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.
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.
-
Hi guys, have a client in a similar situation and working through best option for them...would appreciate any comments or feedback...
Current Status - client has two websites each targeting different countries: .co.nz and .com.au
With the exception of a few products that are offered separately between NZ and AU, the sites are the same. In essence duplicate content. This is due to current platform limitations (the way their web company has built the site it is same site showing in each region on separate domains with option to change products between regions using inventory an integrated inventory tool).
The great news is they are currently rebuilding their websites onto a new platform with two unique versions of the site…which will be great for ongoing SEO - ie we can really drill into creating separate sets of page, product, template content and meta data etc.
They also have a magazine running on Word Press Blog using sub-domains associated with the regional root domain. E.g.
magazine.domain.co.nz and magazine.domainname.com.auAgain, with a few exceptions, this is also duplicated for both countries…ie sub domains assigned to the same site. Again duplicate content.
Question: The magazine being built on Word Press has to date been geared at offering an “FAQ” type engagement with visitors....visitors can submit questions via module which are then answered in Word Press blog posts. There are also links from main site menu away to the magazine...so not ideal for conversion. Client wants to bring this FAQ type feature back to the two main sites and can now do so during new site rebuilds.
There is also some SEO juice in the magazine as in essence it is a large Word Press blog. I am trying to work through what would be the best option for transferring all of the FAQ answers/articles (content) from magazine FAQs to the two new main sites...so over time the two new main sites obtain that SEO strength.
Option 1
Leave magazine as it is so that main sites continue to get benefits of referral traffic to main sites and sales as result of the referrals. Also retains the links from magazine to main site (although links are from a sub-domain of the same domain)
Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article for new NZ site
Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article for new AU site
(Bearing in mind stringent Panda rules etc – mixing up titles so unique, unique content and posting etc to avoid Panda penalties)
Option 2
Take down magazine site and implement 301 redirects + one new version of the articles.
Move all magazine articles across to the highest performing region (NZ by far) and 301 redirect from NZ magazine to the new NZ site with corresponding articles. 301 redirects take care of the indexed pages to retain traffic and rankings for the NZ magazine articles.
Rewrite a brand new version of each magazine article and add to the new AU site and 301 redirect from AU magazine articles to the new version on AU site. 301 redirects take care of any indexed AU magazine articles...but there may be some fluctuation in rankings as the content is now completely different (brand new).
Could there be any issue with loss of the internal backlinks? impacts SEO strength that magazine subdomain to main site might give?
Other Options?
Appreciate any thoughts or comments... thanks in advance...
-
I would steer clear of removing 250 blog posts from the other web properties. They may be driving traffic to those websites.
The client is requesting 250 particular blog posts to be rewritten. This isn't the best content strategy in the world, but that's what you're being asked to do, so the BEST way to handle it is to completely rewrite every post so they are 100% unique.
If you were to remove the blog posts from the other websites and simply post them on the new website, you're running the risk of taking traffic away from the already established websites.
"Would google pick up on the fact that these blogs are already appearing elsewhere on the web and thereby penalise the new site for posting material that is already indexed by Google?" -- Yes, you run the risk of being penalized by Panda with such a large amount of duplicate content. Google wants to rank websites that provide value to visitors. If a website is entirely made up of content that already exists on another website, you're providing no added value to visitors. Again, you could remove the content from the other websites and 301 redirect to the new one.... but you're taking a lot of value away from those websites if you do that.
-
Hi Phillip,
Sorry - I meant to write: Would all of the blogs need to be removed from the website on which they are appearing?
So is the best course of action to have the articles taken off the platforms on which they appear before going ahead and putting them up on the new site?
Also could you explain how the new site might get hit by panda i.e. would google pick up on the fact that these blogs are already appearing elsewhere on the web and thereby penalise the new site for posting material that is already indexed by Google?
Thanks a million Phillip.
-
If you don't make them VERY unique from the originals, the new site won't perform very well. If the new site consists of nothing but 250 blog posts that were already discovered on other websites, you won't get good results. Simply keyword optimizing the posts won't be enough. They should be entirely re-written to avoid potential problems with Panda.
I'm not sure what you mean by this -- Would the articles need to be completely taken by all current publishers?
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 do I fix my portfolio causing duplicate content issues?
Hi, Im new to this whole duplicate content issue. I have a website, fatcatpaperie.com that I use the portofolio feature in Wordpress as my gallery for all my wedding invitations. I have a ton of duplicate content issues from this. I don't understand at all how to fix this. I'd appreciate any help! Below is an example of one duplicate content issue. They have slightly different names, different urls, different images and all have no text. But are coming up as duplicates. Would it be as easy as putting a different metadescription for each?? Thanks for the help! Rena | "Treasure" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/treasure-designers-fine-press 1 0 0 0 200 3 duplicates "Perennial" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/perennial-by-designers-fine-press 1 0 0 0 200 1 of 3 duplicates "Primrose" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/8675 1 0 0 0 200 2 of 3 duplicates "Catalina" by Designers Fine Press - Fat Cat Paperie http://fatcatpaperie.com/portfolio-item/catalina-designers-fine-press |
On-Page Optimization | | HonestSEOStudio0 -
How to overcome blog page 1, 2, 3, etc having no or duplicate meta info?
As the above what is the best way to overcome having the same meta info on your blog pages (not blog posts) So if you have 25 blog posts per page once you exceed this number you then move onto a second blog page, then when you get to 50 you then move onto a 3rd blog page etc etc So if you have thousands f blog pages what is the best method to deal with this rather than having to write 100s of different meta titkes & descriptions? Cheers
On-Page Optimization | | webguru20141 -
Duplicate content penalty
when moz crawls my site they say I have 2x the pages that I really have & they say I am being penalized for duplicate content. I know years ago I had my old domain resolve over to my new domain. Its the only thing that makes sense as to the duplicate content but would search engines really penalize me for that? It is technically only on 1 site. My business took a significant sales hit starting early July 2013, I know google did and algorithm update that did have SEO aspects. I need to resolve the problem so I can stay in business
On-Page Optimization | | cheaptubes0 -
Duplicate Content when Using "visibility classes" in responsive design layouts? - a SEO-Problem?
I have text in the right column of my responsive layout which will show up below the the principal content on small devices. To do this I use visibility classes for DIVs. So I have a DIV with with a unique style text that is visible only on large screen sizes. I copied the same text into another div which shows only up only on small devices while the other div will be hidden in this moment. Technically I have the same text twice on my page. So this might be duplicate content detected as SPAM? I'm concerned because hidden text on page via expand-collapsable textblocks will be read by bots and in my case they will detect it twice?Does anybody have experiences on this issue?bestHolger
On-Page Optimization | | inlinear0 -
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 | | Adam-Perlman0 -
Blog.mysite.com or mysite.com/blog?
Hi, I'm just curious what the majority think of what's the best way to start a blog on your website for SEO benefits. Is it better to have it under a sub domain or a directory? Or does it even matter?
On-Page Optimization | | truckguy770 -
Sliders and Content Above the Fold
I was just inspecting a wire frame that is going out to a client and realized that the slider may interfere with the "content above the fold." Can't believe this had not struck me on others. If the Header has basic business info, etc. in it and you place a slider to display images in the area just beneath the Header or slightly down from it, does that decrease the amount of content seen a being above the fold? Or, is content above the fold established by virtue of H1,2, 3, etc.?
On-Page Optimization | | RobertFisher0 -
Avoiding "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" - Best Practices?
We have a website with a searchable database of recipes. You can search the database using an online form with dropdown options for: Course (starter, main, salad, etc)
On-Page Optimization | | smaavie
Cooking Method (fry, bake, boil, steam, etc)
Preparation Time (Under 30 min, 30min to 1 hour, Over 1 hour) Here are some examples of how URLs may look when searching for a recipe: find-a-recipe.php?course=starter
find-a-recipe.php?course=main&preperation-time=30min+to+1+hour
find-a-recipe.php?cooking-method=fry&preperation-time=over+1+hour There is also pagination of search results, so the URL could also have the variable "start", e.g. find-a-recipe.php?course=salad&start=30 There can be any combination of these variables, meaning there are hundreds of possible search results URL variations. This all works well on the site, however it gives multiple "Duplicate Page Title" and "Duplicate Page Content" errors when crawled by SEOmoz. I've seached online and found several possible solutions for this, such as: Setting canonical tag Adding these URL variables to Google Webmasters to tell Google to ignore them Change the Title tag in the head dynamically based on what URL variables are present However I am not sure which of these would be best. As far as I can tell the canonical tag should be used when you have the same page available at two seperate URLs, but this isn't the case here as the search results are always different. Adding these URL variables to Google webmasters won't fix the problem in other search engines, and will presumably continue to get these errors in our SEOmoz crawl reports. Changing the title tag each time can lead to very long title tags, and it doesn't address the problem of duplicate page content. I had hoped there would be a standard solution for problems like this, as I imagine others will have come across this before, but I cannot find the ideal solution. Any help would be much appreciated. Kind Regards5