Duplicate titles OK if page don't need to rank well?
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I know It is not a good idea to have duplicate titles across a website on pages as Google does not like this. Is it ok to have duplicate titles on pages that aren't being optimised with SERP's in mind? or could this have a negative effect on the pages that are being optimised?
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I see no reason to have duplicate titles regardless of the reasoning. You are loosing keyword potential. There has to be other supporting keywords you did not use on strong pages that you could supplement on non competing pages.
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I would make it very clear to Google which one of my pages is about X and which one is about Y. If there are two X pages, Google will try to figure it out using a variery of available signals (site hierarchy, how far from home page, inbound links, content...etc). There are many possible scenarios but it could in theory happen that Google chooses the wrong page to rank for the given term which would lead your users to a page that is not relevant. If you are actively promoting the preferred page than this becomes less likely. If it was my site, I would give it different titles.
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It's not that Google does not like that - Google just suggest not to use duplicate titles. It is not the best for the user experience as well es for the not optimized pages - for what ever reason they are not optimized :-). Titles are an important for seo, usability and they appear in the search snippets, so they have there in important role to play, too.
But it has not a negative effect on the optimized pages.
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