Selling same products under separate brands and can't consolidate sites...duplicate content issues?
-
I have a client selling home goods online and in-store under two different brand names in separate regions of the country. Currently, the websites are completely identical aside from branding. It is unlikely that they would have the capacity to write unique titles and page content for each website (~25,000 pages each), and the business would never consolidate the sites.
Would it make sense to use canonical tags pointing to the higher-performing website on category and product pages? This way we could continue to capture branded search to the lesser brand while consolidating authority on the better performing website.
What would you do?
-
Hey there,
Yeah, I'd go ahead and Implement the canonical tags to the higher-performing website on category and product-level pages.
However, if you're feeling a little unsure I'd recommend testing it with a sample set of pages and just monitor the impact to your client's site and adjust accordingly.
That's a bummer they won't let you consolidate the sites though.
The other thing I'd probably consider is investing a bit in local SEO since your client sells home good products.
Hope that 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
-
Can't get my site recognised for keyword
My site prettycool.co.uk and primary we sell fascinators, the problem is I can't get the word fascinators to be listed by Google. We are on the 1st page for most colours ie. pink fascinators, blue fascinators etc. but for the term fascinators even if we fetch we are listed for a couple of hours and then disappear. I've checked for keyword stuffing but our site sell fascinators and we need to have this word in our site and other sites have a lot more references to the term and are listed on the 1st or 2nd pages. We used to be listed on page 1 for many years but the last 2 or 3 years dropped back to page 4 but now nothing. Any help or suggestions would be fantastic!
Technical SEO | | Rutts0 -
Duplicated content & url's for e-commerce website
Hi, I have an e-commerce site where I sell greeting cards. Products are under different categories (birthday, Christmas etc) with subcategories (for Mother, for Sister etc) and same product can be under 3 or 6 subcategories, for example: url: .../greeting-cards/Christmas/product1/for-mother
Technical SEO | | jurginga
url:.../greeting-cards/Christmas/product1/for-sister
etc On the CMS I have one description record per each card (product1) with multiple subcategories attached that naturally creates URLs for subcategories. Moz system (and Google for sure) picks these urls (and content) as duplicated.
Any ideas how to solve this problem?
Thank you very much!0 -
Google how deal with licensed content when this placed on vendor & client's website too. Will Google penalize the client's site for this ?
One of my client bought licensed content from top vendor of Health Industry. This same content is on the vendor's website & my client's site also but on my site there is a link back to vendor is placed which clearly tells to anyone that this is a licensed content & we bought from this vendor. My client bought paid top quality content for best source of industry but at this same this is placed on vendor's website also. Will Google penalize my client's website for this ? Niche is HEALTH
Technical SEO | | sourabhrana1 -
Site hacked, but can't find the code
Discovered some really odd words ranking for us in WMT. Looked further and found pages like this www.pdnseek.com/wll/canadian-24-hour-pharmacy. When you click it it redirects to the home page. The developers can't find /wll anywhere on the site. The pages are indexed and cached. Looked at the back links in moz and found many backlinks to our site from other sites using URLs like this. The host says there is nothing on the server, but where else could it be. We've run virus scans, nothing, looked through source code, nothing. Anyone with some idea? www.pdnseek.com is the URL
Technical SEO | | Britewave0 -
Why isn't my homepage number #1 when searching my brand name?
Hi! So we recently (a month ago) lunched a new website, we have great content that updates everyday, we're active on social platforms, and we did all that's possible, at the moment, when it comes to on site optimization (a web developer will join our team this month and help us fix all the rest). When I search for our brand name all our social profiles come up first, after them we have a few inner pages from our different news sections, but our homepage is somewhere in the 2nd search page... What may be the reason for that? Is it just a matter of time or is there a problem with our homepage I'm unable to find? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Orly-PP0 -
Joomla creating duplicate pages, then the duplicate page's canonical points to itself - help!
Using Joomla, every time I create an article a subsequent duplicate page is create, such as: /latest-news/218-image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface and /component/content/article?id=218:image-stabilization-task-used-to-develop-robot-brain-interface The latter being the duplicate. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, but the canonical tag on the duplicate is pointing to itself.. creating mayhem in Moz and Webmaster tools. We have hundreds of duplicates across our website and I'm very concerned with the impact this is having on our SEO! I've tried plugins such as sh404SEF and Styleware extensions, however to no avail. Can anyone help or know of any plugins to fix the canonicals?
Technical SEO | | JamesPearce0 -
Can I format my H1 to be smaller than H2's and H3's on the same page?
I would like to create a web design with 12px H1 and for sub headings on the page to be more like 24px. Will search engines see this and dislike it? The reason for doing it is that I want to put a generic page title in the banner, and more poetic headings above the main body. Example: Small H1: Wholesale coffee, online coffee shop and London roastery Large h2: Respect the bean... Thanks
Technical SEO | | Crumpled_Dog
Scott0 -
Duplicate Content
We have a main sales page and then we have a country specific sales page for about 250 countries. The country specific pages are identical to the main sales page, with the small addition of a country flag and the country name in the h1. I have added a rel canonical tag to all country pages to send the link juice and authority to the main page, because they would be all competing for rankings. I was wondering if having the 250+ indexed pages of duplicate content will effect the ranking of the main page even though they have rel canonical tag. We get some traffic to country pages, but not as much as the main page, but im worried that if we remove those pages and redirect all to main page that we will loose 250 plus indexed pages where we can get traffic through for odd country specific terms. eg searching for uk mobile phone brings up the country specific page instead of main sales page even though the uk sales pages is not optimized for uk terms other than having a flag and the country name in the h1. Any advice?
Technical SEO | | -Al-0