Duplicate items across different pages?

[vortexuk]

On our new website we have a testimonials page which you can cycle through them.  We also have the testimonial on the our work / project page.  Essentially this is duplicate content from another page, what's the best thing to do here?  In the sake of SEO, remove the duplicate content and only have one? Or won't it make much difference?

[TopFloor]

From an SEO perspective, duplicate content and how it is handled is important.  There are two ways to handle it.  The first is to determine which page you identify as the "original".  In this case, I'm guessing that would be the testimonials page.  The next step is to add a canonical tag to any page that uses the same content.  (In your case that would be "our work/project" page).  The canonical tag will point to the orignal page.

One thing to keep in mind is that you should only use canonical tags if both pages have the exact same (or almost the exact same content).  If the "our work/project" page has multiple testimonials on it, then that page would actually have content that a search engine would deem unique, even thought it consists of a compilation of content that appears elsewhere.

This moz post provides a pretty good overview of how to use canonicals.  http://moz.com/blog/complete-guide-to-rel-canonical-how-to-and-why-not

[William.Lau]

Won't make a difference unless its within the body (my opinion).

I would also take note that the testimonials on your work/project page shouldn't be the bulk of the content on those pages. If they are just in a fixed location, that should be fine. Plus if they only appear the testimonial and work/project page, I wouldn't worry about it too much.