50+ duplicate content pages - Do we remove them all or 301?
-
We are working on a site that has 50+ pages that all have duplicate content (1 for each state, pretty much).
Should we 301 all 50 of the URLs to one URL or should we just completely get rid of all the pages?
Are there any steps to take when completely removing pages completely? (submit sitemap to google webmaster tools, etc)
thanks!
-
I would keep them on the same URLs and explain the dupe content risk to client. Then client can decide to upgrade them himself, have you source new content or allow them to run "as is".
I know of a lot of sites that have pages like this that are working well and make nice money.
-
They have gotten some OK traffic. They're being clicked, but it's the exact same on each page.
There are no links coming in to any of them, however. The URLs themselves across the site are pretty weird, so I will be doing a complete restructuring of those as well.
Based on the traffic they've gotten, I agree, it would be good to do unique content for each state, but this obviously wouldn't be able to get completed for quite some time.
With all that in mind, what should we do?
-
We are working on a site that has 50+ pages that all have duplicate content (1 for each state, pretty much).
There are a lot of sites that make a lot of money by having one page for each state (or county or country or city or whatever). Although it is labor intensive to develop content for fifty different pages it can be done eloquently.
There are also a lot of successful sites that get away with fifty pages of cookie cutter content (Replace Alabama with Alaska, etc. on every page).
I would see what kind of traffic the site is currently getting on those pages, how many sales they are making, what visitors are doing on them, do they have any links?
These pages could be highly successful and if that is the case, II would work to improve them instead of removing them.... and if they have an inbound links at present I might improve them on the same URL rather than removing them to build on new URLs.
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
-
Tricky Duplicate Content Issue
Hi MOZ community, I'm hoping you guys can help me with this. Recently our site switched our landing pages to include a 180 item and 60 item version of each category page. They are creating duplicate content problems with the two examples below showing up as the two duplicates of the original page. http://www.uncommongoods.com/fun/wine-dine/beer-gifts?view=all&n=180&p=1 http://www.uncommongoods.com/fun/wine-dine/beer-gifts?view=all&n=60&p=1 The original page is http://www.uncommongoods.com/fun/wine-dine/beer-gifts I was just going to do a rel=canonical for these two 180 item and 60 item pages to the original landing page but then I remembered that some of these landing pages have page 1, page 2, page 3 ect. I told our tech department to use rel=next and rel=prev for those pages. Is there anything else I need to be aware of when I apply the canonical tag for the two duplicate versions if they also have page 2 and page 3 with rel=next and rel=prev? Thanks
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Utilising Wordpress Attachment Pages Without Getting Duplicate Content Warnings.
I have a wordpres site that relies heavily on images and their usefulness. Each post links to larger sizes of the images with links back to the post and the "gallery" all images uploaded to the post. Unfortunately this goes against the "rules" and our attachment page show as duplicate content in Google (even though the image titles are different). There must be a way to utlise and make the most of attachment pages without getting duplicate content warnings?
Technical SEO | | DotP0 -
Duplicate Page Content / Rel Canonical
Hi, The diagnostics shows me that I have 590 Duplicate Page Content , but when it shows the Rel Canonical I have over 1000, so dose that mean I have no Duplicate Page Content problem? Please help.
Technical SEO | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Is there an easy solution for duplicate page content on a drupal CMS?
I have a drupal 7 site www.australiacounselling.com.au that has over 5000 crawl errors (!). The main problem - close to 3000 errors- is I have duplicate page content. When I create a page I can create a URL alias for the page that is SEO friendly, however every time I do this, it is registering there are 2 pages with the same content. Is there a module that you're aware of that I can have installed that would allow me to show what is the canonical page? My developers seemed stumped and have given up trying to find a solution, but I'm not convinced that it should be that hard. Any ideas from those familiar with drupal 7 would be greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | ClintonP0 -
Duplicate Content on Navigation Structures
Hello SEOMoz Team, My organization is making a push to have a seamless navigation across all of its domains. Each of the domains publishes distinctly different content about various subjects. We want each of the domains to have its own separate identity as viewed by Google. It has been suggested internally that we keep the exact same navigation structure (40-50 links in the header) across the header of each of our 15 domains to ensure "unity" among all of the sites. Will this create a problem with duplicate content in the form of the menu structure, and will this cause Google to not consider the domains as being separate from each other? Thanks, Richard Robbins
Technical SEO | | LDS-SEO0 -
Will one line of duplicate content drag down my landing page?
I am using copyscape to check for duplicate content on my landing pages. I found three sites that have the exact same sentence as mine, on a page that I rank well for on one of two key terms related to the product. The sentence is not essential to my product page. Do I risk losing page one rank on a key search term when I remove that sentence on my site, in hopes of possibly improving the page on the second key search term? Do I leave it alone? This is an older "template" site with very little that I can do SEO-wise, and I have managed to get a few key prodcut landing pages on page one of Google. It has seen a drop in rank on many landing pages post-panda, and I'm doing my best to clean up what I can. Do I leave well enough alone for a page one rank on one term, or swap out that sentence in hopes of getting better rank on two keywords?
Technical SEO | | Ticket_King0 -
We are still seeing duplicate content on SEOmoz even though we have marked those pages as "noindex, follow." Any ideas why?
We have many pages on our website that have been set to "no index, follow." However, SEOmoz is indexing them as duplicate content. Why is that?
Technical SEO | | cmaseattle0 -
Video thumbnail pages with "sort" feature -- tons of duplicate content?
A client has 2 separate pages for video thumbnails. One page is "popular videos" with a sort function for over 700 pages of video thumbnails with 10 thumbnails and short desriptions per page. (/videos?sort_by=popularity). The second page is "latest videos" (/videos?sort_by=latest) with over 7,000 pages. Both pages have a sort function -- including latest, relevance, popularity, time uploaded, etc. Many of the same video thumbnails appear on both pages. Also, when you click a thumbnail you get a full video page and these pages appear to get indexed well. There seem to be duplicate content issues between the "popular" and "latest" pages, as well as within the sort results on each of those pages. (A unique URL is generated everytime you use the sort function i.e. /videos?sort_by=latest&uploaded=this_week). Before my head explodes, what is the best way to treat this? I was thinking a noindex,follow meta robot on every page of thumbnails since the individual video pages are well indexed, but that seems extreme. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | 540SEO0