Duplicating relevant category content in subcategories. Good or bad for google ranking?
-
In a travel related page I have city categories with city related information.
Would you recommend for or against duplicating some relevant city related in subcategory pages.For visitor it would be useful and google should have more context about the topic of our page.
But my main concern is how this may be perceived by google and especially whether it may make it more likely being penalized for thin content. We already were hit end of june by panda/phantom and we are working on adding also more unique content, but this would be something that we could do additionally and basically instantaneously. Just do not want to make things worse. -
Thanks a lot Laura, so I guess we would not need to be too concerned.
-
As with many SEO questions, the answer here is "It depends." What type of content is duplicated on the city pages? How much unique content is there in addition to the duplicated content?
Having the same content on unique city pages is not necessarily a problem. Google will serve up the page that is most relevant to the search query and will filter out the rest. However, if all of the content is the same across all of these pages, the overall site would be considered lower quality. The key is to balance any duplicated content with additional unique content that provides value for the site visitor.
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
-
Are backlinks within duplicate content ignored or devalued?
From what I understand, Googles no longer has a "Duplicate Content Penalty" instead duplicate content simply isn't show in the search results. Does that mean that any links in the duplicate content are completely ignored, or devalued as far as the backlink profile of the site they are linking to? An example would be an article that might be published on two or three major industry websites. Are only the links from the first website GoogleBot discovers the article on counted or are all the links counted and you just won't see the article itself come up in search results for the second and third website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Consult19010 -
Is it a good or bad idea (in Google's eyes) to add a forum to my website?
I have an active website with many users adding dozens of comments on the many pages of the site daily. I'm am wondering if it would be good for the overall ranking strength of the site if I were to add a forum to it (in a subdirectory, like forum.mysite.com). On one hand, I can see the forum posts as thin content, which Google wouldn't care for. On the other hand, I see the additional user engagement on the site, which I think Google would like. I know the benefits it can have to the users, but for this question, all I want to know is if this would be seen by Google as a plus or a minus for my site, assuming the forum succeeded in becoming popular. I don't want to do anything that will diminish the value of my site in Google's eyes. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Is Q&A on a website good or bad for SEO?
I am considering adding a Q&A section to my website and I have a few questions for you PROs!: is it a good thing for SEO? Or a potential pitfall for SEO? If it is used often and users post relevant topics related to the website content, will it help the overall DA and websites SERP performance? Are there inherent risks for website security when using a Q&A? Are there any other questions I should be asking? I am using Joomla! 3.0 with Stackideas Easy discuss/easy social. Thanks for any advice! BB
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BBuck0 -
PDF for link building - avoiding duplicate content
Hello, We've got an article that we're turning into a PDF. Both the article and the PDF will be on our site. This PDF is a good, thorough piece of content on how to choose a product. We're going to strip out all of the links to our in the article and create this PDF so that it will be good for people to reference and even print. Then we're going to do link building through outreach since people will find the article and PDF useful. My question is, how do I use rel="canonical" to make sure that the article and PDF aren't duplicate content? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
New Site Launch- Bad Rankings
So I am slightly stumped. I work on a few eCom sites and over the past few months we have been launching new products as well as some site updates/upgrades. The issue that I am having is this. Product that is actually new this season, as in we did not carry it before, is ranking fine...generally speaking we are top 3 in Google with Brand/Product name. However product that is not new, meaning it has a new color or graphic but has been in the catalog for years is not ranking. In Prior years the URL's ended with the product name, now however they have additional information added to the end for this season. Would not directing the old URL to the new URL effect the rankings of these pages? I am open to suggestions beyond redirecting as well. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | K2_Sports0 -
Google Translate for Unique Content
We are considering using the Google Translation tool to translate customer reviews into various languages for publication as indexable content both for users and for search engine long tail visibility and rankings. Does anyone have any experience, insights or caveats to share?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edreamsbcn0 -
How to manage duplicate content?
I have a real estate site that contains a large amount of duplicate content. The site contains listings that appear both on my clients website and on my competitors websites(who have better domain authority). It is critical that the content is there because buyers need to be able to find these listings to make enquiries. The result is that I have a large number pages that contain duplicate content in some way, shape or form. My search results pages are really the most important ones because these are the ones targeting my keywords. I can differentiate these to some degree but the actual listings themselves are duplicate. What strategies exist to ensure that I'm not suffereing as a result of this content? Should I : Make the duplicate content noindex. Yes my results pages will have some degree of duplicate content but each result only displays a 200 character summary of the advert text so not sure if that counts. Would reducing the amount of visible duplicate content improve my rankings as a whole? Link back to the clients site to indicate that they are the original source Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0 -
Duplicate Listings on Google Maps
About 3 weeks ago google created a duplicate listing for our law firm on google maps. In building links I have tried very hard to ensure that our address and company name was always listed identically. Our correct firm name and address is Feldman Feldman & Associates, PC 2221 Camino Del Rio South, Suite 201 inevitably somehow the new listing stated Camino Del Rio S, Ste 201 All of our reviews moved over to this new profile, I claimed it, changed it to make it the same reported it to Google. Google merged them. Now Google has created another profile this time the firm name and address matches ours exactly (South and Suite both spelled out), but all of the reviews have moved over except for the most recent one(s). I have claimed it again and reported it to google, changed the address. Google then created another listing. Our page rank for keywords has been hurt by this. any idea why this keeps happening suggestions? Here are the two pages. This is our original listing http://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&cid=468564492130231259 This is the new one google self created that stole all our reviews, but is ranked very poorly for the keyword searches. http://maps.google.com/maps/place?&cid=468564492130231259
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jfeld2220