How to Handle Franchise Duplicate Content
-
My agency handles digital marketing for about 80 Window World stores, each with separate sites. For the most part, the content across all of these sites is the exact same, though we have slowly but surely been working through getting new, unique content up on some of the top pages over the past year. These pages include resource pages and specific product pages. I'm trying to figure out the best temporary solution as we go through this process. Previously, we have tried to keep the pages we knew were duplicates from indexing, but some pages have still managed to slip through the cracks during redesigns.
- Would canonicals be the route to go? (do keep in mind that there isn't necessarily one "original version," so there isn't a clear answer as to which page/site all the duplicated pages should point to)
- Should we just continue to use robots.txt/noindex for all duplicate pages for now?
- Any other recommendations?
Thanks in advance!
-
It sounds like you are already doing as well as you can - since there's no clear canonical page, noindexing the duplicate pages would probably be the way to go. Don't panic if you see some duplicate pages still sneak into the index after you've noindexed them; this is common and it's unlikely that Google will see this as a Panda-worthy problem on your part.
The one drawback to noindexing the pages is that when unique content is up on them, and they are ready to be indexed, it may take a while for Google to get the message that this page is supposed to be indexed now. I've seen it take anywhere from an hour to a week for a page to appear in the index. One thing you can do in the meantime is make sure each site is accruing some good links - not an easy task with 80 websites, I know, but the higher authority will help out once the unique content is ready to go. Sounds like a herculean task - good luck!
-
Solid insight, but unfortunately we do have the 80 websites because the owners of the store manage each separately. Some stores offer different products or services than others and are completely separate entities. Each store owner that we work with is an individual client; we do not work with corporate. Plus, since we don't do marketing for ALL stores in the entire franchise, just a large chunk of them, one big site just wouldn't work. Also, it's really not possible for us to make all these store owners write their own content for the entire site.
We really appreciate your thought on this and totally agree with your logic, but unfortunately would not be able to implement either solution. Right now, we just need some kind of bandaid solution to utilize as we work through rewriting the most important pages on the site (probably either de-indexing them or some kind of canonical strategy).
Thanks!
-
Hey There!
Important question ... why does the company have 80 websites? Are they being individually managed by the owner of each store, or are they all in the control of the central company?
If the latter, what you are describing is a strong illustration supporting the typical advice that it is generally better to build 1 powerhouse website for your brand than a large number of thin, weak, duplicative sites.
If this company was my client, I would be earnestly urging them to consolidate everything into a single site. If they are currently investing in maintaining 80 website, there's reason to hope that they've got the funding to develop a strong, unique landing page for each of the 80 locations on their main corporate website, and redirect the old sites to the central one. Check out how REI.com surfaces unique pages for all of their locations. It's inspiring how they've made each page unique. If your client could take a similar approach, they'd be on a better road for the future.
You would, of course, need to update all citations to point to the landing pages once you had developed them.
If, however, the 80 websites are being controlled by 80 different franchise location managers, what needs to be developed here is a policy that prevents these managers from taking the content of the corporation. If they want to each run a separate website, they need to take on the responsibility of creating their own content. And, of course, the corporate website needs to be sure it doesn't have internal duplicate content and is not taking content from its franchise managers, either. 80 separate websites should = 80 totally separate efforts. That's a lot to have going on, pointing back to the preferred method of consolidation wherever possible.
Hope this helps!
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
-
International subdirectory without localized content - best practice / need advice
Hi there, Our site uses a subdirectory for regional and multilingual sites as show below for 200+ countries.
Local Website Optimization | | erinfalwell
EX: /en_US/ All sites have ~the same content & are in English. We have hreflang tags but still have crawl issues. Is there another URL structure you would recommend? Are there any other ways to avoid the duplicate page & crawl budget issues outside of the hreflang tag? Appreciate it!0 -
Differentiating Franchise Location Names to better optimize locations
Hello All, I am currently spear heading SEO for a national franchise. I am coming across locations in the same city and zip code. I'm definitely finding difficulties in naming the location in a way that will be specific to the franchise locations (locations are 1 mile away from each other). I am looking to apply geo specific location names for each center regardless of local city terms. (e.g. Apexnetwork of north madronna, Apexnetwork of south madronna) Also, building the website and location to read (apexnetwork.com/north-madronna….. apexnetwork.com/south-madronna) While encouraging the client to continue using the geo specific terms while writing blogs. Is this best practice? Any feedback would help.
Local Website Optimization | | Jeffvertus0 -
Add Content to Page or Create New Page?
We are doing some local SEO for our business which is in 10 cities. We have built a city page with unique content for each city and linked to a unique contact page with contact information unique for each city. The content on our existing page is fairly thin. 2/3 of it is the same amongst all pages as our services are the exact same from city to city so the description ad menu of our services. Then 1/3 of the content is unique to the city which is a stock photo and 1-2 paragraphs of text containing about 175 words. We have another chunk of content for each city which is probably 2-3 paragraphs but each paragraph will be short so probably in total 200 words in 1-3 paragraphs. The subject of the content is related to one of the most popular search queries that are location specific. For example, if we were a company that provided say, environmental remodeling services in city X, this second chunk of content might be about required building permits when doing remodeling in City X and how to get them, how much they cost. If the original content on the pre-existing landing page is already pretty thin, is the SEO effect going to most likely be better to add the content to the existing page or, even though it's less than 200 words, add the content to a separate page and cross link between the main city page and the city contact page.
Local Website Optimization | | SEO18051 -
Question about partial duplicate content on location landing pages of multilocation business
Hi everyone, I am a psychologist in private practice in Colorado and I recently went from one location to 2 locations. I'm currently updating my website to better accommodate the second location. I also plan continued expansion in the future, so there will be more and more locations as time goes on. As a result, I am making my websites current homepage non-location specific and creating location landing pages as I have seen written about in many places. My question is: I know that location landing pages should have unique content, and I have plenty of this, but how much content is it also okay to have be duplicate across the location landing pages and the homepage? For instance, here is the current draft of the new homepage (these are not live yet): http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/ And here are the drafts of the location landing pages: http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/denver-office http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/dev/colorado-springs-office And for reference, here is the current homepage that is actually live for my single Denver location: http://www.effectivetherapysolutions.com/ As you can see, the location landing pages have the following sections of unique content: Therapist picture at the top testimonial quotes (the one on the homepage is the only thing I have I framed in this block from crawl so that it appears as unique content on the Denver page) therapist bios GMB listing driving directions and hours and I also haven't added these yet, but we will also have unique client success stories and appropriately tagged images of the offices So that's plenty of unique content on the pages, but I also have the following sections of content that are identical or nearly identical to what I have on the homepage: Intro paragraph blue and green "adult" and child/teen" boxes under the intro paragraph "our treatment really works" section "types of anxiety we treat" section Is that okay or is that too much duplicate content? The reason I have it that way is that my website has been very successful for years at converting site visitors into paying clients, and I don't want to lose aspects of the page that I know work when people land on it. And now that I am optimizing the location landing pages to be where people end up instead of the homepage, I want them to still see all of that content that I know is effective at conversion. If people on here do think it is too much, one possible solution is to turn parts of it into pictures or put them into I-frames on the location pages so Google doesn't crawl those parts of the location pages, but leave them normal on the homepage so it still gets crawled on there. I've seen a lot written about not having duplicate content on location landing pages for this type of website, but everything I've read seems to refer to entire pages being copied with just the location names changed, which is not what I'm doing, hence my question. Thanks everyone!
Local Website Optimization | | gremmy90 -
SEO for Franchises - Subdomains or Folders?
Wondering if there ever has been any recent consensus on best SEO strategy for a Franchise. I feel it is safe to assume that just having one corporate website with a "store locator" that just brings up the address, phone and hours of a location is not optimal. Yes, the important thing is to get a Google Places for Business listing for each location so you can come up in the 3-pack and regular Maps result, BUT, the rankings for the 3-pack is largely determined by the site's authority and relevance to the specific search term used, IN ADDITION TO, the proximity of the business to the search user's physical location. Apparently it is widely believed that domain authority does not transfer from www.mycorporatedomain.com to somecity.mycorporatedomain.com. And of course we also know there is a potential for a duplicate content penalty, so you can't just duplicate your main site for a number of locations and change the address and phone number on the contact page. If the products and or services are identical for each location, then it's going to be somewhat ridiculous to try and rewrite many sections of the website since the information is no different despite the location. It seems in general more people are advocates of putting location pages or micro-sites in a subfolder of the corporate domain so that it can benefit from the domain's authority. HOWEVER, it is also widely known that the home page (root URL) of any domain carries more weight in the eyes of Google. So let's assume the best strategy is to create a micro-site where phone and address is different anywhere they appear and the contact page is customized to that location, and the "Meet The Staff" page is customized to that location. The site uses the same style 'template' if you will as the main site. Let's also assume you can build a custom home page that has some different content, but still shares the same look and some of the same information as the main site. But let's say between the different phone, address, and maybe some different images and 20% of the content rewritten a bit, Google doesn't view it as dupe content. So would the best strategy then be to have the location home page be: somecity.mycorporatedomain.com and the product and services pages that are identical to the main site you just use a rel canonical to point to the main site? Or, do you make the "home page" for the local business be a subfolder of the main site. So I guess what it boils down to is whether or not the domain authority has more of an effect compared to having a unique home page on a subdomain. What about this? Say the only thing different on the local site is the contact (phone/address) in the header and/or footer of every page, the contact form page, and the meet the staff page. All other content is identical to the corp site, including the home page. I think in that case you need to use a script to serve the pages dynamically. So you would need to server the pages using a PHP script that detects the subfolder name to determine the location and dynamically replaces the phone and address and server different contact and staff pages. You could have a vanity domain mycity.mycorporatedomain.com that does a 301 redirect to the subfolder home page. (This is all ofcourse assuming the subfolder method is the way to go.)
Local Website Optimization | | SeoJaz0 -
Need sitemap opinion on large franchise network with thousands of subdomains
Working on a large franchise network with thousands of subdomains. There is the primary corporate domain which basically directs traffic to store locators and then to individual locations. The stores sell essentially the same products with some variations on pricing so lots of pages with the same product descriptions. Different content All the subdomains have their location information address info in the header, footer and geo meta tags on every page. Page titles customized with franchise store id numbers. Duplicate content Product description blocks. Franchisee domains will likely have the ability to add their own content in the future but as of right now most of the content short of the blocks on the pages are duplicated. Likely limitations -- Adding City to page titles will likely be problematic as there could be multiple franchises in the same city. Ideally it would be nice if users could search for the store or product and have centers return that are closest to them. We can turn on sitemaps on all the subdomains and try to submit them to the search engines. Looking for insight regarding submitting all these sites or just focusing on the main domain that has a lot less content on it.
Local Website Optimization | | jozwikjp0 -
Hreflang | Should I implement hreflang for regional targeted but - different content of websites?
Hello, I'm implementing hreflang for my e-commerce websites which have different languages and do serve different content based on location. Currently, I'm only using hreflang for for alternate language (fr-fr, fr-be, fr-ma, ...). I wonder if it might be better or if I am allowed to add other version of my websites (IT, ES, DE,... ) even if those version are serving specific content for these specific location. So, the content (products) of Germany is different of the product of the other countries. Here is an example : www.mywebsite.com/apple-phone (selling apple phone for US with product avalaible only in US). www.mywebsite.de/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Germany with product avalaible only in Germany, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.it/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Italy with product avalaible only in Italy, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.es/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Spain with product avalaible only in Spain, the available models might be different from US and other websites). www.mywebsite.pt/apple-phone (selling apple phone for Portugal with product avalaible only in Portugal, the available models might be different from US and other websites).
Local Website Optimization | | manoman880 -
Blogs/content marketing or slower salesfunnel on webshop?
Hi all, Im considering about building contents en blogs on a webshop, because a visitor will get see a lot of information about blogs, etc. The salefunnel will be chaotic, purchasing will be slower on a webshop. The webshop has more then 5000 products. Focus on gamers. For example Ikea or mahuranna shop, they have builded a website near their webshops. To get more traffic ofcourse, but its to hard to do both of them. Your focus will get lost and they way of communication on website/shop will be changing. Your brand and strategic will also change a lot, thats why im considering to find the right way. Who can give me an advice?
Local Website Optimization | | Dreamgame20160