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All great points. The individual sites are going to be re-designed as they are old designs and the content is a little thin. I will take all your points into consideration and make a decision.

Thanks for the great answer!

Also, Amazon is not a local company. Its a multinational company who does not need to rank on CITY Keyword`` searches.

Yes. There are certainly some positives and negatives to having one main larger authoritative site (with link juice from the other sites) Or individual sites with more room for geographic authority as well as a group site.

I cannot decide which strategy to go with.

Yes. Those were my thoughts as well. We wouldn't be able to target as many geographic areas on the main site but can on the individual sites.

Thanks for the  great reply!

Currently we have several single sites for each of our dealership locations as well as an automotive group site linking to each location(dealership) website. Currently there is no landing page for each location on the group site.

To save money we were looking into beefing up our group site and getting rid of our individual location sites. 301 redirecting them to location landing pages on the group site website.

Each site has about the same authority including the group site.

Each dealership location resides in the same province(state) but some locations are a 7hour drive apart so not all within the same vicinity.

I want to ensure we continue to rank well in each location. I won't be able to include all geographic locations in the title tag on the homepage of the group site due to the character restrictions.

What would you recommend? Keeping the individual websites per dealership location OR focusing solely on a group website. I need to ensure we continue to rank well in each city where each dealership resides.

Thanks for any recommendations! It's greatly appreciated.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts & opinions.

TL;DR - Is creating a page that has 80% of duplicated content from the past year's product model where 20% is about the new model changes going to be detrimental to duplicate content issues. Is there a better way to update minor yearly model changes and not have duplicated content?

Full Question - We create landing pages for yearly products. Some years the models change drastically and other years there are only a few minor changes.

The years where the product features change significantly is not an issue, it's when there isn't much of a change to the product description & I want to still rank on the new year searches.

Since I don't want duplicate content by just adding the last year's model content  to a new page and just changing the year (2013 to 2014) because there isn't much change with the model, I thought perhaps we could write a small paragraph describing the changes & then including the last year's description of the product.

Since 80% of the content on the page will be duplicated from the last year's model, how detrimental do you think this would be for a duplicate content issue?

The reason I'm leaving the old model up is to maintain the authority that page has and to still rank on the old model which is still sold.

Does anyone else have any other better idea other than re-writing the same information over again in a different way with the few minor changes to the product added in.

Has anyone heard anything about this Google warning that was supposedly sent to some Google Place owners recently.

The message says:

We are making some changes to Google Places for Business and Google Maps so we can continue providing people with the best experience when they're looking for local businesses. As part of this process, we're asking business owners to review and confirm some of the information in their Google Places accounts so we can keep showing it to Google users. We know this will be a few extra steps for merchants, and we apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your time.

We have sent business owners affected by these changes an email entitled "Action Required: You have 3 weeks to save your Google Places Listing". Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2327744/Google-Warns-Local-Businesses-You-Have-3-Weeks-to-Save-Your-Places-Listing

I haven't found much other information in the SEO community but I just wanted to see if anyone has actually received this notice or not?

Someone suggested it may just be a test in Australia/Austria. (Not sure which one it is as the comment in the above list references both countries)

Thanks for any information you have on this topic.

Hey all,

In the automotive industry...

When uploading vehicle inventory to a website I'm concerned with duplicate content issues.

For example, 1 vehicle is uploaded to the main manufacturers website, then again to the actual dealerships website & then again to Craigslist & even sometimes to a group site. The information is all the same, description, notes, car details & images.

What would you all recommend for alleviating duplicate content issues? Should I be using the rel canonical back to the manufacturers website?

Once the vehicle is sold all pages disappear.

Thanks so much for any advice.

I've read a lot of blog posts from a few years ago that Bing Business portal(maps) doesn't accept Canadian Business listings.

I figured by now they would be accepting listings however when I try and submit one you cannot pick Canada. It's defaulted to USA.

Are they seriously still not accepting Canadian listings?

Do you have a version of each page. www.example.com/page & www.example.com/page?   ?   Then yes this is duplicate content.

Do you have a version of each page. www.example.com/page & www.example.com/page?   ?   Then yes this is duplicate content.

Do you have a link back to your Google+ listing from your website? Try putting a link in your footer to the page & on your Contact Us page as well. You want to try and marry the listing to your site.

Currently we have several single sites for each of our dealership locations as well as an automotive group site linking to each location(dealership) website. Currently there is no landing page for each location on the group site.

To save money we were looking into beefing up our group site and getting rid of our individual location sites. 301 redirecting them to location landing pages on the group site website.

Each site has about the same authority including the group site.

Each dealership location resides in the same province(state) but some locations are a 7hour drive apart so not all within the same vicinity.

I want to ensure we continue to rank well in each location. I won't be able to include all geographic locations in the title tag on the homepage of the group site due to the character restrictions.

What would you recommend? Keeping the individual websites per dealership location OR focusing solely on a group website. I need to ensure we continue to rank well in each city where each dealership resides.

Thanks for any recommendations! It's greatly appreciated.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts & opinions.

Has anyone heard anything about this Google warning that was supposedly sent to some Google Place owners recently.

The message says:

We are making some changes to Google Places for Business and Google Maps so we can continue providing people with the best experience when they're looking for local businesses. As part of this process, we're asking business owners to review and confirm some of the information in their Google Places accounts so we can keep showing it to Google users. We know this will be a few extra steps for merchants, and we apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your time.

We have sent business owners affected by these changes an email entitled "Action Required: You have 3 weeks to save your Google Places Listing". Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2327744/Google-Warns-Local-Businesses-You-Have-3-Weeks-to-Save-Your-Places-Listing

I haven't found much other information in the SEO community but I just wanted to see if anyone has actually received this notice or not?

Someone suggested it may just be a test in Australia/Austria. (Not sure which one it is as the comment in the above list references both countries)

Thanks for any information you have on this topic.

You should pick your top 10-20 most important pages on your website & link them from your footer. Since the homepage normally has the most domain authority you want to try to pass along some of the authority to the other pages within your site that you want to rank.

Don't put too many links in the footer as this will over-dilute the home page link juice.

Google frowns upon businesses that include keywords within the business name. You would get your listing deleted from Google if you include World Of Books in your title.