Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Moz Tools
    3. Moz Bar
    4. Duplicate Content on Website with Multiple Locations

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Duplicate Content on Website with Multiple Locations

    Moz Bar
    2
    4
    3924
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • charlie007
      charlie007 last edited by

      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.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • TammyWood
        TammyWood @charlie007 last edited by

        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.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • charlie007
          charlie007 last edited by

          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.

          TammyWood 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • TammyWood
            TammyWood last edited by

            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.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • ravigaurav

              Unsolved How Should I Increase DA of my Website?

              increase da

              Google itself has been troubled by ranking factors. On top of that, the https://moz.com/ has worn a new garland of domain authority. It is even more regrettable when a website DA suddenly decreased. As recently on 22nd September, my website's DA was 16. As usual, on September 23, I posted a new informational blog related to QuickBooks antivirus exclusions on my website. The very next day my website DA was decreased. Can anyone who knows SEO help me understand why this always happens specially to me every time? I read the whole forum and all I found out is how my site's DA is decreased.
              Can anyone let us know whether we can increase the Domain Authority of our website only by creating backlinks or there can be some other activities also?

              Moz Bar | | ravigaurav
              2
            • ajegunle

              Unsolved Why is my website Backlinks Lower on Moz than on SEMRush?

              backlinks

              Hi, I'm new to Moz and I am trying to find out why my website Birmingham Roofers has 7 backlinks on Moz it has 21 on SEMRush. However, I read somewhere online in one of your blog post that it crawls in real time.

              Moz Bar | | ajegunle
              1
            • Art-of-Artists

              Location National vs. Country - Different Ranking

              Why is the ranking for a keyword different for the locations National and for example Austria ... both should bring the ranking for the whole country, but often they are different?

              Moz Bar | | Art-of-Artists
              0
            • jbcorcoran

              How do I see amount of traffic to a particular page on a website?

              I am trying to figure out how much traffic goes to a particular page on a website. How would I go about finding this?

              Moz Bar | | jbcorcoran
              6
            • donnieath

              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 | | donnieath
              1
            • RyanRhodes

              What is Considered Duplicate Content by Crawlers?

              I am asking this because I have a couple of site audit tools that I use to crawl a site I work on every week and they are showing duplicate content issues (which I know there is a lot on this site) but some of what is flagged as duplicate content makes no sense. For example, the following URL's were grouped together as duplicate content: | https://www.firefold.com/contact-us | https://www.firefold.com/gabe | https://www.firefold.com/sale | | | How are these pages duplicate content? I am confused on what site audit tools are considering duplicate content. Just FYI, this is data from Moz crawl diagnostics but SEMrush site auditor is giving me the same type of data. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Ryan

              Moz Bar | | RyanRhodes
              0
            • Essential-Pest

              Duplicate Page and Title Issues

              On the last crawl, we received errors for duplicate page titles and some duplicate content pages. Here is the issue: We went through our page titles that were marked as duplicate and changed them to make sure their titles were different. However, we just received a new crawl this week and it is saying there are even more duplicate page title errors detected than before. We're wondering if this is a problem with just us or if it has been happening to other Moz users. As for the duplicate content pages, what is the best way to approach this and see what content is being looked at as a "duplicate" set?

              Moz Bar | | Essential-Pest
              0
            • Prickett

              Pinterest Back Links Showing For One Website But Not Other in OSE

              Hello, I have verified my business websites on both of my pinterest accounts for the following websites Http://www.prickettproperties.com and Http://www.ChicFamilyTravels.com The backlinks for prickett shows up in OSE, but not for ChicFamily. I am curious as to why that is? Thanks in advance for your help

              Moz Bar | | Prickett
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.