Thank you for your help Tammy. I read through your links when you first replied and they helped a lot.

Pardon my lack of knowledge here, but I just want to make sure I understand correctly: If I go the rel=canonical route for the "duplicate" pages, it won't actually redirect the user, but will just tell google where the "original" page lives, and that it's duplicated on purpose correct? Does that then hurt the rankings for the site that's not showing as the "original" content?

Thanks again for your help.

Hi there,

I've spent hours reading posts on duplicate content and googling this but I'm still not sure what to do.

We created a site that has two WP installs for a company with two different locations - the landing page is website.com and links to WP install 1 (website.com/city1),  and WP install 2 (website.com/city2). They specifically wanted two different sites so they could be managed by staff at either location. However some of the pages have the same content - ie. services, policies, etc. so all of those are showing errors for duplicate content. All pages have different city-specific URL's and meta-descriptions but that clearly doesn't help.

We can't redirect the "duplicate" pages because then it would take the user to the other city's specific site. Is there anything we can do?? Is this going to significantly damage rankings?

Thanks kindly for any help you can provide.

Hi there,

I've spent hours reading posts on duplicate content and googling this but I'm still not sure what to do.

We created a site that has two WP installs for a company with two different locations - the landing page is website.com and links to WP install 1 (website.com/city1),  and WP install 2 (website.com/city2). They specifically wanted two different sites so they could be managed by staff at either location. However some of the pages have the same content - ie. services, policies, etc. so all of those are showing errors for duplicate content. All pages have different city-specific URL's and meta-descriptions but that clearly doesn't help.

We can't redirect the "duplicate" pages because then it would take the user to the other city's specific site. Is there anything we can do?? Is this going to significantly damage rankings?

Thanks kindly for any help you can provide.