Unoriginal Content Shared By Web Firm with Industry Niche
-
I have clients who have worked with Web Design companies that focus on a particular niche. As most of you may know, these type of web companies use the same content on all of their clients' sites (examples: Dentists, Law Firms, CPA's). I want to propose to this prospect for us to do a site redesign as part of their SEO contract. The site they use right now is managed by the type of web company that I have described above. But the main question is, if they keep using this site with unoriginal content - will it hurt their rank of have no effect? I plan to add plenty of original content to their site.
-
_First of all, no need to submit reconsideration request if the content of the website is duplicate. Panda is an algorithmic penalty and therefore, there is no such need of sending reconsideration request, as it is applicable only for manual penalty.
However, what I have assumed from your post is that you are concerned about the duplicate content thing. Yes, it is a matter of concern. Try to rewrite them and wait for Google to index them and your website will be okay._
_However, if someone else is copying your content, there is no reason to be worried about. The sites that are copying your content will be penalized and not the other way round. _
-
Thanks so much for this quick response. Yes I am proposing to them a new site design as well. I would just hate for them to opt for the SEO services without a new site.
It amazes me that the niche industry website companies repurpose all their content on their client's websites. I know of a client that was paying Findlaw $1200/month for repurposed blog content and supposed other SEO services.
-
Resolving issues with a site that has content that is not unique i is not as simple as adding good unique content.
Panda addresses this and the following is a good read: http://searchengineland.com/why-google-panda-is-more-a-ranking-factor-than-algorithm-update-82564.
In a nutshell, Panda "tags" your site as offending. To quote the author of the article, "Panda has been described as more of a ranking “signal” as opposed to an actual algorithm change. This means that when Panda is run it applies a “tag” to an offending site so that when the “normal” Google algo comes around, it uses that “tag” as a ranking signal (which basically tells the “normal” algo – “do NOT rank any page on this site well”).
Read more: http://www.potpiegirl.com/2011/10/how-google-makes-algorithm-changes/#ixzz2FMiCcJR3
Now. What to do. You can:
- Replace all of the duplicate content and get all on page and off page SEO in line. This may allow the site to self correct over time or you can submit a reconsideration request to Google once it is clean (this is working more and more even for sites hit by algos).
- Build a new white hat SEO site side-by-side with the original, using great content.
I am going through a similar situation right now, and whether you can come out of this type of algorithmic penalty cannot be predicted with 100% accuracy. It pays to hedge your bets in this case.
Cheers!
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
-
Should I be worried about our 'Duplicate' content
Hi guys... I've just been working through some issues to give our site a little cleanup. I'm working through our duplicate content issues (we have some legitimate duplicate pages that need removing, and some of our dynamic content is problematic. Are web developers are going to sort with canonical tags this week.) However... There are some pages that are actually different products, but are very similar pages that are 'triggering' MOZ to say we have duplicate pages. Here an example... http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/fortnight-view-filofax-personal and http://www.toaddiaries.co.uk/filofax-refills/filo-12-month-inserts-personal-size/week-to-a-view-filofax-personal They are very similar refill products, it's just the diary format is different. Question: Should I be worried about this? I've never seen our rankings change in the past when 'cleaning up' duplicate content. What do you guys think? Isaac.
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Category Page Content
Hey Mozzers, I've recently been doing a content audit on the category and sub-category pages on our site. The old pages had the following "profile" Above The Fold
On-Page Optimization | | ATP
Page Heading
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / Products
600 words+ of content duplicated from articles, sub categories and products My criticisms of the page were
1. No content (text) above the fold
2. Page content was mostly duplicated content
3. No keyword structure, many pages competed for the same keywords and often unwanted pages outranked the desired page for the keyword. I cleaned this up to the following structure Above The Fold
H1 Page Heading 80-200 Word of Content (Including a link to supporting article)
H2 Page Heading (Expansion or variance of the H1 making sure relevant) 80-200 150 Words of Content
Image Links to Categories / Products
Below the Fold
The rest of the Image Links to Categories / Products The new pages are now all unique content, targeted towards 1-2 themed keywords. I have a few worries I was hoping you could address. 1. The new pages are only 180-300 words of text, simply because that is all that is needed to describe that category and provide some supporting information. the pages previously contained 600 words. Should I be looking to get more content on these pages?
2. If i do need more content, It wont fit "above the fold" without pushing the products and sub categories below the fold, which isn't ideal. Should I be putting it there anyway or should I insert additional text below the products and below the fold or would this just be a waste.
3. Keyword Structure. I have designed each page to target a selction of keywords, for example.
a) The main widget pages targets all general "widget" terms and provides supporting infromation
b) The sub-category blue widget page targets anything related and terms such as "Navy Widgets" because navy widgets are a type of blue widget etc"
Is this keyword structure over-optimised or exactly what I should be doing. I dont want to spread content to thin by being over selective in my categories Any other critisms or comment welcome0 -
Duplicate content, which seems not to be duplicate :S
After crawling I am used to getting a lot of duplicate content messages in Moz, which are High Priority. I do not know what to do with them, since I believe we tackled all the issues. Main point being the advise to put in a link rel=canonical. An example of a page that accordeing to the report has a duplicate. I do not see how. Can you help with that? http://www.beat-it.nl/4y6hctr24x7wdmr-ml350-p-ic-procaresvc.html duplicate sample http://www.beat-it.nl/modu-hp-a5800-acm-for-64-256-aps.html
On-Page Optimization | | Raymo0 -
Acquired Old, Bad Content Site That Ranks Great. Redirect to Content on My Site?
Hello. my company acquired another website. This website is very old, the content within is decent at best, but still manages to rank very well for valuable phrases. Currently, we're leaving the entire site active on its own for its brand, but i'd like to at least redirect some of the content back to our main website. I can't justify spending the time to create improved content on that site and not our main site though. What would be the best practice here? 1. Cross-domain canonical - and build the new content on our main website? 2. 301 Redirect Old Article to New Location containing better article 3. Leave the content where it is - you won't be able to transfer the ranking across domain. Thanks for your input.
On-Page Optimization | | Blenny0 -
Ecommerce, Adding Content To Categories/Product Pages
In an eCommerce store, when is it appropriate to add quality category pages content and when is it more appropriate to add content to the actual product pages instead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Duplicate content "/"
Hi all, Ran my website through the SEOMOZ campaigns and the crawl diagnostics give me a duplicate error for these urls http://www.mysite.com/cat1/article http://www.mysite.com/cat1/article/ so the url with the "/" is a duplicate of the one without the "/" Can someone point me out to a solution to solve this ? regards, Frederik
On-Page Optimization | | frdrik1230 -
How to SEO a website that is being help back by duplicate content?
We have over 20 websites that sell property. Each website is targeted to a different country. People advertise to sell their property. The websites are not getting to page 1 for the terms we want probably because of duplication issues. If we compare one website with another country website on www.duplicatecontent.net we find it is nearly 70% between one and the other. So we trying to understand why this is. If someone wanted to sell a property in Spain we would create an advert for them but rather than putting this on the back-end of the Spain website it goes on a separate website that does on all countries. We have tried to put nofollow tags so that the country specific website gets acknowledgement of being the original website but the rankings for key-terms will not rise and the duplication % remains nearly 70%. Can anyone suggest the best way forward?
On-Page Optimization | | Feily0 -
How to avoid duplicate content on ecommerce pages?
I am currently building the site architecture for a very large ecommerce site. I am wondering how I should build it out if I have products that I want to include in multiple categories within my site. For example: Lets say I sell fitness equipment and I have categories for things such as: Treadmill, Exercise Bike, Stair Stepper, Weight Benches etc. But then I also have specific brand category pages such a: Precor, Life Fitness, Hammer, Body Solid So my question is how do I structure this so I am building this correctly? If I sell a Precor Treadmill I will want to include that product under the "Treadmill" category page as well as under the "Precor Equipment" category page. Can I get some advice for the best way to structure this? It's obviously something I want to avoid at all costs of doing improperly and having to fix later. Thank you Jake
On-Page Optimization | | PEnterprises0