Duplicate Content, Same Company?
-
Hello Moz Community,
I am doing work for a company and they have multiple locations.
For example, examplenewyork.com, examplesanfrancisco.com, etc.
They also have the same content on certain pages within each website.
For example, examplenewyork.com/page-a has the same content as examplesanfrancisco.com/page-a
Does this duplicate content negatively impact us? Or could we rank for each page within each location parameter (for example, people in new york search page-a would see our web page and people in san fran search page-a would see our web page)?
I hope this is clear.
Thanks,
Cole
-
Thanks all.
-
Sorry, I lost track of the fact that you were talking about dupe content on multiple domains, vs. on the same domain. The same logic basically applies. However, when you're talking about essentially duplicating entire domains registered to the same owner, there can be somewhat more of a risk that the original content gets discounted (or in such cases, penalized) along with the duplicate.
If you have a main site that seems to be doing OK in the search results, you may consider keeping that domain and it's content, while eliminating/redirecting the other domains and revising their content for use on the domain you're keeping.
-
Chris makes a fantastic point here.
You almost need to detach "what's reasonable" from what Google wants sometimes. Chris is right - why shouldn't those two pages have the same content? But we're dealing with algorithms mainly, not reasoning.
-
Cole,
I'm going to say roughly the same thing as the soon-to-be-guru Tom but give you somewhat of a different spin on it.
It's completely understandable that anyone with a website would feel that the the content applicable to one city would also apply to another city as well, so what's the harm in just switching out the city names? There shouldn't be really, and in most cases there is no actual harm, in it.
However, while Google's search engine makes it possible for customers in multiple cities to actually be able to seek out and find content you've "tailored" to them, it also makes it possible for other marketers to do the same as you've done--thus competition for keywords increases dramatically. On a small scale, google doesn't want to penalize, per se, a whole site for such practices, but it does want to differentiate that which might be original content from that which might be duplicates of the original and in doing so, be able to rank the original, while discounting duplicates.
To get around this "hurdle" you have to treat each of your pages as unique entities with unique values to each of your target markets. That way, content for each page ends up being unique and Google's algorithm can prioritize all the competitors' pages uniformly according to how relevant and valuable they are to the target audience.
-
Hey Cole
-
The more you do change, the less risk involved. Some might tell you that if you change the content enough to pass "copyscape" or other online plagiarism tools, that would protect you from a penalty. I find that to be slightly ridiculous - why would Google judge by those external standards? The more you can change, the better in my opinion (but I can totally sympathise with the work that entails)
-
Google will know you own the websites if you link them together, share GA code, host them together, contain the same company details and so on - but my question is why would you want to do that? I think if you tried to tell Google you owned all the sites they would come out you even harder, as they could see it as you being manipulative.
To that point, others will recommend that you only use one domain and target different KWs or locations on different pages/subfolders/subdomains, as it'll look less like a link network. Downside of that is getting Google local listings for each page/location can be a bit of a pain if the pages all come from one domain.
It's not really my place to comment on your strategy and what you should/should not be doing, but suffice to say if you go with individual domains for each location, you should aim to make those domains (and their copy) as unique and independent as possible.
-
-
Hey Tom,
The keywords we are competing for aren't very competitive.
Two follow up questions:
1.) To what length should we change the content? For example, is it a matter of a few words (location based) or is it more of altering each content on the page. I guess my question deals with the scope of the content change.
2.) Is there a way to let Google know we own all the websites? I had href lang in mind here. This may not be possible; I just wanted to ask.
Tom, thanks so much for your help.
Cole
-
Hi Cole
That kind of duplication will almost certainly negatively impact your ability to rank.
It's the kind of dupe content that Google hates - the kind that's deliberately manipulative and used by sites just trying to rank for as many different KWs or locations as possible, without trying to give people a unique user experience.
Not to say that you couldn't possibly rank like this (I've seen it happen and will probably see it again in the future), but you're leaving yourself wide open to a Panda penalty and, as such, I'd highly recommend that you cater each site and each landing page to your particular audience. Even by doing that, not only will you be making it unique but you would dramatically improve your chances of ranking by mentioning local things for a local page.
Give each page unique copy and really tailor it to your local audience.
Hope this 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
-
How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content
How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having duplicate content. I mean somewhere google says they will prefer original content & will give preference to them who have original content but this statement contradict when I see Indeed.com as they aggregate content from other sites but still rank higher than original content provider side. How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
ECommerce Duplicate content on product pages (eg delivery info, contact details etc)
Hi, Running a Magento site and wanted to check about duplicate page content. We have 1000+ product pages and it has been suggested to remove some of the "duplicated content" which displays on every product page and replace this with an image of the same text content. By this I am talking about content which is for promo/customer purposes and is displayed on every page. eg: "If you find our products cheaper elsewhere then please click below to get your price match...... etc", and a chunk of text for the "Delivery Tab Information" and "Contact Tab Information" on each and every product page. A SEO company has suggested to turn this content into images. Does anyone have thoughts on this please?
On-Page Optimization | | Ampweb0 -
Magento Duplicate Content Question - HELP!
In Magento, when entering product information, does the short description have to be different than the meta description? If they are both the same is this considered duplicate content? Thanks for the help!!!
On-Page Optimization | | LeapOfBelief0 -
Empty public profiles are viewed as duplicate content. What to do?
Hi! I manage a social networking site. We have a lot of public user profiles that are viewed as duplicate content. This is because these users haven't filled out any public profile info and thus the profiles are "empty" (except for the name). Is this something I should worry about? If yes, what are my options to solve this? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | thomasvanderkleij0 -
Wordpress blog duplicate issue
So after looking at the set up of the blog ive found this. http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/news/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/general/ http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/category/snow/ Content shown on http://www.trespass.co.uk/blog/ can also be found on the other 3 urls. The permalink structure is set up as /%category%/%postname%/ which I want to change to just %postname% Obviously i want to make things as seo friendly as possible so any suggestions to do this right without losing any indexed pages etc. I have limited access to make changes to plugins etc aswell as these need to be done through the development company who manage our site. Cheers Robert
On-Page Optimization | | Trespass0 -
E-Commerce Site - Duplicate Content
We run an e-commerce site with about 250,000 SKUs. Certain items, such as a micro USB car charger, will be applicable to several different phones. Example: http://www.wirelessemporium.com/p-165787-samsung-galaxy-proclaim-illusion-sch-i110-heavy-duty-car-charger.asp http://www.wirelessemporium.com/p-165856-sony-xperia-ion-4g-lte-att-heavy-duty-car-charger.asp As one can imagine with so many items, unique content for each item description page can be a challenge. What would be the best way to address this on a large scale?
On-Page Optimization | | eugeneku0 -
E commerce Website canonical and duplicate content isssue
i have a ecomerce site , i am just wondering if any one could help me answer this the more info page can be access will google consider it as duplicate and if it does then how to best use the canonical tag http://domain.com/product-page http://domain.com/product-page/ http://domain.com/product-Page http://domain.com/product-Page/ also in zencart when link product it create duplicate page content how to tackle it? many thanks
On-Page Optimization | | conversiontactics0 -
Pages with duplicate meta descriptions.
So I have similar items that is being recognized as duplicated meta description. What should I do? Here is couple of items.
On-Page Optimization | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0