Reusing content owned by the client on websites for other locations?

[kbaltzell]

Hello All!

Newbie here, so I'm working through some of my questions I do have two major question regarding duplicate content:

_Say a medical hospital has 4 locations, and chooses to create 4 separate websites. Each website would have the same design, but different NAP, and contact info, etc. Essentially, we'd be looking at creating their own branded template. _

My question 1.) If the hospitals all offer similar services, with roughly the same nav, does it make sense to have multiple websites? I figure this makes the most sense in terms of optimizing for their differing locations.

2.) If the hospital owns the content on the first site, I'm assuming it is still necessary to change it duplicates for the other properties? Or is it possible to differentiate between the duplication of owned content from other instances of content duplication?

Everyone has been fantastic here so far, looking forward to some feedback!

[danatanseo]

I agree with both Andrea and Miriam in that the best-case scenario would be one site that provides links and information to different locations, provided the branding and business model support that of course.

[danatanseo]

You're welcome Tyler. I think Andrea has a good suggestion below too.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Tyler,

Does the hospital have one name or four? In other words, is the whole hospital chain called St. Joseph's Hospital, or is one St. Joseph's Urgent Care, while another is Goldman-St. Joseph's and another is St. Joseph's Memorial, etc. ? If only one, and all four hospitals are administered by the same ruling body, then I would almost always suggest creating just one website if this were my Local SEO/design client.

With this approach, each of the hospital branches can be given a location landing page with unique content on it (most importantly, the unique complete contact information for each branch) and these pages will not duplicate one another in any way. Then, all the rest of the site content goes to the good of the overall brand, and there is no problem with duplication because each page is occurring only once rather than possibly occurring 4 times on 4 different websites.

Also, by making one site the official source of info for the brand, you reduce the risk of Google+ merges/dupes.

If, for some reason, the governing body insists on having 4 different websites instead of 1, then, yes, you must be sure that the content is unique on each website to avoid duplicate content.

[josh-riley]

I'd actually go a different route and do one site with separate pages for each location. It'dbe better for the overall issue of content/avoiding duplicate which can become a huge issue. Four sites is a lot more to manage and track and keep up and running.

But it depends on what the online strategy is, too. Google is constantly working to get localized results, too, so it's not as though there has to be four totally independent sites to get results targeted to a certain neighborhood.

I'm not saying this is the best site ever, but one hospital network that comes to mind, Beaumont, has theirs set up this way: http://www.beaumont.edu/

[kbaltzell]

Hi Dana,

Thanks for the reply! You are correct in that I'm not directly employed by these clients. I'm guessing our best option would just be using a similar base, and reworking the content enough as to differentiate.

The difficult part comes when all the locations will offer the same services. We'll just be tasked with coming up with new ways to say the same things. Home/About Us wouldn't be tricky because that makes unique content creation a bit easier.

Thank you for your quick reply!

[danatanseo]

Hi Tyler,

Here's a partial answer. I am not a specialist in local SEO so you might get some more detailed ideas if some of those folks chime in on  this one.

It seems to me you only have two options. One is to create unique content for each hospital. The other, doing as you suggest an using content created oin one site and re-using it on another is only going to work if you use canonicalization properly. The downside for that is the site with the canonical tag is going to get credit for that content and the site without the canonical tag isn't. You could be fragmenting good content in ways you may never have envisioned when you began. The result could be that one hospital site does way better than another in the SERPs.

I would encourage your clients (I am assuming these hospitals are clients and that you aren't directly employed by them), encourage them to express to you what is special about each of those hospitals. What differentiates them from other hospitals in the same area, and perhaps even from each other. This is the harder, but better route I think.

I hope that helps a little!

Dana