Noindex, follow duplicate pages

[vforvinnie]

I have a series of websites that all feature a library of the same content.  These pages don't make up the majority of the sites content, maybe 10-15% of the total pages.  Most of our clients won't take the time to rewrite the content, but it's valuable to their site.

So I decided to noindex, follow all of the pages.  Outside of convincing them all to write their own versions of the content, is this the best method?  I could also block the pages with robots.txt, but then I couldn't pass any link juice through the pages.

Any thoughts?

[vforvinnie]

Thanks Shane - us Thomas's gotta stick together.  I agree with you that my situation is not ideal, but I'd rather take some course of action rather than just let the pages sit there.  I think it sends a message to Google that I am not intentionally trying to rank duplicate content, and that the pages serve a benefit to visitors regardless of it being duplicate.

Vinnie

[Jinx14678]

Others may have a different opinion;

But as you have described it, I am not sure there is really a good "SEO" answer other than re-write the content...

Reason;

Each duplicated page is probably already not passing rank, due to it is just duplicate content of something that has already been indexed. (I am assuming) Of course this might not be the case, but unless the content is re-written, and of high quality --- These pages are probably doing nothing for the sites (SEO/SEM wise), and the "Link Juice" they are passing is probably negligible (if any).

So to answer your question;

If the clients won't rewrite the content, the pages are probably useless as it pertains to "Link Juice" or SEM strat, so personally, counting on this as an SEO asset to the site is probably a miscalculation.

Since these are all different domains/clients a canonical is probably out of the question as well. I think you are on the right track, but more along the lines of just using for User Experience, not for any SEO/SEM tactic.

Hope this helps

w00t!