Duplicate Contact Information
-
My clients has had a website for many years, and his business for decades. He has always had a second website domain which is basically a shopping module for obtaining information, comparisons, and quotes for tires. This tire module had no informational pages or contact info. Until recently, we pulled this information in through iframes.
Now however the tire module is too complex and we do not bring in this info through iframes, and because of the way this module is configured (or website framework), we are told we can not place it as a sub-directory.
So now this tire module resides on another domain name (although similar to the client's "main site" domain name) with some duplicate informational pages (I am working through this with the client), but mainly I am concerned about the duplicate contact info -- address and phone.
Should I worry that this other tire website has duplicated the client's phone and address, same as their main website?
And would having a subdomain (tires.example.com) work better for Google and SEO considering the duplicate contact info?
Any help is much appreciated.
ccee bar
(And, too, The client is directing AdWords campaigns to this other website for tires, while under the same AdWords account directing other campaigns to their main site? - I have advised an entirely separate AdWords account for links to the tire domain. BTW the client does NOT have separate social media accounts for each site -- all social media efforts and links are for the main site.)
-
Laura,
Yes thank you for your reply, this helps greatly.
Right now for the client, because they lack a good strategy for organic SEO, AdWords generates their greatest traffic. I hope to leverage this with a better organic approach for SEO, and help create a better AdWords strategy.
But all that said, I just wasn't sure about the contact info and address... now I can move on. Thanks again!
-
First of all, backlinks from Adwords campaigns do not help you with organic search rankings at all.
Secondly, this kind of duplicate content issue may not be as big a problem as you think. If Google detects two pages have the same or very similar content, it will choose the best one to display in search results and filter the other one out. So, you may not need to do anything.
On the other hand, if you are particular about which website should appear in search results for that content, you'll want to use the rel="canonical" tag to let Google know which page you prefer. You'll find more info about the canonical tag at the two links below.
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
- https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
I hope that helps!
-
Laura,
Thanks so much for your response.
I guess what I was thinking is if online directories have duplicate info that would be expected.
But if duplicate content information, and business name, were on two different websites ((each set up as a service or consulting business)), would it look like the two websites were trying to capitalize on search results -- especially if some outbound links (like AdWords) were coming to one site (tires, say) and also to the "main site" (brakes, and some tires).
Still you think this is OK?
ccee bar
-
Having the same phone number and address on two websites is not a duplicate content issue. It's very common because of business directories all over the web. If that's the only duplicate content you're worried about, then you're fine.
-
Subdomain is better than separate domain if you cannot have a subdirectory.
As for the duplicate content, regardless of a separate domain, subdomain, or subdirectory, I would canonical any of the duplicate pages to the authoritative content. If it's the main site, then I would canonical the other domain to it. Not sure of a reason why you would prefer the other domain to be the authoritative source, but if that is the case, then you would canonical the main site to the other 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
-
International SEO and duplicate content: what should I do when hreflangs are not enough?
Hi, A follow up question from another one I had a couple of months ago: It has been almost 2 months now that my hreflangs are in place. Google recognises them well and GSC is cleaned (no hreflang errors). Though I've seen some positive changes, I'm quite far from sorting that duplicate content issue completely and some entire sub-folders remain hidden from the SERP.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GhillC
I believe it happens for two reasons: 1. Fully mirrored content - as per the link to my previous question above, some parts of the site I'm working on are 100% similar. Quite a "gravity issue" here as there is nothing I can do to fix the site architecture nor to get bespoke content in place. 2. Sub-folders "authority". I'm guessing that Google prefers sub-folders over others due to their legacy traffic/history. Meaning that even with hreflangs in place, the older sub-folder would rank over the right one because Google believes it provides better results to its users. Two questions from these reasons:
1. Is the latter correct? Am I guessing correctly re "sub-folders" authority (if such thing exists) or am I simply wrong? 2. Can I solve this using canonical tags?
Instead of trying to fix and "promote" hidden sub-folders, I'm thinking to actually reinforce the results I'm getting from stronger sub-folders.
I.e: if a user based in belgium is Googling something relating to my site, the site.com/fr/ subfolder shows up instead of the site.com/be/fr/ sub-sub-folder.
Or if someone is based in Belgium using Dutch, he would get site.com/nl/ results instead of the site.com/be/nl/ sub-sub-folder. Therefore, I could canonicalise /be/fr/ to /fr/ and do something similar for that second one. I'd prefer traffic coming to the right part of the site for tracking and analytic reasons. However, instead of trying to move mountain by changing Google's behaviour (if ever I could do this?), I'm thinking to encourage the current flow (also because it's not completely wrong as it brings traffic to pages featuring the correct language no matter what). That second question is the main reason why I'm looking out for MoZ's community advice: am I going to damage the site badly by using canonical tags that way? Thank you so much!
G0 -
Duplicate Homepage - How to fix?
Hi Everyone, I've tried using BeamUsUp SEO Crawler and have found one warning and two errors on our site. The warning is for a duplicate meta description, and the errors are a duplicate page and a duplicate title. For each problem it's showing the same two pages as the source of the error, but one has a slash at the end and one doesn't. They're both for the homepage. https://www.url.com/ And https://www.url.com Has anyone seen this before? Does anyone know if this is anything we should worry about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rswhtn1 -
Tools to scan entire site for duplicate content?
HI guys, Just wondering if anyone knows of any tools to scan a site for duplicate content (with other sites on the web). Looking to quickly identify product pages containing duplicate content/duplicate product descriptions for E-commerce based websites. I know copy scape can which can check up to 10,000 pages in a single operation with Batch Search. But just wondering if there is anything else on the market i should consider looking at? Cheers, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Duplicate Page Content
We have different plans that you can signup for - how can we rectify the duplicate page content and title issue here? Thanks. | http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=100 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | directiq
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=104 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=116 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=117 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=102 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=119 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=101 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=103 | 0 | 1 | 32 | 1 | 200 |
| http://signup.directiq.com/?plan=5 |0 -
Reinforcing Rel Canonical? (Fixing Duplicate Content)
Hi Mozzers, We're having trouble with duplicate content between two sites, so we're looking to add some oomph to the rel canonical link elements we put on one of our sites pointing towards the other to help speed up the process and give Google a bigger hint. Would adding a hyperlink on the "copying" website pointing towards the "original" website speed this process up? Would we get in trouble if added about 80,000 links (1 on each product page) with a link to the matching product on the other site? For example, we could use text like "Buy XY product on Other Brand Name and receive 10% off!"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
Fixing Duplicate Content Errors
SEOMOZ Pro is showing some duplicate content errors and wondered the best way to fix them other than re-writing the content. Should I just remove the pages found or should I set up permanent re-directs through to the home page in case there is any link value or visitors on these duplicate pages? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | benners0 -
Are duplicate links on same page alright?
If I have a homepage with category links, is it alright for those category links to appear in the footer as well, or should you never have duplicate links on one page? Can you please give a reason why as well? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dkamen0 -
Nuanced duplicate content problem.
Hi guys, I am working on a recently rebuilt website, which has some duplicate content issues that are more nuanced than usual. I have a plan of action (which I will describe further), so please let me know if it's a valid plan or if I am missing something. Situation: The client is targeting two types of users: business leads (Type A) and potential employees (Type B), so for each of their 22 locations, they have 2 pages - one speaking to Type A and another to Type B. Type A location page contains a description of the location. In terms of importance, Type A location pages are secondary because to the Type A user, locations are not of primary importance. Type B location page contains the same description of the location plus additional lifestyle description. These pages carry more importance, since they are attempting to attract applicants to work in specific places. So I am planning to rank these pages eventually for a combination of Location Name + Keyword. Plan: New content is not an option at this point, so I am planning to set up canonical tags on both location Types and make Type B, the canonical URL, since it carries more importance and more SEO potential. The main nuance is that while Type A and Type B location pages contain some of the same content (about 75%-80%), they are not exactly the same. That is why I am not 100% sure that I should canonicalize them, but still most of the wording on the page is identical, so... Any professional opinion would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | naymark.biz0