Penalized for Duplicate Page Content?
-
I have some high priority notices regarding duplicate page content on my website www.3000doorhangers.com
Most of the pages listed here are on our sample pages:
http://www.3000doorhangers.com/home/door-hanger-pricing/door-hanger-design-samples/
On the left side of our page you can go through the different categories.
Most of the category pages have similar text. We mainly just changed the industry on each page.
Is this something that google would penalize us for? Should I go through all the pages and use completely unique text for each page?
Any suggestions would be helpful
Thanks!
Andrea
-
Hi Andrea!
You will not be "penalized" for duplicate content, but Google probably won't be indexing pages seen as duplicates in their search results.
If you are optimizing those category pages for specific keywords, then you will need each category page to have content that is mostly original and unique on each. If you really only have one of those pages optimized and the others are there mainly to help the user on your site, you can use a rel=canonical tag to "tell" Google which version of the page (the specific category page) you wish to display in search results.
Let me know if that helps! If not, ill try to eloborate
-
Here's a two-fold answer: 1) As per Matt Cutts, duplicate content is not an issue unless it is spammy or keyword stuffed. Non-spammy duplicate content will mainly just be ignored (i.e. will not rank for anything). Too much thin content could get you hit during a panda refresh. http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-duplicate-content-wont-hurt-you-unless-it-is-spammy-167459
- It is always best to have good, unique and relevant content on any and all pages that you would actually like people to be able to find and/or access. If you have the manpower to spare to update the content then there's no good reason not to do so. If the pages aren't ranking well because of duplicate content and you don't care if those specific pages rank in the SERPs then you can always consider putting a NoIndex on them.
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
-
Weight of content further down a page
Hi, A client is trying to justify a design decision by saying he needs all the links for all his sub pages on the top level category page as google won't index them; however the links are available on the sub category and the sub category is linked to from the top level page so I have argued as long as google can crawl the links through the pages they will be indexed and won't be penalised. Am I correct? Additionally the client has said those links need to be towards the top of the page as content further down the page carries less weight; I don't believe this is the case but can you confirm? Thanks again, Craig.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CSIMedia1 -
Duplicate Content Question With New Domain
Hey Everyone, I hope your day is going well. I have a question regarding duplicate content. Let's say that we have Website A and Website B. Website A is a directory for multiple stores & brands. Website B is a new domain that will satisfy the delivery niche for these multiple stores & brands (where they can click on a "Delivery" anchor on Website A and it'll redirect them to Website B). We want Website B to rank organically when someone types in " <brand>delivery" in Google. Website B has NOT been created yet. The Issue Website B has to be a separate domain than Website A (no getting around this). Website B will also pull all of the content from Website A (menus, reviews, about, etc). Will we face any duplicate content issues on either Website A or Website B in the future? Should we rel=canonical to the main website even though we want Website B to rank organically?</brand>
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | imjonny0 -
Parameter Strings & Duplicate Page Content
I'm managing a site that has thousands of pages due to all of the dynamic parameter strings that are being generated. It's a real estate listing site that allows people to create a listing, and is generating lots of new listings everyday. The Moz crawl report is continually flagging A LOT (25k+) of the site pages for duplicate content due to all of these parameter string URLs. Example: sitename.com/listings & sitename.com/listings/?addr=street name Do I really need to do anything about those pages? I have researched the topic quite a bit, but can't seem to find anything too concrete as to what the best course of action is. My original thinking was to add the rel=canonical tag to each of the main URLs that have parameters attached. I have also read that you can bypass that by telling Google what parameters to ignore in Webmaster tools. We want these listings to show up in search results, though, so I don't know if either of these options is ideal, since each would cause the listing pages (pages with parameter strings) to stop being indexed, right? Which is why I'm wondering if doing nothing at all will hurt the site? I should also mention that I originally recommend the rel=canonical option to the web developer, who has pushed back in saying that "search engines ignore parameter strings." Naturally, he doesn't want the extra work load of setting up the canonical tags, which I can understand, but I want to make sure I'm both giving him the most feasible option for implementation as well as the best option to fix the issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | garrettkite0 -
Duplicate page title at bottom of page - ok, or bad?
Can I get you experts opinion? A few years ago, we customized our pages to repeat the page title at the bottom of the page. So the page title is in the breadcrumbs at the top, and then it's also at the bottom of the page under all the contents. Here is a sample page: bit.ly/1pYyrUl I attached a screen shot and highlighted the second occurence of the page title. Am worried that this might be keyword stuffing, or over optimizing? Thoughts or advice on this? Thank you so much! ron ZH8xQX6
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yatesandcojewelers0 -
What is the best practice to optimize page content with strong tags?
For example, if I have a sub page dedicated to the keyword "Houston Leather Furniture" is it best practice to bold ONLY the exact match keyword? Or should ONLY the words from the keyword (so 'Houston' 'Leather' and 'Furniture') Is there a rule to how many times it should be done before its over-optimization? I appreciate any information as I want to do the BEST possible practice when it comes to this topic. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
Duplicate Content Question
My understanding of duplicate content is that if two pages are identical, Google selects one for it's results... I have a client that is literally sharing content real-time with a partner...the page content is identical for both sites, and if you update one page, teh otehr is updated automatically. Obviously this is a clear cut case for canonical link tags, but I'm cuious about something: Both sites seem to show up in search results but for different keywords...I would think one domain would simply win out over the other, but Google seems to show both sites in results. Any idea why? Also, could this duplicate content issue be hurting visibility for both sites? In other words, can I expect a boost in rankings with the canonical tags in place? Or will rankings remain the same?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AmyLB0 -
Duplicate content question? thanks
Hi, Im my time as an SEO I have never come across the following two scenarios, I am an advocate of using unique content, therefore always suggest and in cases demand that all content is written or re-written. This is the scenarios I am facing right now. For Example we have www.abc.com (has over 200 original recipes) and then we have www.xyz.com with the recipes but they are translated into another language as they are targeting different audiences, will Google penalize for duplicate content? The other issue is that the client got the recipes from www.abc.com (that have been translated) and use them in www.xyz.com aswell, both sites owned by the same company so its not pleagurism they have legal rights but I am not sure how Google will see it and if it will penalize the sites. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_81 -
Duplicate content for area listings
Hi, I was slightly affected by the panda update on the 14th oct generaly dropping by about 5-8 spots in the serps for my main keywords, since then I've been giving my site a good looking over. On a site I've got city listings urls for certain widget companys, the thing is many areas and thus urls will have the same company listed. What would be the best way of solving this duplicate content as google may be seeing it? I was thinking of one page per company and prominenly listing the areas they operate so still hopefully get ranked for area searches. But i'd be losing the city names in the url as I've got them now for example: mywidgetsite.com/findmagicwidgets/new-york.html mywidgetsite.com/findmagicwidgets/atlanta.html Any ideas on how best to proceed? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NetGeek0