Duplicate content issue for franchising business
-
Hi All
We are in the process of adding a franchise model to our exisitng stand alone business and as part of the package given to the franchisee will be a website with conent identical to our existing website apart from some minor details such as contact and address details.
This creates a huge duplicate content issue and even if we implement a cannonical approach to this will still be unfair to the franchisee in terms of their markeitng and own SEO efforts.
The url for each franchise will be unique but the content will be the same to a large extend. The nature of the service we offer (professional qualificaitons) is such that the "products" can only be described in a certain way and it will be near on in impossible to have a unique set of "product" pages for each franchisee.
I hope that some of you have come across a similar problem or that some of you have suggestions or ideas for us to get round this.
Kind regards
Peter
-
I agree Andrew it has been a good discussion - that is the great thing about this community you can actually bounce ideas off like minded folks that have knowledge and understanding of what you are doing. I think it also shows that there are always several ways to go about things - it is like this discussion it has really got me thinking and I think that can only be a good thing! Thanks
-
good discussion Matt! and your right about creating our own kitchen content.
-
Yeah I agree with that Andrew - it is always best to work on one site and build its strength rather than lots of microsites - however lots brands that have franchises have standalone websites from the main brand and they do well with SEO. Peter stated above that new franchises will get their own website with identical content, except contact details etc, so it is still essential to work on unique content which will help gaining links and more.
Maybe Peter would consider your sub-directory suggestion as an alternative but I think as Egol says he should be demanding about those that take on a franchise creating unique content that will fit in with the brand, benefiting everyone involved.
I don't think you can get away from the fact that creating unique, decent content is the way forward with this - after all you know what they say content is king!
-
Well, if you break out a site into individual franchise sites... your relying on the individual franchises to rank for SEO. All new sites, all starting from scratch whenever they sign on as a franchise. If you use the method of one site using sub-directories.. you have the benefit of building an ongoing SEO powerhouse.
Further strengthening the franchise.
This is something to consider too, right?
-
Hi Andrew - I understand what you are referring to when you use the term skinning and I have seen several sites use this in relation to franchises. I came across this in the past when working for a motor group that had several car manufacturer franchises. However rather than use this option at the time we created unique content written by ourselves in relation to the makes and models, adding user reviews, etc. I found that we out ranked those using the skinning method. Also one question - do you mean that a menu option on your website actually takes you straight to the main manufacturer domain rather than containing information on your own page? If this is the case I think that you will be loosing out from a search point of view as there is no content to be linked to your site in relation to this kitchen refacing - essentially your site for this product is just a gateway page. If people find the kitchen refacing page from the manufacturer in the search engines they will be taken to their site and not yours - if I were you I would look at creating some content of my own as it will benefit you in the long run. Skinning doesn't allow you to control the on-page elements such as title tags etc. Keeping content on your site for instance would allow you to target a local area in the search engines in relation to this franchise - so you might have thiels kitchen refacing in (location).
-
Maybe the term "skinning" was the wrong term or process. I apologize if I've given wrong information.
Have you looked into what other franchise opportunities are doing?
I did a search for "handyman baltimore"
front page of google brought back two franchises using the idea I was trying to express.
go to www(dot)handymanmatters(dot)com and type in a few different zip codes from different states. Same website, same franchise branding, different local experience.
go to www(dot)mrhandyman(dot)com and see how they are doing it.
Also, we've just signed up with a franchise opportunity for kitchen refacing. We're a large home improvement company and are just adding this to our site. But, when you go to our menu tab for kitchen refacing you actually go to thiels(dot)com/products/cabinets/ the difference? it's our branding that appears and not thiels. This is where the idea of skinning came from... probably the wrong term for the actual process.
Those were the options I was trying to express.
-
I don't believe there is any other way round this than creating unique content - you need to remember that search engines will strip away all the fancy layouts etc. and analyse your sites on a textual basis so if all the textual content is the same then you have duplicate content in their eyes! You also need to think about the long term aim of promoting both sites - taking time and effort to produce decent unique content will be far more beneficial!
-
Thank you all for taking the time so far to provide some suggestions and comments,
Can i just double check that there is no techinical way around this other than making the content for each site as unique as possible?
-
What is skinning?
Skinning is a concept where by a program user or website visitor is given control of how the program or website they are using, looks to them, by choosing from a selection of differing pre-made designs (or skins.)
From the user point of view they are able to tailor the way a program or website appears to them according to their tastes and makes for a very interactive experience.
So how does it work?
Well if we leave programs to one side and concentrate on websites, the very basic concept is that as a web designer you create however many HTML pages of content (text and editorial images) are neded for your site and then instead of just one CSS file that governs every style and design/positioning element of the site, you create any number of seperate CSS files which will style the HTML page a different way depending on which one is loaded.
When the user chooses from a selection of skins on your site one CSS file is swapped for another and the page appears to have been instantly redesigned. (the actual content remains the same, but the way it is presented (colours, fonts, structual images) can be swapped each time a new skin is selected (CSS file is loaded.)
I just copied that from the web, but I would make one main website and allow my franchises the ability to skin the website to give it there own local flavor.
-
I would make the development of some unique marketing statements that fit the community of the franchisee a required part of the franchise application.
This will force the franchisee to learn about the business, think about how it will work, how it should be perceived by the public and do that in the unique context of their community location.
Get this information and work out of them while they are still hungry for the opportunity.
Give them a template to make it easy. Then congratulate them on developing all of the information needed for their new website.
This will benefit both you and the franchisee.
I would be demanding about them doing a great job on this.
-
peter have you thought about including some unique testimonials on the products to dilute the duplicate content on the pages of the franchise? also how about rewriting the content with a different structure to your own. there are always ways to create unique content have you read the latest artical on seomoz by gianluca - maybe an option some content curation around the subject? you could also include different unique snippets from the course on both sites to make the content different. hope these ideas help!
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
-
How bad is duplicate content for ecommerce sites?
We have multiple eCommerce sites which not only share products across domains but also across categories within a single domain. Examples: http://www.artisancraftedhome.com/sinks-tubs/kitchen-sinks/two-tone-sinks/medium-rounded-front-farmhouse-sink-two-tone-scroll http://www.coppersinksonline.com/copper-kitchen-and-farmhouse-sinks/two-tone-kitchen-farmhouse-sinks/medium-rounded-front-farmhouse-sink-two-tone-scroll http://www.coppersinksonline.com/copper-sinks-on-sale/medium-rounded-front-farmhouse-sink-two-tone-scroll We have selected canonical links for each domain but I need to know if this practice is having a negative impact on my SEO.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ArtisanCrafted0 -
What is considered duplicate content?
Hi, We are working on a product page for bespoke camper vans: http://www.broadlane.co.uk/campervans/vw-campers/bespoke-campers . At the moment there is only one page but we are planning add similar pages for other brands of camper vans. Each page will receive its specifically targeted content however the 'Model choice' cart at the bottom (giving you the choice to select the internal structure of the van) will remain the same across all pages. Will this be considered as duplicate content? And if this is a case, what would be the ideal solution to limit penalty risk: A rel canonical tag seems wrong for this, as there is no original item as such. Would an iFrame around the 'model choice' enable us to isolate the content from being indexed at the same time than the page? Thanks, Celine
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q0 -
Trying to advise on what seems to be a duplicate content penalty
So a friend of a friend was referred to me a few weeks ago as his Google traffic fell off a cliff. I told him I'd take a look at it and see what I could find and here's the situation I encountered. I'm a bit stumped at this point, so I figured I'd toss this out to the Moz crowd and see if anyone sees something I'm missing. The site in question is www.finishlinewheels.com In Mid June looking at the site's webmaster tools impressions went from around 20,000 per day down to 1,000. Interestingly, some of their major historic keywords like "stock rims" had basically disappeared while some secondary keywords hadn't budged. The owner submitted a reconsideration request and was told he hadn't received a manual penalty. I figured it was the result of either an automated filter/penalty from bad links, the result of a horribly slow server or possibly a duplicate content issue. I ran the backlinks on OSE, Majestic and pulled the links from Webmaster Tools. While there aren't a lot of spectacular links there also doesn't seem to be anything that stands out as terribly dangerous. Lots of links from automotive forums and the like - low authority and such, but in the grand scheme of things their links seem relevant and reasonable. I checked the site's speed in analytics and WMT as well as some external tools and everything checked out as plenty fast enough. So that wasn't the issue either. I tossed the home page into copyscape and I found the site brandwheelsandtires.com - which had completely ripped the site - it was thousands of the same pages with every element copied, including the phone number and contact info. Furthering my suspicions was after looking at the Internet Archive the first appearance was mid-May, shortly before his site took the nose dive (still visible at http://web.archive.org/web/20130517041513/http://brandwheelsandtires.com) THIS, i figured was the problem. Particularly when I started doing exact match searches for text on the finishlinewheels.com home page like "welcome to finish line wheels" and it was nowhere to be found. I figured the site had to be sandboxed. I contacted the owner and asked if this was his and he said it wasn't. So I gave him the contact info and he contacted the site owner and told them it had to come down and the owner apparently complied because it was gone the next day. He also filed a DMCA complaint with Google and they responded after the site was gone and said they didn't see the site in question (seriously, the guys at Google don't know how to look at their own cache?). I then had the site owner send them a list of cached URLs for this site and since then Google has said nothing. I figure at this point it's just a matter of Google running it's course. I suggested he revise the home page content and build some new quality links but I'm still a little stumped as to how/why this happened. If it was seen as duplicate content, how did this site with no links and zero authority manage to knock out a site that ranked well for hundreds of terms that had been around for 7 years? I get that it doesn't have a ton of authority but this other site had none. I'm doing this pro bono at this point but I feel bad for this guy as he's losing a lot of money at the moment so any other eyeballs that see something that I don't would be very welcome. Thanks Mozzers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NetvantageMarketing2 -
Product descriptions & Duplicate Content: between fears and reality
Hello everybody, I've been reading quite a lot recently about this topic and I would like to have your opinion about the following conclusion: ecommerce websites should have their own product descriptions if they can manage it (it will be beneficial for their SERPs rankings) but the ones who cannot won't be penalized by having the same product descriptions (or part of the same descriptions) IF it is only a "small" part of their content (user reviews, similar products, etc). What I mean is that among the signals that Google uses to guess which sites should be penalized or not, there is the ratio "quantity of duplicate content VS quantity of content in the page" : having 5-10 % of a page text corresponding to duplicate content might not be harmed while a page which has 50-75 % of a content page duplicated from an other site... what do you think? Can the "internal" duplicated content (for example 3 pages about the same product which is having 3 diferent colors -> 1 page per product color) be considered as "bad" as the "external" duplicated content (same product description on diferent sites) ? Thanks in advance for your opinions!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kuantokusta0 -
Is an RSS feed considered duplicate content?
I have a large client with satellite sites. The large site produces many news articles and they want to put an RSS feed on the satellite sites that will display the articles from the large site. My question is, will the rss feeds on the satellite sites be considered duplicate content? If yes, do you have a suggestion to utilize the data from the large site without being penalized? If no, do you have suggestions on what tags should be used on the satellite pages? EX: wrapped in tags? THANKS for the help. Darlene
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gXeSEO0 -
Syndicating duplicate content descriptions - Can these be canonicalised?
Hi there, I have a site that contains descriptions of accommodation and we also use this content to syndicate to our partner sites. They then use this content to fill their descriptions on the same accommodation locations. I have looked at copyscape and Google and this does appear as duplicate content across these partnered sites. I do understand as well that certain kinds of content will not impact Google's duplication issue such as locations, addresses, opening times those kind of things, but would actual descriptions of a location around 250 words long be seen and penalised as duplicate content? Also is there a possible way to canonicalise this content so that Google can see it relates back to our original site? The only other way I can think of getting round a duplicate content issue like this is ordering the external sites to use tags like blockquotes and cite tags around the content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MalcolmGibb0 -
Countries - Duplication Issues
Hi there, We have a .co.uk website which has been up and running for the past 5 years now and we have now decided because we have a big market in Ireland .ie we want to have a .ie website, the question is, is it ok just to replicate the .co.uk for the .ie website? Are there duplication issues? Kind Regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul781 -
Duplicate Content | eBay
My client is generating templates for his eBay template based on content he has on his eCommerce platform. I'm 100% sure this will cause duplicate content issues. My question is this.. and I'm not sure where eBay policy stands with this but adding the canonical tag to the template.. will this work if it's coming from a different page i.e. eBay? Update: I'm not finding any information regarding this on the eBay policy's: http://ocs.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?CustomerSupport&action=0&searchstring=canonical So it does look like I can have rel="canonical" tag in custom eBay templates but I'm concern this can be considered: "cheating" since rel="canonical is actually a 301 but as this says: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/12/handling-legitimate-cross-domain.html it's legitimately duplicate content. The question is now: should I add it or not? UPDATE seems eBay templates are embedded in a iframe but the snap shot on google actually shows the template. This makes me wonder how they are handling iframes now. looking at http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/search-engine-simulator.shtml does shows the content inside the iframe. Interesting. Anyone else have feedback?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joseph.chambers1