Content - Similar but not exactly the same content - Duplicate or Spammy?

[Niclasfa]

Hey, so I have been wondering for some time now as some pages will get indexed and others won't appear at all. That makes me think that I am either creating to similar content or it is becoming too spammy.

Take these two pages I created for example. The body content is very similar but h tags, meta tags and title are different. So my questions is; would pages not be displaying due possibly being too similar and spammy or duplicate?

I have linked two pages that are very similar below and would love to hear any thoughts about it.

https://www.dlmremovals.com.au/queensland/interstate/removalists/gold-coast-to-ballarat-removalist-backloads-and-moving-service.html

https://www.dlmremovals.com.au/queensland/interstate/removalists/gold-coast-to-bendigo-removalist-backloads-and-moving-service.html

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[EGOL]

Lots of people grab content and republish it.

Lots of people grab the same content and republish it.

The first few people who do it have the best chance of getting away with it.  But, if you are the tenth or the twentith, then you are more likely to be ignored by Google.  (After you republish this duplicate, Google might find it, index it, and rank it... then some months down the road they realize that your stuff is duplicate and take action against it.)

The exception to the above is when you are a powerful publisher.  Then you can get away with a lot more than other republishers, and you might even outrank the original source.

"If you've realized that your local industry is riddled with poor quality content, see this as your opportunity to beat out lazier competitors. If you deliver the superior experience, it may give you a very valuable edge, while also safeguarding your reputation and rankings against Google filters and penalties in future."

This is so true and so surprising.  There are still a lot of topics on the internet that are not covered by substantive, high quality content written by an authoritative author.

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks for coming back with further questions on this. Unfortunately, changing tags and maps doesn't make your text content "different enough" to lessen the concern that Google may view what you are doing as duplicative.

Basically, your business model is a local business with a single location. If you wish to gain organic visibility for your services beyond that single location, it's true that developing landing pages for these other locations is a best practice ... only provided that the content of them is actually useful and largely unique. You are in a similar scenario to a plumber, who has a single location from which he offers a set of services to a variety of neighboring towns. His Local SEO is going to be anchored to his city of location, but his organic SEO can branch out to represent his work in the other towns he serves. There is nothing spammy about him featuring this work in his service cities, but unless he has something unique to say about his work there, he's going to end up with a weak site burdened with duplicate content clearly designed for search engines instead of for the assistance of consumers.

I recommend taking a look at a blog post I wrote here a couple of years ago that offers tips for creating strong, diversified landing pages in a scenario much like yours:

https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages

You will need to dig deep into your resources to create this type of useful, unique content.

As for your competitors, your question is reasonable. If Google doesn't like thin, duplicate content, why do we see people getting away with it? To this, my answer is:

1. People were getting away with all kinds of things the day before an update like Penguin or Panda. They woke up the following day to a changed world in which their lack of effort was no longer being rewarded.

2. If you've realized that your local industry is riddled with poor quality content, see this as your opportunity to beat out lazier competitors. If you deliver the superior experience, it may give you a very valuable edge, while also safeguarding your reputation and rankings against Google filters and penalties in future.

Hope this helps!

[Niclasfa]

Thank you for the feedback.

I see all the points mentioned but I still feel confused about it. I have worked in the industry for 5 years now and some of the website that do this have been ranking well for at least that long, would google not have penalised these website by now? I started to do it to and alas, I also started to rank better and get more inquiries.

I want to make one point here. Even though the content is similar. It is not the same and I have clearly changed factors that will help google understand what I am trying to achieve. Meta tags, title, h tags, even maps on the pages. Location to location is what I am trying to factor in with this project. Even though the content is very similar. Is it still not unique? Where is the line? that is what I find confusing. Do I spend more time making pages unique even though I don't need to? Will that be better in the long run and keep the pages positioned better for longer? How unique does the content have to be?

[MiriamEllis]

Seconding the opinions of Clive and EGOL here. And, particularly want to highlight EGOL's point about not imitating competitors' poor practices. It might help to view these competitors as being just one Google action away from getting dinged for this strategy.

It seems like the challenge for you here is to create something that helps customers understand the geography of your services, without simply duplicating the same page and swapping out city names. I would recommend putting some creative resources behind figuring out how to meet this challenge.

[EGOL]

Clive Morley is right.  100% right.

These pages are close enough to being duplicates and Google will likely filter one of them from the search results.  Maybe they will filter both of them from the search results.

If you want to compete for slightly different keywords then you will need to produce unique and substantive content for every one of them.

Many competitors that rank much better do exactly the same.

This is sometimes true.   But Google has detected that you are doing it.  Someday Google might detect that they are doing it.

So, now it is up to you to stop taking shortcuts and do the work required to present unique value for each page on your website.

[I.AM.Strategist]

Hello,

These pages are virtually identical and I wouldn't be surprised if Google views these as duplicate or spammy.

Both of these pages serve the same user intent - moving from Gold Coast to another location - and it's therefore worth considering having just one page that covers all of the numerous destinations.

Both pages have an unnatural amount of keyword usage which may also trigger a spammy issue.

If the purpose is to rank for "moving from Gold Coast to...." type searches than this page would probably benefit from having more Gold Coast related content - geographical info, images, etc.

Good luck