Multi Location business - Should I 301 redirect duplicate location pages or alternatively No Follow tag them ?
-
Hello All,
I have a eCommerce site and we operate out of mulitple locations. We currently have individual location pages for these locations against each of our many categories. However on the flip slide , this create alot of duplicate content.
All of our location pages whether unique or duplicated have a unique title Tag, H1, H2 tag , NAP and they all bring in the City Name . The content on the duplicated content also brings in the City name as well.
We have been going through our categories and writing unique content for our most popular locations to help rank on local search.
Currently I've been setting up 301 redirects for the locations in the categories with the duplicated content pointing back to the category page.
I am wondering whether the increase in number of 301's will do more harm than having many duplicate location pages ?..
I am sure my site is affected by the panda algorithm penalty(on the duplicated content issues) as a couple of years ago , this didn't matter and we ranked top 3 for pretty much for every location but now we are ranking between 8 - 20th depending on keyword.
An Alternative I thought, may be to instead of 301 those locations pages with duplicate content, is to put No Follow tags on them instead ?...
What do you think ?.
It's not economically viable to write unique content for every location on every category and these would not only take years but would cost us far to much money. Our Site is currently approx 10,000 pages
Any thoughts on this greatly appreciated ?
thanks
Pete
-
Hello Monica,
Many thanks for your response.
We currently don't have any user generated content on these pages. It is something we are looking at doing but being a tool rental business , reviews is something, I have found that the industry (my competitors etc) have previously stayed aways from. Thoughts, being that most people who give a review with regards to this, would tend to give a negative review as opposed to saying the carpet cleaner they rented was ace !..
We are currently spending alot of money on the location content writting, it's just with over 100 categories and so many locations, the cost of doing this for everything would be way beyond our budgets. We have like you said, picked our most valuable locations depending on category (where we rent more of a certain product) and have written unique content for these pages.
If we Rel Canonical Tag the remaining location pages with the duplicate content, is this not going to cause problems as the main location varies category to category and these duplicate location pages still have their own NAP etc etc so , in effect I am pointing one branch page to another branch page at a different location which gets more rentals ?.. Would the location pages with the duplicate content still get affected by panda ?...
There's nothing really on the web I can find about this specific problem but I am sure , there must be loads of multiple location business who have done similar to us.
I will take a read and research on your suggestion and probably try it out for a few of them to see what happens in the rankings.
Many thanks
Pete
-
This is a tough question. My first thought is do you have any user generated content on these pages? Is it possible to get some reviews on these location pages?
Secondly, I know that it takes time and money but there is nothing more important for successful SEO than **uniquely valuable content. **If you are expecting success with duplicate content or thin and missing content you will not get it. If I could only pick one thing to spend money and time on it would be Content Writing. I would start with your most valuable pages and get some expertly written and valuable copy on them asap.
As far as the problem being location pages, I would recommend using some REL Canonical tags instead of 301 redirecting the pages. I would pick your main location as the authoritative page. Having unique copy on the location pages, like user generated comments and reviews, is really the best way to solve your duplicate content issue. The canonical tags will help you in the interim, but, the best way to solve your issue it with unique content.
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
-
Do old backlinks still help with new URL with 301 redirect? Also I added the www. How does this affect it all?
I changed my URL from exampledetailing. com to exampleautodetailing. com. It is redirected with a 301. Also, it is on Squarespace AND I opted to add the www. So will the old backlinks of exampledetailing. com still help the new URL exampleautodetailing. com or do I need to try and update all the links? Also, future links, do I need to include the www. or just the root domain of exampleautodetailing. com or even the whole https://wwwexampleautodetailing. com? I believe the www is considered a sub domain and a new entity on Google, so I am not sure how that works. Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Rmarkjr810 -
Ecommerce Site Structure -- "/our_locations" page: helpful or harmful?
Hello! We are a retailer with brick and mortar stores in different cities. We have a website (ourbusiness.com), which includes a blog (ourbusiness.com/blog) and a separate ecommerce site for each store in subfolders (ourbusiness.com/Boston-store and ourbusiness.com/Atlanta-store). NB: We do this for non-business reasons and have no choice. So, this is not like REI (for example) or other stores with lots of locations but one central ecommerce operation. Most experts seem to recommend a site structure that echoes REIs. IE: a home page principally devoted to ecommerce (rei.com) includes an Our Locations-type page (rei.com/stores) which links to local store pages like (rei.com/stores/fresno) I understand how this would help REI, since their homepage is devoted to ecommerce and they need a store locator page that doesn't compete with the shopping experience. But since we can't send people to products directly from our home page, is there any reason for us not to put the store locator function right on the home page? That is, is there any reason in our case to prefer (A) ourbusiness.com/our_locations/Boston_store over (B) ourbusiness.com/Boston-store? As i see it, the extra page (/our_locations/) could actually hurt, as it puts products one click further away from customers, and one link deeper for bots. On the other hand, it may make the multi-store structure clearer to bots (and maybe people) and help us in local search. Finally, would it make a difference if there were 10 stores vs 2? Thanks for any thoughts!
Local Website Optimization | | RankAmateur...1 -
Home Page Not Ranking for Brand
I've got an odd issue (that I've never encountered in 12+ years in SEO). A client's home page isn't ranking for their brand term. It's a medical spa in Las Vegas, so physical location that takes online appointments. We have an online booking system (which isn't a good one) that originally had a booking page replacing our home page. My thought is that Google associated that page as our home page because it was a stronger domain and the booking page is most used. That tool didn't allow the booking page to be noindexed (I know, crazy)- so I changed the name inside the booking tool away from the brand name as to not have both the site and the booking site optimized for the brand. Other things I've checked: The home page is indexed Home page canonical tag points to itself Title tag contains brand name at front (rest of site it's at the end) Robots.txt is accurate (allows home page) XML sitemap contains home page (and accurate for other pages) To make this even more confusing, if you search the brand name the physical location appears on the right rail with accurate URL. Any other ideas that I may be missing?
Local Website Optimization | | karmadigital0 -
One of my man pages is not ranking and does not seem to exist.
One of my main pages is not ranking and does not seem to exist. I have gone through every tool on webmaster and yoast. I cannot find an error, but every metric I know of says my page should be on the first page of my target search term. Moz graded it as an A, but It is not ranked on any page. Can someone please help?? my target search is "Jekyll Island Wedding Photographer" my home page shows up on page 2 but this page http://saintsimonsphotography.com/jekyll-island-wedding-photographer/ is my page that does not seem to exist. I have never had this problem with any of my other businesses. Jekyll island is the next island over and I need this term to rank. Thank you for any help.
Local Website Optimization | | krivec80 -
If I am starting a new business, similar to my existing business...
Howdy MOZ community, I hope you are enjoying the last days of summer as much as we are here in Toronto-Canada.I own an Air Duct Cleaning business, I have done the web design as well as SEO, My website is currently ranking for quite a few keywords (some of them on the top of the SERPS) special thanks to MOZ for their awesome tools and blog posts.I am starting a Mobile Car Detailing business, Despite the fact that my Duct Cleaning domain is 5 years old with a DA of 42 and PA of 40 (main page).Would it be better for me to just add pages to my existing website (despite the fact that both businesses are in a cleaning niche) or would it be better for me to start another website from scratch? Would it be a bonus for me in terms of my current DA to add pages to my existing website.like for example: www.mywebsite.ca/Mobile-Auto-Detailing or would I get penalized for it? I thank you all for answering my question. Alex
Local Website Optimization | | DustChasersToronto0 -
Internationalization: 2 Websites in English for different location?
Hi guys, My customer is already well established in France. They have a good Domain Authority and a lot of Inbound Links. They're doing very well in France. They're now looking at entering the US market, however, their trademark is already registered within the US. They therefore decided to go with a new name. Basically: They open an english-only website for the US presence They add English as a language on their French website for their European presence They'll therefore have two domains: aaa.com: US Presence bbb.com: European Presence; 2 languages: French & English My main reaction was that: since the content on aaa.com and bbb.com/english/ will be the same, they'll necessarily have Duplicate Content issue. How would you look at this? What would be the best alternative for them? Thank you
Local Website Optimization | | PierreLechelle0 -
UK website to be duplicated onto 2 ccTLD's - is this duplicate content?
Hi We have a client who wishes to have a site created and duplicated onto 3 servers hosted in three different countries. United Kingdom, Australia and USA. All of which will ofcourse be in the English language. A long story short, the website will provide the user 3 options on the homepage asking them which "country site" they wish to view. (I know I can detect the user IP and autoredirect but this is not what they want) Once they choose an option it will direct the user to the appropriate ccTLD. Now the client wants the same information to appear on all 3 sites with some slight variations in products available and English/US spelling difference but for the most part, the sites will look the same with the same content on each page. So my question is, will these 3 sites been seen as duplicates of each other even though they are hosted in different countries and are on ccTLD's? Are there any considerations I should pass onto the client with this approach? Many thanks for reading.
Local Website Optimization | | yousayjump
Kris0 -
International Site Geolocation Redirection (best way to redirect and allow Google bots to index sites)
I have a client that has an international website. The website currently has IP detection and redirects you to the subdomain for your country. They have currently only launched the Australian website and are not yet open to the rest of the world: https://au.domain.com/ Google is not indexing the Australian website or pages, instead I believe that the bots are being blocked by the IP redirection every time they try to visit one of the Australian pages. Therefore only the US 'coming soon' page is being properly indexed. So, I would like to know the best way to place a geolocation redirection without creating a splash page to select location? User friendliness is most important (so we don't want cookies etc). I have seen this great Whiteboard Friday video on Where to Host and How to Target, which makes sense, but what it doesn't tell me is exactly the best method for redirection except at about 10:20 where it tells me what I'm doing is incorrect. I have also read a number of other posts on IP redirection, but none tell me the best method, and some are a little different examples... I need for US visitors to see the US coming soon page and for Google to index the Australian website. I have seen a lot about JS redirects, IP redirects and .htaccess redirects, but unfortunately my technical knowledge of how these affect Google's bots doesn't really help. Appreciate your answers. Cheers, Lincoln
Local Website Optimization | | LincolnSmith0
