Duplicate content issues?
-
Our company consists of several smaller companies, some of whom deal with very similar things. For instance, two of our companies resell accounts software, but only one provides after-sales support.
Because of the number of different companies and websites we have, sometimes it would be easier to simply copy content from one site to the other, optimised in the same manner as, in some instances, we would want different websites to rank for the same keywords.
I have been asked my opinion on the potential impact of this practice and my initial response was that we should avoid this due to potential penalties. However, I thought I'd garner opinion from a wider audience before making any recommendations either way. What do people think?
Thanks.
-
If duplicate content does between two sites owned by the same company exist what is generally the outcome? Does one site rank and not the other? Are both sites penalised? Does location influence the site that ranks?
-
Panda sez Nom.
-
Short answer: Avoid it.
You want to avoid duplicating any kind of copy from one website to another as much as possible. If there's a need to do it (for instance, a blog post from the parent company could be useful to the audience of a smaller company) there's always the ability to use a canonical to identify the preferred (original) source in order to help Google identify which one should be given credit/indexed. Even with that, a canonical is simply a suggestion and not a definite order. Google can choose to ignore it if it wishes.
But in the instance of website copy that talks about a product or service where you want the ability for both pages to rank, I would invest the time in rewriting the content so it's specific to that website and avoid duplication as much as possible. As an example, the company that provides after-sales support has a definite point of differentiation. That could become a good chunk of the copy to help dilute it, along with rewriting the other parts of the copy as well. If you're trying to rank both websites for similar (or the same) keywords, you're going to end up forcing Google to make a choice between the two if a good chunk of the second website is just a replication of the first.
Investing the time in unique copy will be worth it. Hope this 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
-
Duplicated Content on Wordpress Mobile&Desktop versions- Is it bad for SEO?
Hello, I use a Wordpress theme for displaying mobile and desktop versions separately. The problem is that if you use tools like screaming frog or if you look at the code (view source), you can detect duplicated content. But if you're browsing on your mobile you will see only the content I have created for the mobile version and the same if you're looking at the desktop version, you will only see the desktop content.
On-Page Optimization | | AlphaRoadside
Is this creating an SEO problem? If it is, please let me know why and if it has a solution. Thanks in advance.0 -
How to optimize WordPress Pages with Duplicate Page Content?
I found the non WWW ans WWW duplicate pages URL only, more than thousand pages.
On-Page Optimization | | eigital0 -
Is tracking code added to the end of a URL considered duplicate content
I have two URLs one with a tracking coded and one without. http://www.towermarketing.net/lets-talk-ux-baby and http://www.towermarketing.net/lets-talk-ux-baby/**#.U6ghgLEz64I ** My question is will this be considered as two separate URLs, will Google consider this as two pages with duplicate content. Any recommendations would be much appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | TowerMarketing0 -
Duplicate Content
I have a question about duplicate content. (auto generated text).
On-Page Optimization | | affigroup
Will google consider page 1 and page 2 as duplicate content? Page 1. You will find all the Amazon coupon codes and Amazon discount codes currently available listed below, if Amazon doesn't currently have any coupons available you may want to check for Amazon deals or find related coupon codes or promotional codes for similar online stores selling the same products as amazon.
We always have the latest coupon codes for Amazon which are updated daily, so if you can't find any Amazon coupons here then you won't find them anywhere else.
Shop online today at Amazon, and take advantage of the coupon codes that Amazon currently has on offer, these coupon codes, offer codes, and promo codes for Amazon may never be available again. Page 2. You will find all the Target coupon codes and Target discount codes currently available listed below, if Target doesn't currently have any coupons available you may want to check for Target deals or find related coupon codes or promotional codes for similar online stores selling the same products as Target.
We always have the latest coupon codes for Target which are updated daily, so if you can't find any Target coupons here then you won't find them anywhere else.
Shop online today at Target, and take advantage of the coupon codes that Target currently has on offer, these coupon codes, offer codes, and promo codes for Target may never be available again.0 -
I'm looking to put a quite length FAQs tab on product pages on an ecommerce site. Am I likely to have duplicate content issues?
On an ecommerce site we have unique content on the product pages (i.e. descriptions), as well as the usual delivery and returns tabs for customer convenience. From this we haven't had any duplicate content issues or warnings, which seems to be the case industry-wide. However, we're looking to add a more lengthy FAQs tab which is still highly relevant to the customer but contains a lot more text than the other tabs. The product descriptions are also relatively small. Do you think this will cause potential duplicate content issues or should it be treated the same as a delivery tab, for instance?
On-Page Optimization | | creativemay0 -
Duplicate page content
what is duplicate page content, I have a dating site and it's got a groups area where the members can base there discussions in a category like for an example, night life, health and beauty, and such. why would this cause a problem of duplicate page content and how would I fix it. explained in the terms of a dummy.
On-Page Optimization | | clickit2getwithit0 -
Creating a product per size causing duplicate content problems?
I have an e-commerce site and in order to receive a listing for each size and color in Google Merchant, I've created a new product for each size and color. The problem is that since I did this, the canonical tags aren't correct and there isn't a way to change them manually with the platform I'm on. I feel like this is one of the main reasons I've been dropping in the rankings. Should I delete all duplicate products? The system will take care of canonical tags automatically when creating a new size/color within the system (how it's supposed to be created) but the canonical tags become messy when I duplicate a product and edit the size/color to create a "whole new product". Here is an example of what I'm referring to: http://www.carbonconnection.com/search.php?search_query=nalini+rigel&x=0&y=0 (this problem actually isn't mine, it's a friend's but for the sake of simplicity and gaining a second opinion to be sure before he redoes all of his products, I'm asking as though it were my issue)
On-Page Optimization | | EmdeS0 -
Duplicate pages
Hi, I am using a CMS that generates dynamic urls that according to the SeoMoz tool will be indexed as duplicate pages. The pages in questions are forms, blog-posts etc. that are not crucial to achieve ranking for. I do worry though about the consequences of having 20 (non-duplicate)pages with static urls and about 100 pages that are duplicates with dynamic urls. What consequences will this have for the speed that the robots crawl the site and could there be negative effects on ranking for the entire domain?
On-Page Optimization | | vibelingo0