Duplicate Content - Local SEO - 250 Locations

[SEOJedi51]

Hey everyone,

I'm currently working with a client that has 250 locations across the United States. Each location has its own website and each website has the same 10 service pages. All with identical content (the same 500-750 words) with the exception of unique meta-data and NAP which has each respective location's name, city, state, etc.

I'm unsure how duplicate content works at the local level. I understand that there is no penalty for duplicate content, rather, any negative side-effects are because search engines don't know which page to serve, if there are duplicates.

So here's my question:

If someone searches for my client's services in Miami, and my client only as one location in that city, does duplicate content matter? Because that location isn't competing against any of my client's other locations locally, so search engines shouldn't be confused by which page to serve, correct?

Of course, in other cities, like Phoenix, where they have 5 locations, then I'm sure the duplicate content is negatively affecting all 5 locations.

I really appreciate any insight!

Thank you,

[EGOL]

** I was just curious if anyone knew if the duplicate content would suppress traffic for locations that aren't in the same city.**

If Google sees pages on your site that are substantially duplicate.  It will filter all but one of them from the SERPs.

** is it even possible to re-write the same 750 word service page "uniquely" 250 times? Ha.**

Yes.  The reward is enormous.  Ha.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey There!

In my view, the client has 2 options here:

1. Spring for unique content on the 250 site

2. Reconsider his decision about bringing everything into a single site. The question you've asked (can you really write about the identical service 250 times) is exactly why he should see his strategy is cumbersome. Ideally, you'd have a good handful of unique pages describing benefits of the service and would then have 250 semi-unique pages on the website, one for each physical location.

[BlueCorona]

Hi SEO Team @ G5!

Since you are unable to create one large domain that houses all of the locations, I would attempt to make each of the websites as "unique" as possible. But keep in mind that unique content doesn't necessarily mean that you need to completely reword the content in different ways 250 times. Small changes can make a big difference.

There's a great (and short) video of Google's Matt Cutts talks about how Google handles duplicate content. There's also another helpful video about it here.

Matt Cutts has said, "Google looks for duplicate content and where we can find it, we often try to group it all together and treat it as of it’s just one piece of content. So most of the time, suppose we’re starting to return a set of search results and we’ve got two pages that are actually kind of identical. Typically we would say, “OK, rather than show both of those pages since they’re duplicates, let’s just show one of those pages and we’ll crowd the other result out,” and then if you get to the bottom of the search results and you really want to do an exhaustive search, you can change the filtering so that you can say, “OK, I want to see every single page” and then you’d see that other page. But for the most part, duplicate content isn’t really treated as spam. It’s just treated as something we need to cluster appropriately and we need to make sure that it ranks correctly, but duplicate content does happen."

Read more from this article here: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2319706/googles-matt-cutts-a-little-duplicate-content-wont-hurt-your-rankings

With this in mind, I do think your assumption is correct. If you make sure that any location that could be seen as competing areas has unique content, they won't necessarily be dinged for duplicated content. Unless you were trying to rank nationally, this shouldn't be a major problem for each individual website that is targeting a different location.

[SEOJedi51]

Thanks for your response. We would love to move to a single-domain, but unfortunately the client won't allow us to make that change.

I agree that ideally all 250 locations would have unique content, but I was just curious if anyone knew if the duplicate content would suppress traffic for locations that aren't in the same city.

Also, my other concern is; is it even possible to re-write the same 750 word service page "uniquely" 250 times? Ha.

[EGOL]

I would also make them into one big website.

But at the same time, I would have full unique content for each of the 250 locations.  I know that sounds like a huge expense and a lot of work, but any company who has the resources to support 250 locations can support the small expense of unique content for each of them.

[RyanScollon]

I completely understand where you are coming from, but I can only advise that you scrap all of the individual sites and make them into one big website. I know that sounds easier than it really is and there are most likely some complications that prevented them from doing it in the first place but it really is the best thing to do.

I do believe that the duplication will still matter, even if you only have one office/store in that location.