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Hello SEOmozzer!

I have recently joined a large pharmaceutical marketing company as our head SEO guru, and I've encountered a duplicate content related issue here that I'd like some help on.

Because there is so much red tape in the pharmaceutical industry, there are A LOT of limitations on website content, medication and drug claims, etc.  Because of this, it is required to have Important Safety Information (ISI) clearly stated on every page of the client's website (including the homepage).  The information is generally pretty lengthy, and in some cases is longer than the non-ISI content on each page. Here is an example:  http://www.xifaxan.com/

All content under the ISI header is required on each page.   My questions are:

1. How will this duplicated content on each page affect our on-page optimization scores in the eyes of search engines?  Is Google seeing this simply as duplicated content on every page, or are they "smart" enough to understand that because it is a drug website, this is industry standard (and required)?

2. Aside from creating more meaty, non-ISI content for the site, are there any other suggestions you have for handling this potentially harmful SEO situation?

And in case you were going to suggest it, we cannot simply have an image of the content, as it may not be visible by all internet users. We've already looked into that

Thanks in advance!

Dylan

Hi -- I have a client with various international versions of their site.  By adding a lightbox to their U.S. home page enabling the user to select their preferred translation (and cookie them)....does this have any negative SEO implications?  It seems like a better alternative than the splash page they were using, but just want to be sure.

Thanks!

Thanks for your response Chris!  Good suggestion on the HTML sitemap.  Any concerns if there are a couple of hundred links on this HTML site map page?

Hi there - I'm working on an educational site in which users will be able to search our repository of PDF articles, PowerPoint files, and so on through an on-site search engine.  What is the best way to ensure each of these documents/assets are indexable by Google since they technically don't reside on an HTML page....they are just pulled up if the user searches for them?   The site itself is just a few pages, but the files, articles, and videos in the repository are in the hundreds.  Should I just name and tag them properly and make sure they're all included in an XML site map?  Anything else suggested?

Thanks very much!