Cant get my head around this duplicate content dilemma!
-
Hi,
Lets say you have a cleaning company, you have a services page, which covers window cleaning, carpet cleaning etc, lets say the content on this page adds up to around 750 words.
Now lets say you would like to create new pages which targeted location specific keywords in your area.
The easiest way would be to copy the services page and just change all the tags to the location specific term but now you have duplicate content.
If I wanted to target 10 locations, does this now mean I need to generate 750 words of unique content for each page which is basically the services page rewritten?
Cheers
-
That's great, Activitysuper,
Just stage the project in a reasonable manner. Your copywriter can't do it all at once, but he/she can do it over time. Good luck!
Miriam
-
Yeah I did find this very helpful, always good to know how someone has actually tackled this problem, it also reassures im not actually being silly and there is a better way of doing it.
Looks like unique for each page is the only way to go.
The only difference is I might add say 200 words for each page from start and then add 100 words more each month, I think this might make it easier to write more in each location.
I got a copywriter, which is half the battle done for me.
-
Thanks, Alan. Glad you found this helpful. I hope ActivitySuper will, too.
-
Thank you Miriam, this is excellent advice, thank you for taking the time to do it. I wish I could give you 10 thumbs up!
-
Hi ActivitySuper!
Thanks for coming to Q&A with what is actually very important question.I sympathize with your puzzlement here because I hear many local business owners saying the same thing - what am I supposed to write about?
Members here are giving you good advice - you've either got to be ready to make the effort/investment, or be satisfied with simply mentioning your services and locations and cross your fingers. If you are the only game in town, that might get you somewhere, but if you've got even 1 local competitor, such an approach will not lead to the dominance that you no doubt seek.
Here is what I do for my clients (some of who, coincidentally, are carpet cleaning companies!) This advice is given with the understanding that, like most business owners in the cleaning industries, you have one actual physical location but serve within a variety of neighboring cities. If that's correct, read on. If that isn't correct and you've got multiple physical offices, let me know.
1. Implement the major local hooks on the website for the physical location - Google is always going to see you as most relevant to your city of location, not other cities within the service radius. In addition to doing the on-site Local SEO, get the business properly listed with a violation-free Google Place Page and other local business directory listings.
2. Create a list of your 5-10 main services. Make a menu on the site of a page for each of these services, optimized for the services + your city of location. The content must be good, strong and unique.
3. Create a list of your 5-10 main service cities. Create a city landing page for each of these cities (including your city of location) creating an overview of your work in each city on each page. Make a menu of these pages on the site. Again, the content must be good, strong and unique. No cutting and pasting!
At this point you will have developed 10-20 pages of unique, creative content for your website. Depending on the competitiveness of your industry in your region, this may get you enough rankings to satisfy you and get phones ringing. However, in most cases, you will want to do more. Move on to step 4.
4. Now, create a big list of all possible combinations. This might look like:
Carpet Cleaning City A
Carpet Cleaning City B
Carpet Cleaning City C
Window Cleaning City A
Window Cleaning City B
Window Cleaning City C
Tile and Grout Cleaning City A
etc.Create a timeline for beginning to write articles over a set number of months to cover each of these phrases. You're not going to do this all at once. My clients have most typically requested that I do anywhere from 3-10 articles a month for them. A blog is terrific for this sort of thing, by the way. If the client has hired me to do 10 articles a month, in 3 months, we've covered 30 terms, in 6 months, we've covered 60 terms, etc.
The client has to participate in this. If he simply paid some penny copywriter to write a bunch of boring, generic content for this large number of terms, chances are, he wouldn't end up with a very pleasant or persuasive website. Rather, he needs to be photographing his projects in the different cities and coming to me with photos, testimonials from clients in the service cities, anecdotes and what have you. I take this, combine it with a solid knowledge of the city and the service/products used, find some other photographs and maybe maps and turn each article into a very solid piece of content. The approach is quite authentic and results in the ongoing creation of an ever-growing library of content about the client's work in each of his cities.
Remember, the whole point of this approach is to obtain secondary visibility (typically organic) for terms outside of his city of location. It should be seen as an ongoing project, and I've seen this approach work time and again for my clients.
You're at an important point of decision right now. You need to decide if you have the creativity and time to do this right on your own, hire a Local SEO-skilled Copywriter to do it for you or if you just can't do either. Sincerely wishing you luck!
Miriam -
I agree, Alan. No matter how hard you try it is going to carry some level of dup - you would be better off trying to target all 10 locations on the main services page than trying to re-spin the same 750 words. Your first suggestion is the approach I would take as well.
-
What you just said is only true if you have nothing to write about.
I should have made it clear that I only advocate doing that if you have something to say that is meaningful.
If you don't, then don't do it - If you have something relevant and useful to say, it is better than repeating the same information, whether you rewrite it or not.
Spinning the 750 word story into 10 different versions is a really bad idea, in my opinion.
-
Yeah that is a option but your now looking at creating semi-relevant content (that's even if you can find something to write about for each location that is semi-relevant).
But your reply is an option so thanks.
-
Only if you want them to be indexed.
Alternatively, you can write 150 to 200 words that apply specifically to the location and link off to the original page with 750 words of stunning content.
For example, here is an idea:
_ Window Cleaning and Carpet Cleaning in Murfreesboro _
Murfreesboro and surrounding areas sometimes presents a problem for carpet cleaners, because of the high incidence of termites. These termites..... blah blah blah.
....
Our Murfreesboro carpet cleaning crews are all locals, so they have an intimate knowledge of ... blah blah blah.
....
Read about how our carpet cleaning service fits your unique needs.
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
-
Duplicate Content and Subdirectories
Hi there and thank you in advance for your help! I'm seeking guidance on how to structure a resources directory (white papers, webinars, etc.) while avoiding duplicate content penalties. If you go to /resources on our site, there is filter function. If you filter for webinars, the URL becomes /resources/?type=webinar We didn't want that dynamic URL to be the primary URL for webinars, so we created a new page with the URL /resources/webinar that lists all of our webinars and includes a featured webinar up top. However, the same webinar titles now appear on the /resources page and the /resources/webinar page. Will that cause duplicate content issues? P.S. Not sure if it matters, but we also changed the URLs for the individual resource pages to include the resource type. For example, one of our webinar URLs is /resources/webinar/forecasting-your-revenue Thank you!
Technical SEO | | SAIM_Marketing0 -
What to do with old website still online & duplicate content
I launched a new wordpress site at www.cheaptubes.com in Sept. I haven't taken the old one down yet, it is still at http://65.61.43.25/ The reason I left it up is I wanted to make sure everything was properly redirected 1st. Some pages and images are still ranking but most point to the new site. When I search for carbon nanotubes pricelist and look in images I see some of our images on the old site are still ranking there https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://65.61.43.25/images/single-walled-nanotubes.1.gif&imgrefurl=http://65.61.43.25/ohfunctionalizedcnts.htm&h=359&w=451&tbnid=HKlL84A_9X0jGM:&docid=N2wdCg7rSQBsjM&ei=-A2qVqThL4WxeKCyjdAM&tbm=isch&ved=0ahUKEwikvcWdxczKAhWFGB4KHSBZA8oQMwhJKCIwIg I guess I can put WP on the old server and do some 301s from there but I'm not sure if that is best or if I should just kill it off entirely? My rankings took a hit on Nov 15th and business has been bad ever since so I'm trying to figure this out quickly. Moz.com and onpage.org both say my site has duplicate content on several pages. I've looked at the content and it isn't duplicate. How can I figure this out? Google likely see's it the same way. These aren't duplicate pages, they are different products. I even searched my product pages to make sure I didn't have 2 of each in there and I don't. With Moz its mostly product tags it sees as duplicate but the products are completely different
Technical SEO | | cheaptubes0 -
WordPress Duplicate Content Caused By Categories
Hello, We have a wordpress blog that has around 250 categories. Due to our platform we have a hierarchy structure for 3 separate stores. For example iPhone > Apps > Books. Placing a blog post in the books category automatically places it into iPhone and iPhone/Apps category, causing 3 instances of any blog post in this category. Is this an issue? I have seen 2 schools of thought on categories, 1 index follow and 2 noindex follow. I know some of our categories get indexed, but with so many, maybe it is better to noindex them. We also considered reducing our categories to 10 to 12 and use tags to provide the indexed site navigation as follows: Reviews (category) iPhone Book App, iPhone App Store (tags) but this seems a little redundant? Anyone want to take this on? thank you Mike
Technical SEO | | crazymikesapps10 -
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
I'm getting an error showing that two separate pages have duplicate content. The pages are: | Help System: Domain Registration Agreement - Registrar Register4Less, Inc. http://register4less.com/faq/cache/11.html 1 27 1 Help System: Domain Registration Agreement - Register4Less Reseller (Tucows) http://register4less.com/faq/cache/7.html | These are both registration agreements, one for us (Register4Less, Inc.) as the registrar, and one for Tucows as the registrar. The pages are largely the same, but are in fact different. Is there a way to flag these pages as not being duplicate content? Thanks, Doug.
Technical SEO | | R4L0 -
Duplicate Page Titles and Content
I have a site that has a lot of contact modules. So basically each section/page has a contact person and when you click the contact button it brings up a new window with form to submit and then ends with a thank you page. All of the contact and thank you pages are showing up as duplicate page titles and content. Is this something that needs to be fixed even if I am not using them to target keywords?
Technical SEO | | AlightAnalytics0 -
Strange duplicate content issue
Hi there, SEOmoz crawler has identified a set of duplicate content that we are struggling to resolve. For example, the crawler picked up that this page www. creative - choices.co.uk/industry-insight/article/Advice-for-a-freelance-career is a duplicate of this page www. creative - choices.co.uk/develop-your-career/article/Advice-for-a-freelance-career. The latter page's content is the original and can be found in the CMS admin area whilst the former page is the duplicate and has no entry in the CMS. So we don't know where to begin if the "duplicate" page doesn't exist in the CMS. The crawler states that this page www. creative-choices.co.uk/industry-insight/inside/creative-writing is the referrer page. Looking at it, only the original page's link is showing on the referrer page, so how did the crawler get to the duplicate page?
Technical SEO | | CreativeChoices0 -
Getting rid of duplicate content with rel=canonical
This may sound like a stupid question, however it's important that I get this 100% straight. A new client has nearly 6k duplicate page titles / descriptions. To cut a long story short, this is mostly the same page (or rather a set of pages), however every time Google visits these pages they get a different URL. Hence the astronomical number of duplicate page titles and descriptions. Now the easiest way to fix this looks like canonical linking. However, I want to be absolutely 100% sure that Google will then recognise that there is no duplicate content on the site. Ideally I'd like to 301 but the developers say this isn't possible, so I'm really hoping the canonical will do the job. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | RiceMedia0