Duplicate Footer Content

[BigStereo]

A client I just took over is having some duplicate content issues. At the top of each page he has about 200 words of unique content. Below this is are three big tables of text that talks about his services, history, etc. This table is pulled into the middle of every page using php.  So, he has the exact same three big table of text across every page.

What should I do to eliminate the dup content. I thought about removing the script then just rewriting the table of text on every page... Is there a better solution?

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[NeilD]

We currently have footer content contained in a single php include file and is included in every page and contains the following:

• Most recent 3 tweets from our twitter feed

• Snippets of our 3 most recent blogs posts

• navigation links to our main pages (essentially the same as our main navigation in the header)

Is this bad practice for footer content?

[NakulGoyal]

If it can be useful copy that is unique to every page, it might make sense to do it. If not, it might be easier to just convert it into an image as Streamline recommended and instead add other copy on the page that is more in sync with what the page is about.

Presuming that copy in the middle is something like "Why Buy From Us" kind of thing, how many different ways can you really write it, at the same time being useful to the user.

[BigStereo]

Yeah, it is about 40 pages. So... I think we will just have to rewrite the content. He does want to rank these pages. They are actually ranking in the top 10 now with about 80% dup content.

thanks for the help!

[StreamlineMetrics]

If you can rewrite the text on each page, then that's what I would do. But if the site has thousands of pages and it's not possible to rewrite the content on every single page, then I'd suggest either moving each section of text to its own dedicated page (like History would be its own page with its own link in the navigation) OR if you think the content is important enough to be seen on every page, then you could try putting the text as an image...

Your site won't necessarily be penalized for having the same text on every page but you certainly won't benefit from it since the key is to make every single page as unique and high quality as possible.

Hope that helps!