Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. On-Page Optimization
    4. Duplicate Content - Blog Rewriting

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Duplicate Content - Blog Rewriting

    On-Page Optimization
    4
    5
    3986
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • StoryScout
      StoryScout last edited by

      I have a client who has requested a rewrite of 250 blog articles for his IT company. The blogs are dispersed on a variety of platforms: his own website's blog, a business innovation website, and an IT website.

      He wants to have each article optimised with keyword phrases and then posted onto his new website thrice weekly. All of this is in an effort to attract some potential customers to his new site and also to establish his company as a leader in its field.

      To what extent would I need to rewrite each article so as to avoid duplicating the content?

      Would there even be an issue if I did not rewrite the articles and merely optimised them with keywords?

      Would the articles need to be completely taken by all current publishers?

      Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • OnlineAssetPartners
        OnlineAssetPartners last edited by

        Hi guys, have a client in a similar situation and working through best option for them...would appreciate any comments or feedback...

        Current Status - client has two websites each targeting different countries: .co.nz and .com.au

        With the exception of a few products that are offered separately between NZ and AU, the sites are the same. In essence duplicate content. This is due to current platform limitations (the way their web company has built the site it is same site showing in each region on separate domains with option to change products between regions using inventory an integrated inventory tool).

        The great news is they are currently rebuilding their websites onto a new platform with two unique versions of the site…which will be great for ongoing SEO - ie we can really drill into creating separate sets of page, product, template content and meta data etc.

        They also have a magazine running on Word Press Blog using sub-domains associated with the regional root domain. E.g.
        magazine.domain.co.nz and magazine.domainname.com.au

        Again, with a few exceptions, this is also duplicated for both countries…ie sub domains assigned to the same site. Again duplicate content.

        Question: The magazine being built on Word Press has to date been geared at offering an “FAQ” type engagement with visitors....visitors can submit questions via module which are then answered in Word Press blog posts. There are also links from main site menu away to the magazine...so not ideal for conversion. Client wants to bring this FAQ type feature back to the two main sites and can now do so during new site rebuilds.

        There is also some SEO juice in the magazine as in essence it is a large Word Press blog. I am trying to work through what would be the best option for transferring all of the FAQ answers/articles (content) from magazine FAQs to the two new main sites...so over time the two new main sites obtain that SEO strength.

        Option 1

        Leave magazine as it is so that main sites continue to get benefits of referral traffic to main sites and sales as result of the referrals. Also retains the links from magazine to main site (although links are from a sub-domain of the same domain)

        Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article for new NZ site

        Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article for new AU site

        (Bearing in mind stringent Panda rules etc – mixing up titles so unique, unique content and posting etc to avoid Panda penalties)

        Option 2

        Take down magazine site and implement 301 redirects + one new version of the articles.

        Move all magazine articles across to the highest performing region (NZ by far) and 301 redirect from NZ magazine to the new NZ site with corresponding articles. 301 redirects take care of the indexed pages to retain traffic and rankings for the NZ magazine articles.

        Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article and add to the new AU site and 301 redirect from AU magazine articles to the new version on AU site. 301 redirects take care of any indexed AU magazine articles...but there may be some fluctuation in rankings as the content is now completely different (brand new).

        Could there be any issue with loss of the internal backlinks? impacts SEO strength that magazine subdomain to main site might give?

        Other Options?

        Appreciate any thoughts or comments... thanks in advance...

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Philip-DiPatrizio
          Philip-DiPatrizio @StoryScout last edited by

          I would steer clear of removing 250 blog posts from the other web properties.  They may be driving traffic to those websites.

          The client is requesting 250 particular blog posts to be rewritten.  This isn't the best content strategy in the world, but that's what you're being asked to do, so the BEST way to handle it is to completely rewrite every post so they are 100% unique.

          If you were to remove the blog posts from the other websites and simply post them on the new website, you're running the risk of taking traffic away from the already established websites.

          "Would google pick up on the fact that these blogs are already appearing elsewhere on the web and thereby penalise the new site for posting material that is already indexed by Google?" -- Yes, you run the risk of being penalized by Panda with such a large amount of duplicate content.  Google wants to rank websites that provide value to visitors.  If a website is entirely made up of content that already exists on another website, you're providing no added value to visitors.  Again, you could remove the content from the other websites and 301 redirect to the new one.... but you're taking a lot of value away from those websites if you do that.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
          • StoryScout
            StoryScout @Philip-DiPatrizio last edited by

            Hi Phillip,

            Sorry - I meant to write: Would all of the blogs need to be removed from the website on which they are appearing?

            So is the best course of action to have the articles taken off the platforms on which they appear before going ahead and putting them up on the new site?

            Also could you explain how the new site might get hit by panda i.e. would google pick up on the fact that these blogs are already appearing elsewhere on the web and thereby penalise the new site for posting material that is already indexed by Google?

            Thanks a million Phillip.

            Philip-DiPatrizio 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • Philip-DiPatrizio
              Philip-DiPatrizio last edited by

              If you don't make them VERY unique from the originals, the new site won't perform very well.  If the new site consists of nothing but 250 blog posts that were already discovered on other websites, you won't get good results.  Simply keyword optimizing the posts won't be enough.  They should be entirely re-written to avoid potential problems with Panda.

              I'm not sure what you mean by this -- Would the articles need to be completely taken by all current publishers?

              StoryScout 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • wearehappymedia

                Duplicate content with tagging and categories

                Hello, Moz is showing that a site has duplicate content - which appears to be because of tags and categories. It is a relatively new site, with only a few blog publications so far. This means that the same articles are displayed under a number of different tags and categories... Is this something I should worry about, or just wait until I have more content? The 'tag' and 'category' pages are not really pages I would expect or aim for anyone to find in google results anyway. Would be glad to here any advice / opinions on this Thanks!

                On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia
                1
              • vivekrathore

                How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content

                How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having duplicate content. I mean somewhere google says they will prefer original content & will give preference to them who have original content but this statement contradict when I see Indeed.com as they aggregate content from other sites but still rank higher than original content provider side. How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content

                On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore
                0
              • Dan-Lawrence

                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-Lawrence
                0
              • LeahHutcheon

                Duplicate Content for Men's and Women's Version of Site

                So, we're a service where you can book different hairdressing services from a number of different salons (site being worked on). We're doing both a male and female version of the site on the same domain which users are can select between on the homepage. The differences are largely cosmetic (allowing the designers to be more creative and have a bit of fun and to also have dedicated male grooming landing pages), but I was wondering about duplicate pages. While most of the pages on each version of the site will be unique (i.e. [male service] in [location] vs [female service] in [location] with the female taking precedent when there are duplicates), what should we do about the likes of the "About" page? Pages like this would both be unique in wording but essentially offer the same information and does it make sense to to index two different "About" pages, even if the titles vary? My question is whether, for these duplicate pages, you would set the more popular one as the preferred version canonically, leave them both to be indexed or noindex the lesser version entirely? Hope this makes sense, thanks!

                On-Page Optimization | | LeahHutcheon
                0
              • Adam-Perlman

                What's the best practice for handling duplicate content of product descriptions with a drop-shipper?

                We write our own product descriptions for merchandise we sell on our website.  However, we also work with drop-shippers, and some of them simply take our content and post it on their site (same photos, exact ad copy, etc...).  I'm concerned that we'll loose the value of our content because Google will consider it duplicated. We don't want the value of our content undermined... What's the best practice for avoiding any problems with Google? Thanks, Adam

                On-Page Optimization | | Adam-Perlman
                0
              • NiallTom

                Duplicate Content for Spanish & English Product

                Hi There, Our company provides training courses and I am looking to provide the Spanish version of a course that we already provide in English.  As it is an e-commerce site, our landing page for the English version gives the full description of the course and all related details. Once the course is purchased, a flash based course launches within a player window and the student begins the course. For the Spanish version of the course, my target customers are English speaking supervisors purchasing the course for their Spanish speaking workers.  So the landing page will still be in English (just like the English version of the course) with the same basic description, with the only content differences on that page being the inclusion of the fact that this course is in Spanish and a few details around that. The majority of the content on these two separate landing pages will be exactly the same, as the description for the overall course is the same, just that it's presented in a different language, so it needs to be 2 separate products. My fear is that Google will read this as duplicate content and I will be penalized for it.  Is this a possibility or will Google know why I set it up this way and not penalize me?  If that is a possibility, how should I go about doing this correctly? Thanks!

                On-Page Optimization | | NiallTom
                0
              • Shipyard_Agency

                Best practice for franchise sites with duplicated content

                I know that duplicated content is a touchy subject but I work with multiple franchise groups and each franchisee wants their own site, however, almost all of the sites use the same content.  I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites and does not penalize them for the following issues. All sites are hosted on the same server therefor the same IP address All sites use generally the same content across their product pages (which are very very important pages) *templated content approved by corporate Almost all sites have the same design (A few of the groups we work with have multiple design options) Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Again Aaron

                On-Page Optimization | | Shipyard_Agency
                0
              • smaavie

                Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?

                We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
                Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
                Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
                find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
                find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards

                On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
                5

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter

              Access all your tools in one place. Whether you're tracking progress or analyzing data, everything you need is at your fingertips.

              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.