Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best practice for franchise sites with duplicated content
-
I know that duplicated content is a touchy subject but I work with multiple franchise groups and each franchisee wants their own site, however, almost all of the sites use the same content. I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites and does not penalize them for the following issues.
All sites are hosted on the same server therefor the same IP address
All sites use generally the same content across their product pages (which are very very important pages) *templated content approved by corporate
Almost all sites have the same design (A few of the groups we work with have multiple design options)
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Again
Aaron
-
I fully agree. We have notified them all and let them know its in their best interest to modify the content throughout the site. Unfortunately most of them don't and the copy remains templated.
Thanks for your answers
-
If the search is for Company product or service, You can take little advantage by doing local listing of each franchisee. Except This content rewriting is only option as per my knol.
-
Maybe part of the literature describing your program can include the point that to be really effective the franchisee's will have to write their own content. It all depends on your business model, whether you want to make them aware that they have 100-5,000 competitors from your company alone.
-
I fully agree with you EGOL "There is another problem - maybe bigger than Google's desire for unique content."
We give each franchisee the opportunity to expand on the content and make it their own, however I would say 90% of them don't make any changes.
I don't think that either the franchisee or corporate would want to pay the $$$ it would cost to have our Copywriters write unique copy for each site. (50-100+ products/services) per site or franchisee.
-
I wish we could redo the strategy but we aren't talking about small franchises here. We are talking franchises anywhere from 100 stores all the way up to 5,000 stores.
The products/services they offer are described very well and unfortunately the only thing we add into each product page is maybe a few location identifiers and a company name.
I don't want to use the canonical solution because each site has to be seen as a stand along site.
-
Each Franchise has their own domain.
Each Product/Service has a single description - Each franchisee has to use the same corporate approved logo.
All Images are named the same thing so it can matter.
I like your suggestions though...you are going the same route we have in the past.
-
Information about Google using OCR... Use this link to see an example of how google extracted and highlighted "wrigley swim" from this newspaper scan.
Google can determine the color of an image... image files are actually characters and google can extract the colors. If you go into image search there is an option limit the results by color. Some of that is done via context (such as words in the file name or words near the image), however, some is done by extracting data from the image file.
-
Here we are all giving advices based on their own knowledge. So i personally think Google cannot read images or what a specific image relates to. If I'm wrong and I hope I'm not ... can i get more details EGOL
Thanks.
-
...Google cannot read images or colors...
Are you willing to bet a month's pay on that?
-
I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites...
I don't think that there is an inexpensive way to get this done and have high quality results. If you want unique content you gotta pay the price... but you could consider.
Hire several writers to reauthor the content - will cost a lot less than starting from scratch.
Get an article spinner program - that will be cheap but you will probably not like the results.
Make a enthusiastic sales pitch to each franchisee with incentives to write their own content.
...templated content approved by corporate...
There is another problem - maybe bigger than Google's desire for unique content.
Good luck.
-
You may want to re-think your strategy of franchising the product and the content. If the content is the same the only way to eliminate the duplicate content problem is to point to one of them as the canonical version, and that would very much impact the performance of the other versions of the other sites.
-
I suggest your give the products (franchise) use their own sort of domain(logo) but add franchise [your logo].
1. Their Own Domain
2. Their own product description even if it's the same product (maybe add your logo to make sure people recognizes the brand.
3. Design does not matter (urls, title, description, content etc counts) as Google cannot read images or colors
Hope it helps.
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 in sidebar
Hi guys. So I have a few sentences (about 50 words) of duplicate content across all pages of my website (this is a repeatable text in sidebar). Each page of my website contains about 1300 words (unique content) in total, and 50 words of duplicate content in sidebar. Does having a duplicate content of this length in sidebar affect the rankings of my website in any way? Thank you so much for your replies.
On-Page Optimization | Jun 9, 2019, 11:46 PM | AslanBarselinov1 -
On Site Question: Duplicate H2...
Hi All A few on-site audit tools pull information on duplicate H2 tags on pages. This implies it's a bad thing and should be fixed - is that the case? On one of my sites the tag-line is in H2 in the header, so appears on every page... Just wondering if this is something worth fixing. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | Jul 5, 2016, 5:07 PM | GTAMP0 -
Duplicate Content - Blog Rewriting
I have a client who has requested a rewrite of 250 blog articles for his IT company. The blogs are dispersed on a variety of platforms: his own website's blog, a business innovation website, and an IT website. He wants to have each article optimised with keyword phrases and then posted onto his new website thrice weekly. All of this is in an effort to attract some potential customers to his new site and also to establish his company as a leader in its field. To what extent would I need to rewrite each article so as to avoid duplicating the content? Would there even be an issue if I did not rewrite the articles and merely optimised them with keywords? Would the articles need to be completely taken by all current publishers? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | Sep 3, 2014, 11:07 PM | StoryScout0 -
Best practice for Portfolio Links
I have a client with a really large project portfolio (over 500 project images), which causes their portfolio page to have well over the 100 links that are recommended. How can I reduce this without reducing the number of photos they can upload?
On-Page Optimization | Aug 15, 2013, 12:52 AM | HochKaren0 -
Duplicate Content from on Competitor's site?
I've recently discovered large blocks of content on a competitors site that has been copy and pasted from a client's site. From what I know, this will only hurt the competitor and not my client since my guy was the original. Is this true? Is there any risk to my client? Should we take action? Dino
On-Page Optimization | Mar 13, 2013, 10:17 PM | Dino640 -
What's the best practice for handling duplicate content of product descriptions with a drop-shipper?
We write our own product descriptions for merchandise we sell on our website. However, we also work with drop-shippers, and some of them simply take our content and post it on their site (same photos, exact ad copy, etc...). I'm concerned that we'll loose the value of our content because Google will consider it duplicated. We don't want the value of our content undermined... What's the best practice for avoiding any problems with Google? Thanks, Adam
On-Page Optimization | Oct 25, 2012, 1:10 PM | Adam-Perlman0 -
Which is Best Practice for creating URLs for subdomain?
My website is related to education. We have created sub domains for all major colleges, universities & Entrance exams like Gre, Toefl ETC. for eg: amityuniversity.abc.com (Amity is Name of University ) Now if have to mention city name in URL as well (college is located in multiple locations) amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
On-Page Optimization | Aug 18, 2012, 6:21 AM | rohanarora536
amityuniversitydelhi.abc.com Now my Q is can we use hyphens in sub domains if we have to add city name or shall we create without using any hyphens. In Directory structure we can always separate words with hyphens, can we follow same practice in subdomain as well Which is a best URL for subdomain amity-university-delhi.abc.com
amityuniversity-delhi.abc.com
or amityuniversitydelhi.abc.com0 -
Contact Form On Homepage - Best Practices
How important is it to have a contact form on the homepage of a service-based business? I am trying to decide if having a form on front page will increase the number of people filling it out.
On-Page Optimization | Jul 18, 2012, 2:48 PM | TheSEODR0