or category pages as ideally a person should be directed straight to a product page. I am interested in how best to approach a site that is listing second hand products for sale - essentially a marketplace of second hand goods (in my case, www.boatshed.com - international boat brokers). For example, we currently have 5 Colvic Sailer 26 boats for sale across the world - that is 5 boats of the same make and model but differing years, locations, sellers and prices. My concern is with search results and 'category' pages. Unlike typical e-commerce sites, when someone searches for a 'Colvic sailer 26 for sale' I want them to go to a search results style page as it is more useful for them to see a list of boats than one random one that Google decides is most important (or possibly one it can match by location). Currently we have 3 different URL types to show search results style pages (i.e. paginated lists of boats that include name, image and short description):
On-Page Optimization | | pbscreative
manufacturer URL's e.g. http://www.boatshed.com/colvic-manufacturer-145.html
category URL's e.g. barges http://www.boatshed.com/barges-category-55.html
and normal search results e.g. dosearch.php?form_boattype_textbox=&.... I have noindexed the search results pages but our category and manufacturer URLs show up in search results and ultimately these are pages I want people to land on. I am however getting duplicate content warnings in Moz. Most boats are in several categories and all will come up on 1 manufacturer and one manufacturer and model page. Both sets of URL's are in my opinion needed; lots of users search for exact makes / models and lots of users just search for the type of boat e.g. 'barge for sale' so both sets of landing pages are useful. Any suggestions or thoughts greatly appreciated Thanks Ben0 -
Duplicate content list by SEOMOZ
Hi Friends, I am seeing lot of duplicate (about 10%) from the crawl report of SEOMOZ. The report says, "Duplicate Page Content" But the urls it listed have different title, different url and also different content. I am not sure how to fix this issue.. My site has both Indian cinema news and photo gallery. The problme mainly coming in photo gallery posts. for example: this is the main url of a post. apgossips.com/2012/12/18/telugu-actress-poonam-kaur-photos . But in this post, each image is a link to its enlarged images (default wordpress). The problem is coming with each individual image with in this post. examples of SEOMOZ report 3 individual urls as duplicate content...from the same above post.: http://apgossips.com/2012/12/18/telugu-actress-poonam-kaur-photos/poonam-kaur-hot-photo-shoot-stills-4 http://apgossips.com/2012/12/18/telugu-actress-poonam-kaur-photos/poonam-kaur-hot-photo-shoot-stills-3 http://apgossips.com/2012/12/18/telugu-actress-poonam-kaur-photos/poonam-kaur-hot-photo-shoot-stills-2 Some body please advise me.. Appreciate your help.
On-Page Optimization | | ksnath0 -
Duplicating content on multiple domains
Hey guys, I've started working with a new client recently called Resource Investing News. I'm more a Social Media person, though I do have SEO experience. RIN has about 40 URLs all of which have original news content published on them. One SEO-related issue that I can see here though is that the primary domain re-publishes all of the original content that the other URLs do. In other words: resourceinvestingnews.com will have an article on it that is also published on goldinvestingnews.com with the same date stamp and a link out to the original article. E.g. http://resourceinvestingnews.com/42539-molybdenum-goes-far-beyond-steelmaking.html http://molyinvestingnews.com/5301-molybdenum-steelmaking-vehicle-demand-electronics-lubricant.html Does anyone have an idea if this is something that should be reviewed and/or whether the content is being negatively affected in search? Many thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | blahblahblah20150 -
Can internal duplicate content cause issues?
Hello all mozzers - has anyone used nitrosell? we use them only because their inventory connects to ours epos point but because they have thousands of 301s on our domain we are getting duplicate content because different sizes of products (we sell womenswear) are creating seperate URLS so we are duplicating both content and URLS - im curious as to whether anyone has experienced simillar problems that have affected their SERPS? Best wishes, Chris
On-Page Optimization | | DaWillow1 -
My website is saying I have duplicate page content and page title. How do I fix it?
Hi, I created a website on webstarts.com. After I launched it then ran a scan through SEO it says I have duplicate page content and page title. The 2 pages it is reading are technically the same page. www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com and www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com/index . I am unsure how to get rid of on of these as it keeps saying this is an error in the SEO scan. Could someone please advise me of what to do from here. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | bcarp880 -
Do product pages need unique content or does having duplcate content hurt on those pages?
We are adding product rapidly to our website but this requires allowing duplicate to exist on our product pages of furniture-online.com. From an SEO standpoint do we need to make this content unique for each product. Since we aren't link building to specific product pages and we don't anticipate product pages being found in a search result, are we ok leaving the duplicate content in place and spending our dollars elsewhere?
On-Page Optimization | | gallreddy0