Is this Duplicate content?

[TomLondon]

Hi all,

This is now popping up in Moz after using this for over 6 months.
It is saying this is now duplicate site content.

What do we think? Is this a bad strategy, it works well on the SERPS but could be damaging the root domain page ranking? I guess this is a little shady.

http://www.tomlondonmagic.com/area/close-up-magician-in-crowborough/

http://www.tomlondonmagic.com/area/close-up-magician-in-desborough/

http://www.tomlondonmagic.com/area/close-up-magician-in-didcot/

Thanks.

[DougRoberts]

If what you've got right now is working for you and bringing in relevant (converting) traffic then I would be cautious about doing anything too drastic. There's always a risk associated with any changes you make like this and the last thing you want to do is kill your own traffic.

I wouldn't immediately tear down the duplicate pages, but I would start to think about how I could update some of the content and maybe create new pages that better engage with your visitors and help to increase your conversion rate (I don't know what your conversion rate is.). That may help off set any impact cause by a potential loss of rankings for those duplicate pages might.If the pages continue to rank then it'll still help!

I've got some thoughts that might be useful (please take this as constructive criticism and recognise that I don't know your niche as well as you do!)

For example, the copy on your home page is "all about you" and very little about what your visitor. What do I get if I book you for an event? What's your value proposition, the benefits of your particular service and how can you differentiate yourself from the competition.

A great place to start is to speak to your last 10 customers and find out why they hired you, what were the things that convinced them to hire you, what were the concerns/doubts they  the had?

I'm guessing here (you'll need to talk to your real customers) but if I was hiring you for my wedding, I wouldn't be so worried about the price, or the quality of your routines (I don't know what ground-breaking magic is!) but more concerned with questions like:

• "What if it's all going to be a bit cheesy?"
• Is this going to annoy my guests?
• Is it going to be intrusive?
• Can he work with the venue?
• Can the performance be tailored to the theme of my event or the location?

If you can figure our what really matters to people you can quickly put them at ease and even turn these concerns into benefits.

You might want to also look at how you're using images. It can be hard on the ego, but it's not you that's the important thing here - if you can show more of the reactions and atmosphere that you create then that may help people fell that "yes,  I want some of that for my wedding/party etc"

Don't bury your testimonials away on a testimonials page. You've got some great comments there about "delighting guests", "making birthdays special"... I'd use those on your relevant pages. (Personally I think they're more compelling than the "celeb" testimonials.)

Segment your customers and work that group's particular needs/concerns. I'm sure you know the kind of specific issues that come up when your dealing with corporate customers.

I really do think it would help to write the content in the first person, using as natural language as possible. As it stand, the site comes across a bit cold, and doesn't let your personality come across.

Hope this helps.

[TomLondon]

Doug,

Thank you for your response, it solidifys what I have been thinking for the last few months about removing the keyword optimisation on site.

Yes, I do get a lot of work from those pages, and they do seem to convert fairly well. I guess I need to change the title of the website and the copy for human eyes, not google's.

The only fear there is that I drop out of rankings. I guess that is the price to pay if you want to play by the rules!

With regards to the duplicate pages, what should I do then, everyone in my niche is doing it, shall I get rid of them all and bite the bullet!?

[DougRoberts]

Nice!

Tom, out of interest, do these pages get much search traffic? What is the conversion rate like on these - do they actually get your any work. If you're not getting any traffic/conversions then just showing up in the SERPS for your keyword is just vanity thing.

If the tactic is getting you work then you obviously don't want to tear it all down, although I'm sure you understand that it's not exactly the kind of thing Google's terms of service are trying to encourage. These kind of tactics are still working, but there's a risk attached too and it's not something I would recommend and not something I'd feel comfortable recommending.

You've got to look at your competition too - and I see that it's a pretty common (almost ubiquitous) tactic used in your niche.

Do you detail the area your cover on your home page? I'm worried that seeing "Magician London" at the start of your page title and the keywords "Magician London" all over the copy could put people off looking for something local.

How can people find out if you cover their area when they visit your site?

The page copy doesn't read very naturally! Have you tried reading it out-loud? I'm, not sure you'd talk to someone like this face to face. I would try to make the text more natural and use the first person. After all, you're trying to sell yourself aren't you, and it's your personality, that's makes you different from your competition.

My general advice would to think less about optimising for search engines, and start thinking about optimising your your visitors, what information are they looking for and what are they trying to achieve on your site...

[Devanur-Rafi]

Hi there, this is definitely not a good idea from an SEO stand point. I strongly recommend to you to have the content written uniquely for each of those pages. I have seen methods like these making websites vanish from the index as well as making websites safely pass under the Google's radar. But, we should stick to the best practices and see to it that all the pages on our websites have substantially unique content so as to find and secure their place into the SERPs. Quality content that is unique, fresh, highly relevant, interesting, link and share worthy can literally spell magic for your SEO efforts. Just my two cents my friend.

Best of luck to you,

Devanur Rafi.