Duplicate Content on Website with Multiple Locations
-
Hi there,
I've spent hours reading posts on duplicate content and googling this but I'm still not sure what to do.
We created a site that has two WP installs for a company with two different locations - the landing page is website.com and links to WP install 1 (website.com/city1), and WP install 2 (website.com/city2). They specifically wanted two different sites so they could be managed by staff at either location. However some of the pages have the same content - ie. services, policies, etc. so all of those are showing errors for duplicate content. All pages have different city-specific URL's and meta-descriptions but that clearly doesn't help.
We can't redirect the "duplicate" pages because then it would take the user to the other city's specific site. Is there anything we can do?? Is this going to significantly damage rankings?
Thanks kindly for any help you can provide.
-
HI,
It doesn't redirect the user, no. It tells Google 'which URL' you prefer to be indexed. Now, again I don't believe that this is the best option, as you want BOTH cities to rank. Does it affect the rankings? Yes, because you are saying Page A is more valuable than the duplicated Page B- leaving Page B out in the wild as the less important page for ranking.
So, again having two versions of the domains ( based on the cities) isn't beneficial, these should both be under one domain ( wp installation) and adding a "locations" page, to reduce the self competition.
-
Thank you for your help Tammy. I read through your links when you first replied and they helped a lot.
Pardon my lack of knowledge here, but I just want to make sure I understand correctly: If I go the rel=canonical route for the "duplicate" pages, it won't actually redirect the user, but will just tell google where the "original" page lives, and that it's duplicated on purpose correct? Does that then hurt the rankings for the site that's not showing as the "original" content?
Thanks again for your help.
-
While not appealing, you should rewrite all the content to be 100% unique, if it is privacy policy, tos, etc, you can no index those to reduce duplication. Otherwise, your options are limited. I realize that the products/ services will be similar in nature, but writing them in a different way to reduce the significantly similar content.
Alternatively, you can do a cross domain canonical tag, this tells Google that this content is duplicated intentionally on the other URL.
Here are a few articles about that:
https://yoast.com/rel-canonical/
http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/56326/canonical-urls-with-multiple-domains
Next, focus on building local links to the individual city pages, to further differentiate the cities and the intent. Also, using the schema.org for 'local business' on each versions of the URL's. And, again I will say this is not an ideal situation and the best case scenario would be to add that content on ONE domain just with different location pages, within a subdirectory format.
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
-
SEO Audit for Law Website
Hello, One of our client had a 3 page Law website and i am looking for an seo audit tool. What are the things we need to recommend as niche is Law industry. What audit tools would you recommend ? Thanks John
Moz Bar | | Johnroger0 -
What do I do with content suggestions to help you rank higher?
I am looking at the Page Optimization on a post. Under content suggestions to help you rank higher - Are they recommending that I use the recommend anchor text and use one of the top ranking websites to link to those?
Moz Bar | | RoniFaida1 -
Www and non www / duplicate content / redirects / www resolve issue
I am not getting docked for these specific errors, but I am getting docked for 1 page has a WWW resolve issue and 1 wrong URL in the sitemap... (SEM Rush) but when I use moz, it's not showing any issues. So I have these things set up so far: In .htaccess i have a command that removes the www. 301 redirect from www version to the non www (homepage) canonical on index.html pointing to non www version, I also set up a canonical tag for each page on the site search console with non www, www, https www, https non www all set to non www preference. Also, when I fetch the www version in google search console it says it's being 301 redirected to non www version which is basically what I want.Is there anything that i'm missing? These errors on SEM Rush are giving me anxiety lol.
Moz Bar | | donnieath1 -
Duplicating a Report to monthly from weekly
Is there a way to duplicate a weekly report and also run it monthly without redesigning it from scratch? I have a great report a client loves but they also want to see it monthly. Thanks! Melinda
Moz Bar | | timesharecmo0 -
Crawl Diagnostics: How many pages (deep) will it crawl for dup content
Does anyone know how deep the crawl diagnostics will crawl when searching for dup content? Will it crawl the entire site, or will it only crawl "x" amount of pages? Thanks!
Moz Bar | | tdawson090 -
Weekly Custom Reports Send Duplicates
For one of my sites, I have set up a weekly custom report to be sent out, but when the report comes in, there are multiple copies of the report. Any help would be appreciated on how to make sure that only one copy of the report is sent.
Moz Bar | | Wharthog0 -
My 301 Error and Duplicate Title Content Issue is Growing !
When i redirect some of my page - it shows error. not redirecting and i made this 3-4 months before, no effect. All Errors under each category make me gone sick.
Moz Bar | | Esaky0 -
Why do the crawl diagnostics indicate duplicate page content among blog postings hosted by WordPress?
Does anyone know why the crawl diagnostics indicate duplicate page content regarding the blog we are hosting on WordPress? And does anyone know how to fix this issue? The content is not, or does not appear to be duplicate.
Moz Bar | | AndreaKayal0