How different does content need to be to avoid a duplicate content penalty?

[WayneBlankenbeckler]

I'm implementing landing pages that are optimized for specific keywords. Some of them are substantially the same as another page (perhaps 10-15 words different). Are the landing pages likely to be identified by search engines as duplicate content? How different do two pages need to be to avoid the duplicate penalty?

[WayneBlankenbeckler]

Thanks, everyone, for the responses. They were very helpful.

[TakeshiYoung]

First of Google does not "penalize" you for duplicate content, unless you're doing it on a massive scale (Panda). If Google detects duplicate content on your site, it will only display one version of that content in the SERPs. Still not ideal, not quite a penalty.

Perhaps more importantly, why do you have multiple landing pages that differ by only 10 words? Aside from the duplicate content issue, how are you "optimizing" each page for different keywords? If you are just changing the title and the URL, then it's probably not worth it from an SEO or user perspective.

If you want to rank for multiple keywords, write rich content which is relevant for multiple keywords or create multiple pages which substantially different and specifically aimed at your target keywords. Changing 10-15 words isn't optimizing for anything.

[MikeRoberts]

Yes, those landing pages sound like they will be viewed as duplicate content with only 10 or so words different... unless you only have 25 words on each page (which would then be incredibly thin content). I've heard people say that a page should be a minimum of 60% different (No idea how that number was determined though) to avoid duplicate errors. At that point it becomes simpler and easier in most cases to write up completely new content for every page to avoid any issues.

[Mike.Goracke]

TextMarketing is spot on!

Either re-writing from memory or having someone else write the content based on a generic layout are two ways around having duplicate content.

And just for some additional info, this what Google considers duplicate content: "Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar." and "...content is deliberately duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic. Deceptive practices like this can result in a poor user experience, when a visitor sees substantially the same content repeated within a set of search results."

Duplicate Content = BAD SEO and BAD User Experience.

Mike

[TextMarketing]

I would worry that Goggle may find these pages to be duplicate content if there's only a 10 to 15 word difference. I would recommend re-writing each page from memory without looking at the other in order to help make differentiate the content.