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 question for multiple sites under one brand
-
I would like to get some opinions on the best way to handle duplicate / similar content that is on our company website and local facility level sites. Our company website is our flagship website that contains all of our service offerings, and we use this site to complete nationally for our SEO efforts. We then have around 100 localized facility level sites for the different locations we operate that we use to rank for local SEO. There is enough of a difference between these locations that it was decided (long ago before me) that there would be a separate website for each. There is however, much duplicate content across all these sites due to the service offerings being roughly the same. Every website has it's own unique domain name, but I believe they are all on the same C-block. I'm thinking of going with 1 of 2 options and wanted to get some opinions on which would be best.
1 - Keep the services content identical across the company website and all facility sites, and use the rel=canonical tag on all the facility sites to reference the company website. My only concern here is if this would drastically hurt local SEO for the facility sites.
2 - Create two unique sets of services content. Use one set on the company website. And use the second set on the facility sites, and either live with the duplicate content or try and sprinkle in enough local geographic content to create some differential between the facility sites.
Or if there are other suggestions on a better way to handle this, I would love to hear any other thoughts as well.
Thanks!
-
Just FYI, someone specifically asked if canonicalizing a page will prevent it from being indexed last year on Moz. It's was a good discussion. Pay particular attention to what Dr Pete has to say on the matter.
Sounds like you have a plan! Great.
-
Great questions Donna. We rank in both the local search results area and organic search. Typically it looks like the home page is what shows in the local search results area, and then either the home page or services pages in the organic area for a geo-optimized search term. I didn't realize though that doing a canonical could keep the services pages from showing in the local area. Even though that might not hurt us immediately from what I'm seeing, I think I'm hesitant to risk that.
I think in the short term I'm going to keep the status quo going and focus on citations and reviews as you said. We have a pretty good strategy in place for that. I do think I will change up my duplicate copy on the facility sites so it is different than our company site, and just live with the duplicate content across the facility sites for now.
For the long-term we have been considering adding a locations section to our company website that has a single page for each location we operate, and then I would add a link on each page to get to their dedicated site. I'm hopeful that if we invest some time growing that section and adding unique content for each location over the next 1-2 years, that we could eventually discard our dedicated facility sites.
Thanks for your help!
-
What pages are folks landing on when they do a local search? If it's the services page, you'll lose the ability to rank for those pages locally if you do a canonical. Are you showing up for local search terms in organic search results or local search results? If you go with a single site and dedicated local pages with local phone numbers, you'll be able to rank in both organic and local search results.
If your facility pages "tend to perform about the same as other local companies that are our biggest competition" and your goal is to gain an advantage, I'm thinking your best bet might be to grow your citations and reviews. I'm usually a big fan of consolidation so you can maximize the value derived from your SEO efforts, but it would be very disruptive to transition to a single site. Is management prepared and willing to shoulder that?
If you're not ready to rock the just boat yet, perhaps you should do an apples to apples comparison of your local facility sites to your competitors to see if a boost in citations or reviews could help bump you higher.
I'm just not hearing a pressing need from you...
-
Hello Donna,
Thanks for your reply. I will try and answer these questions the best I can. I appreciate the help!
Our company flagship site preforms very well. We rank top 10 nationally for many of our top keywords (although they are not highly competitive terms). This website of course has an extremely higher number of links than our facility sites, and we are pretty active on social channels. And all of the facility sites do link back to this site as the parent.
The facility sites perform okay from an analytics standpoint. They rank in the top 10 for a handful of keywords that are geo-targeted. They tend to perform about the same as other local companies that are our biggest competition, but there are some companies similar in size to us that are stronger in SEO with a single domain and dedicated local pages.
The facility sites we have were actually created over 10 years ago when SEO wasn't near as big. Management felt that giving each site a local feel was what our customers wanted to see. Our customers are definitely very local, or they are doing a local search for the area they are interested in. We are a healthcare company, so we get family members looking for services for their parents or dependents that may live somewhere else.
Nothing has really fundamentally changed recently with how we do business. I'm just trying to make the best use out of the sites we have, and hopefully can come up with something to improve our sites performance and of course impress our executive team!
Thanks!
-
Thanks for the reply StickyWebz. Yea the facility sites are good for the user I think. They were originally created many years ago before we were focusing on SEO, because our senior management wanted each location to have a local feel. They felt you were choosing the individual facility more than the brand. And there is some good unique content on the sites... just unfortunately nothing that is keyword rich. All of the services pages with our good keywords are the ones that have duplicate content.
-
Hi KH,
What are your analytics telling you? Which site or sites are performing well? Were there overriding reasons to take that direction a few years ago and now the business has changed? Are most of your customers local? Is proximity important to them?
Logically I would expect results to be not as good as they could be if your efforts were consolidated into a single domain with dedicated local pages but am curious to hear answers to those questions first.
-
Are these micro sites / facility sites actually good for the user, or just done for SEO purposes? If they aren't created with the user in mind you will probably not be rewarded for them in the long run.
That being said, if the micro sites must stay up you should rel canonical 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
-
Multiple Locations Same City
I have a local seo campaign im trying to reconfigure. Lets say i am a dwi lawyer and i have multiple locations. These are merely examples for cities and keywords. Home page is Criminal defense lawyer - this is the term we should be targeting. Maybe i can target the state name, but i am losing so much SEO weight by not leveraging this home page as the main page for this term. Then we have a location page in south Boston that is "S Boston DWI lawyer" as the title tag. Then we have another location page north Boston that is "N Boston DWI Lawyer" as the title tag. I can leave the city name off the home page title tag, but then what do i do with these pages that are pretty much competing with one another? I know the home page will not rank since none of the locations point to it, and only to a location page. I was thinking about creating one page with both locations and having both G map listings go directly there, but that doesn't make sense because other locations do not have the same setup. Or choosing the most central location and pointing that to the home page and let the rest have a locations page. Finally the home page will not rank well for any major terms. The location page does rank for the fictional south Boston DWI lawyer, but the other listing does not show up. The home page does not show up in the first ten pages either. One other aspect is that the home page ranks for terms that I am not even targeting. These pages are all targeted on specific keywords so that they do not overlap or compete, but some pages are the services main outline, but the location pages have their own version. I have removed all mentions of the same keyword from the home page. I made a few wchanges about 2 weeks ago and already noticed movement in rankings days later.
Local Website Optimization | | waqid0 -
SEO Best Practice for Managing a Businesses NAP with Multiple Addresses
I have a client with multiple business addresses - 3 across 3 states, from an SEO perspective what would be the best approach for displaying a NAP on the website? So far I've read that its best: to get 3 GMB account to point to 3 location pages & use a local phone number as opposed to a 1300 number. Display all 3 locations in the footer, run of site
Local Website Optimization | | jasongmcmahon1 -
Can I use Schema zip code markup that includes multiple zip codes but no actual address?
The company doesn't have physical locations but offers services in multiple cities and states across the US. We want to develop a better hyperlocal SEO strategy and implement schema but the only address information available is zip codes, names of cities and state. Can we omit the actual street address in the formatting but add multiple zipcodes?
Local Website Optimization | | hristina-m0 -
One locations page, or multiple pages?
Hi, I represent a franchisor who does all marketing- including local seo- for our franchisees. I've read a lot about local SEO and understand the basics, but have some remaining questions. 1- If our typical territories are quite large and encompass more than one major city, should we create multiple location pages for the same franchise owner? I believe the answer should be yes from an SEO stand point, but the problem is that most of our franchisees naturally just have one business address (their home). Since PO boxes and virtual offices aren't the way to go, what's the best course of action? And when I say major cities, I'm really talking about major cities (and not just small towns/boroughs). Can they just use a friend's/relative's address? 2- There's a lot of info out there about "locations pages," but it's not really clear whether or not you should really just have ONE page for each location, or several pages with different content? For instance, it looks like a lot of businesses are creating just one, "home-page" looking landing page for their individual locations, with everything from services to testimonials on just that one page. Is this preferred over creating several different local pages for that one location? The latter is what we currently do. From the user stand-point, it looks like each franchise location has it's own "mini website" on our main website. For instance, a landing page optimized for the local business name, a local services page, a project/photo gallery page, local review page, etc. It seems like a lot less work just building one landing page for each location, but is the payoff the same? I'm torn between the two strategies- is it really worth the extra work (in terms of traffic + local ranking) to build out the individual pages for the one location? Thanks Moz Community!
Local Website Optimization | | kimberleymeloserpa0 -
Listing multiple schema Things (e.g. Organization, LocalBusiness, Telephone, Locations, Place, etc)
Greetings All, My law office features many pages with what are essentially directory listings (names, addresses, and phone numbers of places, agencies, organizations that clients might find helpful). Am I correct in assuming that using schema for each of these listings might cause confusion for search engines? In other words, are search engines looking for schema on pages or sites to tell them only about the company running that page or site, or do search engines appreciate schema markup to tell them about all the pieces of content on the pages or that site?
Local Website Optimization | | micromano0 -
How does duplicate content work when creating location specific pages?
In a bid to improve the visibility of my site on the Google SERP's, I am creating landing pages that were initially going to be used in some online advertising. I then thought it might be a good idea to improve the content on the pages so that they would perform better in localised searches. So I have a landing page designed specifically to promote what my business can do, and funnel the user in to requesting a quote from us. The main keyword phrase I am using is "website design london", and I will be creating a few more such as "website design birmingham", "website design leeds". The only thing that I've changed at the moment across all these pages is the location name, I haven't touched any of the USP's or the testimonial that I use. However, in both cases "website design XXX" doesn't show up in any of the USP's or testimonial. So my question is that when I have these pages built, and they're indexed, will I be penalised for this tactic?
Local Website Optimization | | mickburkesnr0 -
Local SEO for National Brands
Hi all, When it comes to local SEO in 2015, I appreciate that having a physical location in the town/city you wish to rank is a major factor. However, if you're a national brand is it still possible to rank for local searches when you're based in one location? The reason I ask is that, although our service is national, the nature of what we offer means that it is not inconceivable that people would search for a local variation of our top keywords. Other than the standard things - location in the content, the H1/H2s, title tag, meta description, url etc. - is there anything national businesses can do to help? Thanks in advance. John
Local Website Optimization | | NAHL-14300 -
Duplicate content on a proxy site?
I have a local client with a 500 page site.
Local Website Optimization | | TFinder
They advertise online and use traditional media like direct mail.
A print media company, Valpak, has started a website
And wants the client to use their trackable phone number
And a proxy website. When I type the proxy domain in the browser
It appears to be client home page at this proxy URL. The vendor
Wishes to track activity on its site to prove their value or something
My question is: is their any "authority" risk to my clients website
By allowing this proxy site??0