How best to handle (legitimate) duplicate content?
-
Hi everyone, appreciate any thoughts on this. (bit long, sorry)
Am working on 3 sites selling the same thing...main difference between each site is physical location/target market area (think North, South, West as an example)
Now, say these 3 sites all sell Blue Widgets, and thus all on-page optimisation has been done for this keyword.
These 3 sites are now effectively duplicates of each other - well the Blue Widgets page is at least, and whist there are no 'errors' in Webmaster Tools am pretty sure they ought to be ranking better than they are (good PA, DA, mR etc)
Sites share the same template/look and feel too AND are accessed via same IP - just for good measure
So - to questions/thoughts.
1 - Is it enough to try and get creative with on-page changes to try and 'de-dupe' them? Kinda tricky with Blue Widgets example - how many ways can you say that? I could focus on geographical element a bit more, but would like to rank well for Blue Widgets generally.
2 - I could, i guess, no-index, no-follow, blue widgets page on 2 of the sites, seems a bit drastic though. (or robots.txt them)
3 - I could even link (via internal navigation) sites 2 and 3 to site 1 Blue Widgets page and thus make 2 blue widget pages redundant?
4 - Is there anything HTML coding wise i could do to pull in Site 1 content to sites 2 and 3, without cloaking or anything nasty like that?
I think 1- is first thing to do. Anything else? Many thanks.
-
I think your header links will look spammy.
Also, your sharing out our Page Rank to your duplicate sites! I would either remove the links or no follow (are the links of value to your visitors? if not get rid!).
-
Great help here folks, thanks.
One last question if i may - each of the 3 sites links to the other 2 in the header (on every page), so i've got x00 cross-referencing links.
Any value in making them rel=no-follow? Don't want to remove them necessarily.
-
IIS7 supports a type of mod_rewrite. But even if you can't use that, you should have access to ASP or .NET and can easily use those to do your 301s
-
ISS has no problems doing 301s, and if you can use php, asp or anything similar you can just manualy put a 301 on each page if that fails.
No rel-canonical solution will result in all 3 sites ranking as far as I am aware.
Your best option is usualy one site with geo-located pages. If it has to be 3 sites, then the only real option is to make all that content unique, on unique ips e.t.c., which at the end of the day is 3X the work or more.
-
No problem, best of luck and let us know how you get on!
-
Thanks for all the replies everyone. Tricky isn't it?
Moving to 1 site is probably the best medium/long-term option. The 3 sites thing is historical in that sites 2 and 3 were purchased (physically) by the owner over last few years.
Biggest problem with totally new is that (afaik anyway, according to hosting company) i can't 301 old sites to this new site due to the shared hosting issue (using IIS as well, not Apache), so perhaps getting them split out is proper interim measure. (I might be able to do something via WMTools with this though i guess)
Will do some more research into use of canonical cross-domain and attempt the on-page rewrite as well as talking to client about moving sites to unique hosts.
thanks again.
-
why is it hard to restate the content in a different way? reword it. If it's products then change the order and write unique content on the bottom. By east west north south exactly what types of regions are you talking about and why do you need three sites to accomplish this instead of one with geo targeted LPs?
-
you can certainly use the canonical, however you probably wont rank from domains 2 and 3 as your telling Google not to attribute the content to those domains.
I'm still missing the bit where having thee regionalized sites is beneficial to your visitors, why not make one general site with the products and then do some geo-targeted pages?(thats what I would do, makes for a much simpler task).
best of luck with which ever way you go, but come back and let us know what happens
-
The benefit to the user is that they will need to visit physical site to view/purchase and as such, wouldn't click on say, North site (even if it was top 2 or 3) if they were in South.
Are you (both) saying it'd be ok to link rel canonical domain1/page.html on domains 2 and 3? (i.e. different domain names)
Thanks.
-
how is this for good measure?
"Sites share the same template/look and feel too AND are accessed via same IP - just for good measure :)"
Make them as unique and separate as possible. Different templates, different hosting, different email contact, different contact info on domain registration, write content on the page and geo target the wording.
-
What is the benefit to the user for an individual sites for North, South and west?
Are you not just creating a lot of work for yourself, especially since as you state ''would like to rank well for Blue Widgets generally" which ultimately means each site is competing against the others.
I would rethink my strategy, Your more likely to rank 'generally' for your chosen terms if you focus your efforts on one site and perhaps use canonical tags on the other two to ensure Google knows who to attribute the content too.
-
There's not too many options here. Geotargeted (even locally) tends to produce duplicate content. The only option, really, is to canonical all your products to one place. If you do it right, you might be able to rank all three sites for your keyword.
You can try #1 but, as you said, it's hard to restate the same content in a non-duplicated way.
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 on URL trailing slash
Hello, Some time ago, we accidentally made changes to our site which modified the way urls in links are generated. At once, trailing slashes were added to many urls (only in links). Links that used to send to
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yacpro13
example.com/webpage.html Were now linking to
example.com/webpage.html/ Urls in the xml sitemap remained unchanged (no trailing slash). We started noticing duplicate content (because our site renders the same page with or without the trailing shash). We corrected the problematic php url function so that now, all links on the site link to a url without trailing slash. However, Google had time to index these pages. Is implementing 301 redirects required in this case?1 -
Duplicating content from manufacturer for client site and using canonical reference.
We manage content for many clients in the same industry, and many of them wish to keep their customers on their individualized websites (understandably). In order to do this, we have duplicated content in part from the manufacturers' pages for several "models" on the client's sites. We have put in a Canonical reference at the start of the content directing back to the manufacturer's page where we duplicated some of the content. We have only done a handful of pages while we figure out the canonical reference potential issue. So, my questions are: Is this necessary? Does this hurt, help or not do anything SEO-wise for our ranking of the site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moz1admin1 -
Ticket Industry E-commerce Duplicate Content Question
Hey everyone, How goes it? I've got a bunch of duplicate content issues flagged in my Moz report and I can't figure out why. We're a ticketing site and the pages that are causing the duplicate content are for events that we no longer offer tickets to, but that we will eventually offer tickets to again. Check these examples out: http://www.charged.fm/mlb-all-star-game-tickets http://www.charged.fm/fiba-world-championship-tickets I realize the content is thin and that these pages basically the same, but I understood that since the Title tags are different that they shouldn't appear to the Goog as duplicate content. Could anyone offer me some insight or solutions to this? Should they be noindexed while the events aren't active? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | keL.A.xT.o1 -
Duplicate Content
Hi, So I have my great content (that contains a link to our site) that I want to distribute to high quality relevant sites in my niche as part of a link building campaign. Can I distribute this to lots of sites? The reason I ask is that those sites will then have duplicate content to all the other sites I distribute the content to won;t they? I this duplication bad for them and\or us? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
I have search result pages that are completely different showing up as duplicate content.
I have numerous instances of this same issue in our Crawl Report. We have pages showing up on the report as duplicate content - they are product search result pages for completely different cruise products showing up as duplicate content. Here's an example of 2 pages that appear as duplicate : http://www.shopforcruises.com/carnival+cruise+lines/carnival+glory/2013-09-01/2013-09-30 http://www.shopforcruises.com/royal+caribbean+international/liberty+of+the+seas We've used Html 5 semantic markup to properly identify our Navigation <nav>, our search widget as an <aside>(it has a large amount of page code associated with it). We're using different meta descriptions, different title tags, even microformatting is done on these pages so our rich data shows up in google search. (rich snippet example - http://www.google.com/#hl=en&output=search&sclient=psy-ab&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.shopforcruises.com%2Froyal%2Bcaribbean%2Binternational%2Fliberty%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bseas&oq=http:%2F%2Fwww.shopforcruises.com%2Froyal%2Bcaribbean%2Binternational%2Fliberty%2Bof%2Bthe%2Bseas&gs_l=hp.3...1102.1102.0.1601.1.1.0.0.0.0.142.142.0j1.1.0...0.0...1c.1.7.psy-ab.gvI6vhnx8fk&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44442042,d.eWU&fp=a03ba540ff93b9f5&biw=1680&bih=925 ) How is this distinctly different content showing as duplicate? Is SeoMoz's site crawl flawed (or just limited) and it's not understanding that my pages are not dupe? Copyscape does not identify these pages as dupe. Should we take these crawl results more seriously than copyscape? What action do you suggest we take? </aside> </nav>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JMFieldMarketing0 -
News section of the website (Duplicate Content)
Hi Mozers One of our client wanted to add a NEWS section in to their website. Where they want to share the latest industry news from other news websites. I tried my maximum to understand them about the duplicate content issues. But they want it badly What I am planning is to add rel=canonical from each single news post to the main source websites ie, What you guys think? Does that affect us in any ways?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | riyas_heych0 -
Best practices for handling https content?
Hi Mozzers - I'm having an issue with https content on my site that I need help with. Basically we have some pages that are meant to be secured, cart pages, auth pages, etc, and then we have the rest of the site that isn't secured. I need those pages to load correctly and independently of one another so that we are using both protocols correctly. Problem is - when a secure page is rendered the resources behind it (scripts, etc) won't load with the unsecured paths that are in our master page files currently. One solution would be to render the entire site in https only, however this really scares me from an SEO standpoint. I don't know if I want to put my eggs in that basket. Another solution is to structure the site so that secure pages are built differently from unsecured pages, but that requires a bit of re-structuring and new SOPs to be put in place. I guess my question is really about best practices when using https. How can I avoid duplication issues? When do I need to use rel=canonical? What is the best way to do things here to avoid heavy maintenance moving forward?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CodyWheeler0 -
How much (%) of the content of a page is considered too much duplication?
Google is not fond of duplication, I have been very kindly told. So how much would you suggest is too much?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | simonberenyi0