Is minor duplicate content on my website okay?

[Brabian]

I know duplicate content across multiple websites is not a good thing, however I've always wondered about minor duplicate content on your own website. I know its good practice to have unique content on each page but what about the little stuff. For example on our website certain related pages share the same content in a right sidebar. Such as links to pdf leaflets, or "you can read our blog etc" . Is there a minimum number of repeated words required before its flagged as duplicate content? Another example is a customer gave two testimonials for two of our employees - the testimonials were identical other than the employee names - if these were posted on separate pages is it a problem for the site as a whole or for both those individual pages?

Thanks

[Brabian]

Thanks for the responses guys! I appreciate your help. As for the duplicate testimonial LindaLV, I agree with you completely. But as there are over 100 employee profiles with customer testimonials on chances are slim that anyone would notice. I know its best practice to have them different anyway but my employers would rather it just went up than taking the time to bother their client or re-write it themselves they wouldnt care much for best practice, user experience etc.

[ofw12387]

Hello,

my opinion is that as soon as each url offers always some unique content to be indexed, it should be ok. I don´t see the sense of having two urls with exactly the same content, but doesn´t seems to be your case

Br

//Oliver

[Linda-Vassily]

Yes, many sites have repeated information in sidebars, footers and so on--that is not a problem. I would wonder about the testimonials, though. Not from an SEO viewpoint but from a user viewpoint. If I read two testimonials that were identical except for the name, I would not give either one much credence. (But that's a small issue.)

[RyanPurkey]

Per Google, "Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar."  (from: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359)  Substantive meaning most or nearly all of the content on two pages being the same. The examples they provide bear this out.

• Discussion forums that can generate both regular and stripped-down pages targeted at mobile devices
• Store items shown or linked via multiple distinct URLs
• Printer-only versions of web pages

In each case they're talking about URLs that would be nearly identical, not the blocks of navigation or sidebar content that are common through out a site. Your website should be ok.