Is Noindex Enough To Solve My Duplicate Content Issue?
-
Hello SEO Gurus!
I have a client who runs 7 web properties. 6 of them are satellite websites, and 7th is his company's main website. For a long while, my company has, among other things, blogged on a hosted blog at www.hismainwebsite.com/blog, and when we were optimizing for one of the other satellite websites, we would simply link to it in the article.
Now, however, the client has gone ahead and set up separate blogs on every one of the satellite websites as well, and he has a nifty plug-in set up on the main website's blog that pipes in articles that we write to their corresponding satellite blog as well.
My concern is duplicate content.
In a sense, this is like autoblogging -- the only thing that doesn't make it heinous is that the client is autoblogging himself. He thinks that it will be a great feature for giving users to his satellite websites some great fresh content to read -- which I agree, as I think the combination of publishing and e-commerce is a thing of the future -- but I really want to avoid the duplicate content issue and a possible SEO/SERP hit.
I am thinking that a noindexing of each of the satellite websites' blog pages might suffice. But I'd like to hear from all of you if you think that even this may not be a foolproof solution.
Thanks in advance!
Kind Regards,
Mike
-
Definitely deal with the security issues! Good find there...
Regarding the client who wants to republish the same article on multiple sites, I think that noindexing it on all but the original site is perfectly fine.
Or, alternatively, place a canonical tag on the duplicate sites to let Google know where the true source lies.
-
Good thread and I agree with everything Brian has already said. One additional option that hasn't been mentioned is possibly using Repost.us . If your client's blogs are on WordPress, there is a nifty Repost.Us plugin, very easy to install. He could then use this to repost the content on his main blogs, without having duplicate content issues or problems for his SEO. It would get the content where he wants it, preserve authorship plus give a link back to his main site. He would also have the opportunity of monetizing his posts if that was something he wanted to do. Hope this is helpful!
Dana
-
Wow, that's new! Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if the plug-in is at fault.
Well, as usual, issues compound into new issues.
My many thanks for your help and insight, Brian.
Kind Regards,
Mike
-
Wasn't able to visit the site, got this warning, attached.
Kinda poignant that this warning from the Fiji site gave me a warning referencing the Pacific site, which is exactly the kind of thing we're talking about.
Wonder if the very plugin your client is using is causing this issue too. -
Sure, here's an example: this is the main website: beautifulpacific.com, with the blog being located at beautifulpacific.com/blog. One of the satellite sites is beautifulfiji.com, with its blog at beautifulfiji.com/blog.
-
_To me, the best-case scenario would be to use these blogs to pump out fresh, authoritative content for each satellite site blog -- a more intensive undertaking, to be sure, but a best practice -- and include an RSS feed. _
Agreed. Also, there's no reason he can't write a post for one audience that references a post he made on another domain. It's hard to get a good feel for the whole situation without viewing the sites and blogs themselves.
-
Many thanks for your reply, Brian.
The satellite websites are not where conversations/sales take place; they feed his main site. I agree that providing a feed via the blog's RSS would make more sense. And when you say, "but if the point of the content is to be consumed, enjoyed, attract social shares and links, build traffic and then convert, then there's really little if any gain to be had in [noindexing]," I wholeheartedly agree. Even if it were to solve the duplicate content issue, it would preclude us from being able to put fresh content up on that blog and leverage it accordingly.
I can tell you that there is nothing nefarious in the client's idea here: his intentions are purely to give users fresh content to explore on the satellite sites. But as he relies on me to guide him in terms of SEO implications, I don't think he thought through how duplicate content could hurt him.
To me, the best-case scenario would be to use these blogs to pump out fresh, authoritative content for each satellite site blog -- a more intensive undertaking, to be sure, but a best practice -- and include an RSS feed.
-
Have you suggested he use an iframe to host the content from one site into the satellites?
Or maybe simply a feed to show the fresh content to visitors?
Does he convert on those satellite sites or are they micros to drive to the main?The thing is, it is definitely going to be duplicate content, and since the host is presumably the same... well... Not good.
I would ask: "why?" He is expecting to get links to this content on this site one day, the same content on this site the next? If it's a good post, what would happen if someone shares it socially from one domain, and those exposed to it see it elsewhere?
I think noindexing is a good half measure, but if the point of the content is to be consumed, enjoyed, attract social shares and links, build traffic and then convert, then there's really little if any gain to be had in even doing that. A noindexed blog post getting links? A noindexed blog category getting social buzz?
Force your client to understand the end goal. If he just wants something for them to read, add a feed. Then the social shares and links will do some good to at least the most important domain.
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
-
Duplicate Content
HI There, Hoping someone can help me - before i damage my desk banging my head. Getting notifications from ahrefs and Moz for duplicate content. I have no idea where these weird urls have came from , but they do take us to the correct page (but it seems a duplicate of this page). correct url http://www.acsilver.co.uk/shop/pc/Antique-Vintage-Rings-c152.htm Incorrect url http://www.acsilver.co.uk/shop/pc/vintage-Vintage-Rings- c152.htm This is showing for most of our store categories 😞 Desperate for help as to what could be causing these issues. I have a technical member of the ecommerce software go through the large sitemap files and they assured me it wasn't linked to the sitemap files. Gemma
Technical SEO | | acsilver0 -
Javascript tabbed navigation and duplicate content
I'm working on a site that has four primary navigation links and under each is a tabbed navigation system for second tier items. The primary link page loads content for all tabs which are javascript controlled. Users will click the primary navigation item "Our Difference" (http://www.holidaytreefarm.com/content.cfm/Our-Difference) and have several options with each tabs content in separate sections. Each second tier tab is also available via sitemap/direct link (ie http://www.holidaytreefarm.com/content.cfm/Our-Difference/Tree-Logistics) without the js navigation so the content on this page is specific to the tab, not all tabs. In this scenario, will there be duplicate content issues? And, what is the best way to remedy this? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | Total-Design-Shop0 -
Is My Boilerplate Product Description Causing Duplicate Content Issues?
I have an e-commerce store with 20,000+ one-of-a-kind products. We only have one of each product, and once a product is sold we will never restock it. So I really have no intention to have these product pages showing up in SERPs. Each product has a boilerplate description that the product's unique attributes (style, color, size) are plugged into. But a few sentences of the description are exactly the same across all products. Google Webmaster Tools doesn't report any duplicate content. My Moz Crawl Report show 29 of these products as having duplicate content. But a Google search using the site operator and some text from the boilerplate description turns up 16,400 product pages from my site. Could this duplicate content be hurting my SERPs for other pages on the site that I am trying to rank? As I said, I'm not concerned about ranking for these products pages. Should I make them "rel=canonical" to their respective product categories? Or use "noindex, follow" on every product? Or should I not worry about it?
Technical SEO | | znagle0 -
Duplicate content or titles
Hello , I am working on a site, I am facing the duplicate title and content errors,
Technical SEO | | KLLC
there are following kind of errors : 1- A link with www and without www having same content. actually its a apartment management site, so it has different bedrooms apartments and booking pages , 2- my second issue is related to booking and details pages of bedrooms, because I am using 1 file for all booking and 1 file for all details page. these are the main errors which i am facing ,
can anyone give me suggestions regarding these issues ? Thnaks,0 -
Advice on Duplicate Page Content
We have many pages on our website and they all have the same template (we use a CMS) and at the code level, they are 90% the same. But the page content, title, meta description, and image used are different for all of them. For example - http://www.jumpstart.com/common/find-easter-eggs
Technical SEO | | jsmoz
http://www.jumpstart.com/common/recognize-the-rs We have many such pages. Does Google look at them all as duplicate page content? If yes, how do we deal with this?0 -
Avoiding Cannibalism and Duplication with content
Hi, For the example I will use a computers e-commerce store... I'm working on creating guides for the store -
Technical SEO | | BeytzNet
How to choose a laptop
How to choose a desktop I believe that each guide will be great on its own and that it answers a specific question (meaning that someone looking for a laptop will search specifically laptop info and the same goes for desktop). This is why I didn't creating a "How to choose a computer" guide. I also want each guide to have all information and not to start sending the user to secondary pages in order to fill in missing info. However, even though there are several details that are different between the laptops and desktops, like importance of weight, screen size etc., a lot of things the checklist (like deciding on how much memory is needed, graphic card, core etc.) are the same. Please advise on how to pursue it. Should I just write two guides and make sure that the same duplicated content ideas are simply written in a different way?0 -
How to noindex lots of content properly : bluntly or progressively ?
Hello Mozers ! I'm quite in doubt, so I thought why not ask for help ? Here's my problem : I need to better up a website's SEO that consists in a lot (1 million+ pages) of poor content. Basically it's like a catalog, where you select a brand, a product series and then the product, to then fill out a form for a request (sorry for the cryptic description, I can't be more precise). Beside the classic SEO work, a part of what (I think) I need to do is noindex some useless pages and rewrite important ones with great content, but for the noindexing part I'm quite hesitant on the how. There's like 200 000 pages with no visits since a year, so I guess they're pretty much useless junk that would be better off in noindex. But the webmaster is afraid that noindexing that much pages will hurt its long tail (in case of future visits), so he wants to check the SERP position of every one of them, to only eliminate those that are in the top 3 (for these there's no hope of amelioration he thinks). I think it would be wasting a lot of time and resources for nothing, and I'd advise to noindex them regardless of their position. The problem is I lack the experience to be sure of it and how to do it : Is it wise to noindex 200 000 pages bluntly in one time (isn't it a bad signal for google ?) or should we do this progressively in like a few months ? Thanks a lot for your help ! Johann.
Technical SEO | | JohannCR0 -
Duplicate content?
I have a question regarding a warning that I got on one of my websites, it says Duplicate content. I'm canonical url:s and is also using blocking Google out from pages that you are warning me about. The pages are not indexed by Google, why do I get the warnings? Thanks for great seotools! 3M5AY.png
Technical SEO | | bnbjbbkb0