Duplicate content on domains we own
-
Hello!
We are new to SEO and have a problem we have caused ourselves. We own two domains GoCentrix.com (old domain) and CallRingTalk.com (new domain that we want to SEO). The content was updated on both domains at about the same time. Both are identical with a few exceptions. Now that we are getting into SEO we now understand this to be a big issue.
Is this a resolvable matter?
At this point what is the best approach to handle this? So far we have considered a couple of options.
1. Change the copy, but on which site? Is one flagged as the original and the other duplicate?
2. Robots.txt noindex, nofollow on the old one.
Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance!
-
Although both pages are very similar sans the logo color and some verbiage, if we do the rel canonical from GoCentrix->CallRingTalk.com then CallRingTalk.com will be the preferred site for indexing?
** Yes.
You can also add rel canonical to it self on CallRingTalk.com.
Lastly, will having had the duplicate content for some time now have any sort of lasting effect on our potential ranking once we implement the canonicalization?
** No, you are more then safe. This rel canonical will only help google understand what is your preferred version and it will display it accordantly.
Overall the only downside of duplicate content is that Google might show in serps the version that is teh secondary as importance in your opinion - but there is no algorithmic or manual filter / penalty for this even if you don't implement rel canonical.
Hope it helps.
-
Everyone,
Thanks for the quick responses! Unfortunately we cannot do a 301 in this case so the rel canonical is probably going to be the option to take.
To verify what I'm reading/understanding. Although both pages are very similar sans the logo color and some verbiage, if we do the rel canonical from GoCentrix->CallRingTalk.com then CallRingTalk.com will be the preferred site for indexing?
Lastly, will having had the duplicate content for some time now have any sort of lasting effect on our potential ranking once we implement the canonicalization?
Thanks!
-
I agree, that is good solution. You should use .htaccess to redirect 301 for gocentrix.com. I have same problem with 2 sites, one sandbox test content vs main site content. And I created 301 redirect for sandbox.
-
Mike is right - it's a good approach.
Another option will be to use rel canonical cross domain -> it works like a charm. (as long as it make sense and you want to keep both domain "in business")
In this way you can still leverage both domains if needed.
here is a good and clear resource on the subject covering both 301 and rel canonical:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.at/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html
Hope it helps !
Cheers.
-
I had the same issue with an old client that I had. They actually had three different domains with the same content. The best solution is to focus on CallRingTalk.com and use 301 redirects for GoCentrix.com. Make sure that you are using 1 to 1 redirects so that you're able to maintain link juice from both site. Aside from the obvious benefit of no duplicate content issues, you will also no longer be competing against yourself and updating will be easier. Another benefit is that you will be able to transfer all the inbound links for your legacy domain to the new domain. Just make sure that you use OSE to figure out the important inbound links and see if you can get those links changed to your new domain.
I hope that helps!
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
-
Duplicate Content
When I say duplicate content, I don't mean that the content on a clients site is displaying on another site on the web or taken from a site on the web. A client has a few product pages and each product page has content on the bottom of the page (4-5 paragraphs) describing the product. Now, this content is also displaying on other pages, but re-worded so it's not 100% duplicate. Some pages show a duplicate content % ranging from 12% to 35% and maybe 40%. Just curious if I should suggest having each product page less than 10% duplicated. Thanks for your help.
On-Page Optimization | | Kdruckenbrod0 -
Duplicate Content Re: Product listing body copy on Website, Amazon & Ebay - issues ?
Hi Is it ok to have identical product body copy on market/platform listings same as the websites product listings ? In this case the products are the websites/own brand products (all pages canonicalised), so i take it shouldn't cause any issues or are you supposed to differentiate the product body copy on marketplace listings ? Im asking re seo reasons All Best Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Googlebot indexing URL's with ? queries in them. Is this Panda duplicate content?
I feel like I'm being damaged by Panda because of duplicate content as I have seen the Googlebot on my site indexing hundreds of URL's with ?fsdgsgs strings after the .html. They were beign generated by an add-on filtering module on my store, which I have since turned off. Googlebot is still indexing them hours later. At a loss what to do. Since Panda, I have lost a couple of dozen #1 rankings that I've held for months on end and had one drop over 100 positions.
On-Page Optimization | | sparrowdog0 -
Multiple domains
I have a client, (for example Henry Jewelers) who likes to advertise their site as www.henry.com, but their main site resides on HenryJewelers.com. If www.henry.com has a permanent redirect to henryjewelers.com, are the two sites impacted negatively from a SEO standpoint?
On-Page Optimization | | BrettMackrell0 -
Not sure if I need to be concerned with duplicate content plus too many links
Someone else supports this site in terms of making changes so I want to make sure that I know what I am talking about before I speak to them about changes. We seem to have a lot of duplicate content and duplicate titles. This is an example http://www.commonwealthcontractors.com/tag/big-data-scientists/ of a duplicate. Do I need to get things changed? The other problem that crops up on reports is too many on page links. I am going to get shot of the block of tags but need to keep the news. Is there much else I can do? Many thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Niamh20 -
E-commerce site product descriptions and duplicate content
Hi everyone. I'm developing an e-commerce site using Prestashop and concerned about the issue of duplicate content among product descriptions. My main concerns are: If there are 500 or more products and those product descriptions are obtained from a manufacturer or supplier's website hence running into external duplicate content issues. Internal duplicate content is also an issue, if there are multiple similar products and each product has the same description across several pages. What would be the best approach to eliminate the possibility of incurring a duplicate content penalty due to similar product descriptions? I've already considered the suggestion of noindex-ing the complete range of products to help protect from duplicate content penalties and having unique articles written in the site blog discussing products instead linking to certain products on the site. Another consideration I had was noindex-ing all product pages except pages for featured products in the store and rewriting descriptions for a set amount of those featured products regularly (this will still have the problem of internal duplicate content across pages if similar product descriptions are rewritten). The product range is intended to be very large so I'm really seeking an alternative solution from the insane task of rewriting many product descriptions. Any suggestions to make SEO work efficient are very much welcome and appreciated. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | valuepets0 -
WordPress - duplicate content
I'm using WordPress for my website. However, whenever I use the post section for news, I get a report back from SEOmoz saying that there's duplicate content. What it does is it posts them in the Category and Archive section. Does anyone know if Google sees this as duplicate content and if so how to stop it? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | AAttias0 -
Footer Content
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 good/bad?
On-Page Optimization | | NeilD0