Can having similar content on my company's two sites hurt our rankings?
-
We have a very successful website that has been up for a number of years (www.comellaortho.com). We rank high in the natural rankings for that site.
A few months ago, we started seeing patients in another nearby city. I purchased a new domain name, www.dansvilleortho.com, and had our web company duplicate the website under the new domain name. The reality is that the content on these two sites are nearly identical. Some of the pages are different; for example, there are fewer pages on the new site. But the pages that do exist are nearly identical.
My question is: Can having similar content on my company's two sites hurt our rankings?
Based on what I've read thus far, I believe the answer is "Yes". However, I'm curious how bad this may hurt us.
I'm not as worried about the new site (dansvilleortho.com) because our competition in that city is slim to none. But I AM worried about harming the original site/business (comellaortho.com).
Which site(s) rankings may be affected by this, and if so, how bad?
Thank you.
-
Thanks! The problem is, the businesses have two completely different names/branding/logos, etc. I'm trying to create a seamless & separate experience for both cities.
Would an alternative (albeit less desirable) option be to re-write the content on the duplicate site? Or at least change it enough to not be so identical?
-
Absolutely can cause a penalty. I would take down the dupe site immediately.
Also two sites are against Google TOS. Instead of having a second site, create city/state pages for your main site and get those ranked instead.
-
Rewriting or repurposing the content wouldn't hurt you. Thumb rule is to never have identical content on any two pages on the web.
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
-
Need advice on Paying for content?
Hi, We would like to attracting more readers onto our blog by accepting guest posting from external bloggers. Could anyone refer any good artricles on MOZ about the best practices on managing the activities and what would be the normal KPIs and ROI?
Content Development | | LauraHT0 -
Is paid content a good or bad thing
Hi, over the past couple of years we have turned down thousands of request from companies to have paid editorial on our sites, I have always turned this down but i have seen some sites accept this and would like to know your stance on this. In newspapers and magazines which i have worked in both, they have paid editorial all the time, so i am just wondering what google thinks of paid editorial. look forward to hearing your thoughts
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Are there any tools available for wordpress that can help with SEO?
I'm looking for a wordpress plugin that that keeps current/updates with all the changes that constantly take place on various search engines. Is there such an addon that meets this criteria?
Content Development | | uofmiamiguy0 -
Is the Page Authority/Rank of my corporate site affected by my blog's PA/PR and vice versa?
If I host my blog on my corporate site (it is a wordpress blog) will the page authority and page rank of my site translate to the blog? And does this also go the other way around? My gut says this would make sense, and I think I have seen it in action with other corporate sites that host their wordpress blogs, but I want to be completely sure. Even better, if someone can explain to me how this works, that would be super helpful!
Content Development | | Kendi0 -
How can i get this map on my site
hi. i have just seen a great map that i would love to have on my joomla website here it is http://www.holidaywatchdog.com/42894-Kolymbia-Holiday_Village_Rhodes-Holiday-Review.html it is the map on the side where it shows where the hotel is, on the right hand side, can anyone tell me how i can get this on my site and pop up on my site without the person leaving my site please many thanks
Content Development | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Best way to resolve duplicate content issue?
Not sure about what to do about this - I have a client who has a ton of pages (around 1200) which are all City specific pages, for long-tail search. These are all written with paragraphs in the format such as: Order to [City] today. So every page has essentially the same content. The site also only has 1562 pages, so with 1200 of them being City-specific same-content pages, that can't be good. However the problem is that these pages still rank very well (usually Position 1 or 2) for the terms they're targeting, and bring in enough traffic and revenue to justify their purpose. We also have Country specific pages, and these are all with unique content, rather than the scripted content on the City pages. So for example, for Italy we might have: Italy Page (Unique Content) Rome (Duplicate Content) Milan (Duplicate Content) Venice (Duplicate Content) etc. (Duplicate Content) For a low traffic country (Austria), we tried to 301 the City pages to the Country page, but that only resulted in us seeing a drop in search results for the city keywords, from (usually) Position 1 to more like Page 3 or 4, so quite a drop. So, without writing 1200 pages worth of unique content, what would your advice be?
Content Development | | TME_Digital0 -
Rand's blogging graphics
What software and graphics does Rand use to make his blog posts look so good? I recall seeing a blog about it that gave tips and insights for adding graphics to your blog posts.
Content Development | | -Noah0 -
How important is linking out to relevant, authoritative sites?
As I write blog articles for my site I often come across a situation where I'm quoting something from another site, or using a piece of data from that other site to make a point. I know it's nice and courteous to link to the source when I do this but from a pure SEO point of view, does it matter? Is there any benefit to linking from my site to other sites that are related and authoritative on the subject I'm discussing? I know I'll bleed off a little link juice to that external site that would otherwise go towards my internal links on the same page, but are there other benefits to linking out to known good sites? Is that any kind of signal to Google that I'm playing in a good neighborhood?
Content Development | | scanlin0