Link Structure & Duplicate Content

[ZiaTG]

I am struggling with how I should handle the link structure on my site. Right now most of my pages are like this:

Home -> Department -> Service Groups -> Content Page

For Example:

Home -> IT Solutions -> IT Support & Managed Services -> IT Support

Home -> IT Solutions -> IT Support & Managed Services -> Managed Services

Home -> IT Solutions -> IT Support & Managed Services -> Help Desk Services

Home -> IT Solutions -> Virtualization & Data Center Solutions -> Virtualization

Home -> IT Solutions -> Virtualization & Data Center Solutions -> Data Center Solutions

This structure lines up with our business and makes logical sense but I am not sure how to handle the department and service group pages.

Right now you can click them and it just brings you to a page with a small snippet for the links below. The real content is on the content pages. What I am worried about is that the snippets on those pages are just a paragraph or two of the content that's on the content page. Will this hurt me and get considered duplicate content?

What is the best practice for dealing with this? Those department/service group pages have some good content on them but it's just parts of other pages. Am I okay doing this because there are not direct duplicates of other pages just parts of a few pages?

Any help on this would be great.

Thanks in advance.

[Adam.Whittles]

Hi Steve,

I have seen several similar pages go unnoticed by Google in terms of duplicate content but it is generally good practice to create content that is unique and provides value to visitors. Without seeing your site and just by what you have said, I doubt you have any major duplicate content issues to worry about.

That being said, if you are trying to adhere to a quality SEO campaign then why not just create good content for your department and service group pages? You are missing out on valuable SEO benefits by just regurgitating snippets of content from other pages. I would perhaps focus on creating content that provides value to your visitors for those pages and then you won't have to worry at all about duplicate content.

Adam.

[BlueprintMarketing]

In this case I would say best practices would be to put the links in the Nav Bar as a drop-down otherwise I would not be overly concerned about Google thinking links are duplicate content just because they're on a website. If you're website large amounts of quality content already has in these links lead to quality content not worry at all. I would check using SEOmoz campaign manager URL put your into one of the campaigns allow for it to give you data on actually have if you duplicate content or not.

I hope I was of help to you,

Thomas von Zickell