Duplicate Content
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Hi, I have a website with over 500 pages.
The website is a home service website that services clients in different areas of the UK.
My question is, am I able to take down the pages from my URL, leave them down for say a week, so when Google bots crawl the pages, they do not exist.
Can I then re upload them to a different website URL, and then Google wont penalise me for duplicate content?
I know I would of lost juice and page rank, but that doesnt really matter, because the site had taken a knock since the Google update.
Thanks for your help.
Chris,
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Just to second what Mike said - it's always tough to speak in generalities, but I can't think of any benefit to this approach. Typically, 301s are the preferred method for changing URLs. If you just kill the old pages and introduce new ones with the same content, you not only may experience some short-term duplicate content issues, but you lose inbound links and ranking signals to those old URLs.
Are you concerned about transferring a penalty via 301s? I'm just not clear on what the goal is here.
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In good conscious I cant think of how that would be a good ongoing process to move forward with. What I would do is start an overhaul and merge scenario where you identify the most valuable unique content within the site and start merging less valuable content pages with stronger ones. As well as 301 any old pages to like items or the home page as well as make sure 404's and 410'are in place as well.
With that many pages I know it can be a daunting task to think about but if you truly care for the site and it seems that you do I would not take this approach as it can lead to further damage down the road. I would be trying to make sure I do not get hit again by P & P.
In the end if it seems like a spammy or fishy tactic it probably is or will be at some point.
Good luck my friend
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