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Is a different location in page title, h1 title, and meta description enough to avoid Duplicate Content concern?
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I have a dynamic website which will have location-based internal pages that will have a <title>and <h1> title, and meta description tag that will include the subregion of a city. Each page also will have an 'info' section describing the generic product/service offered which will also include the name of the subregion. The 'specific product/service content will be dynamic but in some cases will be almost identical--ie subregion A may sometimes have the same specific content result as subregion B. Will the difference of just the location put in each of the above tags be enough for me to avoid a Duplicate Content concern?</p></title>
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Thanks Miriam. Sorry for the delayed response--been pretty tied up.
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Hi Couponguy,
Smart question. You're right to be concerned here. Swapping out a geo term across near-identical pages is not going to be enough to differentiate your pages. You could, indeed, be at risk for a duplicate content penalty. I highly recommend that you write unique content for each page. My rule in this scenario is: if you can't find something unique to write on a local landing page, don't create the page. There are instances in which a company is covering just too many cities to create unique pages for all of them, in which case, they might be better served by creating an interactive map of some kind to show their service areas to their clients and then utilizing PPC, instead of of SEO, to gain visibility for all of these cities. Hopefully, though, you can find a creative approach for creating unique content for your pages. This is ideal, when it is possible.
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