Duplicate content question for multiple sites under one brand

[KHCreative]

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!

[DonnaDuncan]

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.

[KHCreative]

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!

[DonnaDuncan]

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...

[KHCreative]

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!

[KHCreative]

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.

[DonnaDuncan]

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.

[StickyWebz]

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.