Using Product Page Content from an Offline Website
-
Hi all,
We have two websites. One of the website's no longer sells product range A.
However, on the second website, we would like to sell range A.
We paid a copywriter to write some really good content for these ranges and we were wondering if we would get stung for duplicate content if we took these descriptions from website 1 and placed them on website 2.
The products / descriptions are live anymore and haven't been for about 6 weeks.
We're ranking for some great keywords at the moment and we don't want to spoil that.
Thanks in advance!
D
-
Thanks for all your responses Linda and Dirk!
The pages are not live on the first website so there will be no possibility of any redirects.
Although i'm reassured now that we can transfer the descriptions over without being penalised.
Thank you again!
-
Not at all, Dirk. I was just clarifying my answer.
If the pages still exist (just not listed on the website) and were doing well = Redirect or canonicalize to take advantage of their residual authority.
If the pages no longer exist = Not much you can do...
In either case, no problem with duplicate content as Google will soon figure out where the content now (exclusively) lives.
-
Linda,
I hope there is no misunderstanding, I fully agreed with your first answer. I also like the solution with the canonical - however not possible to implement this if the content has already been put off-line.
rgds,
Dirk
-
If you don't want to do the redirects, you can do the cross-domain canonical. Lots of unrelated sites do this, for instance when syndicating content.
-
I saw that the writer had said that site 1 no longer sold product range A, but I wasn't sure whether that meant that the range pages had been removed from Google's index or whether they were just no longer available on the site.
I also wasn't sure which site was the one ranking for great keywords. If it is the product range A products on site 1 (with the really good content) then it might be best to leave them indexed, with the redirect, till Google picks up on the change and passes the goodness to site 2. (If not, no harm done.)
-
Thanks for your responses!
We don't want to do any redirects between the websites as we would like to keep them as two separate entities.
I believe google has the content still cached which is why i was panicking about duplicate content.
Thanks,
Dale
-
Hi,
You can only have duplicate content if the same content is published on different sites. As far as I understand from your question, site one doesn't sell product range A anymore, so these products are no longer published on site one. So there can't be a duplicate content issue if you publish the same content on site two.
I like the suggestion of Linda to put 301 from the old pages on site 1 to the new pages on site 2 as it will reinforce the position of the new pages.
rgds,
Dirk
-
You can use a cross-domain canonical from site 1 pointing to to site 2, or 301 redirect the pages from site 1 to site 2.
Duplicate content isn't a penalty, it just makes Google choose which version to show. If you use one of those signals (probably the 301, if you are sure this is a permanent change), the correct site will get the benefit of the content.
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
-
Home Pages of Several Websites are disappearing / reappearing in Google Index
Hi, I periodically use the Google site command to confirm that our client's websites are fully indexed. Over the past few months I have noticed a very strange phenomenon which is happening for a small subset of our client's websites... basically the home page keeps disappearing and reappearing in the Google index every few days. This is isolated to a few of our client's websites and I have also noticed that it is happening for some of our client's competitor's websites (over which we have absolutely no control). In the past I have been led to believe that the absence of the home page in the index could imply a penalty of some sort. This does not seem to be the case since these sites continue to rank the same in various Google searches regardless of whether or not the home page is listed in the index. Below are some examples of sites of our clients where the home page is currently not indexed - although they may be indexed by the time you read this and try it yourself. Note that most of our clients are in Canada. My questions are: 1. has anyone else experienced/noticed this? 2. any thoughts on whether this could imply some sort of penalty? or could it just be a bug in Google? 3. does Google offer a way to report stuff like this? Note that we have been building websites for over 10 years so we have long been aware of issues like www vs. non-www, canonicalization, and meta content="noindex" (been there done that in 2005). I could be wrong but I do not believe that the site would keep disappearing and reappearing if something like this was the issue. Please feel free to scrutinize the home pages to see if I have overlooked something obvious - I AM getting old. site:dietrichlaw.ca - this site has continually ranked in the top 3 for [kitchener personal injury lawyers] for many years. site:burntucker.com - since we took over this site last year it has moved up to page 1 for [ottawa personal injury lawyers] site:bolandhowe.com - #1 for [aurora personal injury lawyers] site:imranlaw.ca - continually ranked in the top 3 for [mississauga immigration lawyers]. site:canadaenergy.ca - ranks #3 for [ontario hydro plans] Thanks in advance! Jim Donovan, President www.wethinksolutions.com
Technical SEO | | wethink0 -
Duplicate Content on a Page Due to Responsive Version
What are the implications if a web designer codes the content of the site twice into the page in order to make the site responsive? I can't add the url I'm afraid but the H1 and the content appear twice in the code in order to produce both a responsive version and a desktop version. This is a Wordpress site. Is Google clever enough to distinguish between the 2 versions and treat them individually? Or will Google really think that the content has been repeated on the same page?
Technical SEO | | Wagada0 -
Utilising Wordpress Attachment Pages Without Getting Duplicate Content Warnings.
I have a wordpres site that relies heavily on images and their usefulness. Each post links to larger sizes of the images with links back to the post and the "gallery" all images uploaded to the post. Unfortunately this goes against the "rules" and our attachment page show as duplicate content in Google (even though the image titles are different). There must be a way to utlise and make the most of attachment pages without getting duplicate content warnings?
Technical SEO | | DotP0 -
Product page Canonicalization best practice
I'm getting duplicate content errors in GWT for product list pages that look like this: -www.example.com/category-page/product
Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
-www.example.com/category-page/product/?p=2 The "p=2" example already has a rel=canonical in place, " Shouldn't the non-canonical pages be using the canonical attribute for the first page rather than the additional product pages? Thanks!0 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content Crawl Diagnostics
I have Pages with Duplicate Page Content in my Crawl Diagnostics Tell Me How Can I solve it Or Suggest Me Some Helpful Tools. Thanks
Technical SEO | | nomyhot0 -
Using Rel Nofollow on Duplicate Pages
Hi there, I have a rather large site that has duplicate content on many pages due to how it's being spidered by google. I was hoping I could set the internal link to this page as "nofollow." My question is that I have hundreds of other sites with backlinks to these duplicate content pages.. will this affect me negatively if I tell google not to index the duplicated pages?
Technical SEO | | trialminecraftserverfinder0 -
Local Search | Website Issue with Duplicate Content (97 pages)
Hi SEOmoz community. I have a unique situation where I’m evaluating a website that is trying to optimize better for local search and targeting 97 surrounding towns in his geographical location. What is unique about this situation is that he is ranking on the 1st and 2nd pages of the SERPs for his targeted keywords, has duplicate content on 97 pages to his site, and the search engines are still ranking the website. I ran the website’s url through SEOmoz’s Crawl Test Tool and it verified that it has duplicate content on 97 pages and has too many links (97) per page. Summary: Website has 97 duplicate pages representing each town, with each individual page listing and repeating all of the 97 surrounding towns, and each town is a link to a duplicate page. Question: I know eventually the site will not get indexed by the Search Engines and not sure the best way to resolve this problem – any advice?
Technical SEO | | ToddSEOBoston0 -
I have 2 websites with the same content
Hello everyone, this is my first post here on SEOmoz and I have a questions that I cannot seem to figure out. So here is my scenario: I have 2 websites that are identical. The only difference between the 2 websites is the domain name. This was done a while back for marketing purposes, however, I am no longer needing my 2nd website. What is the best way to get rid of this second website? I still have about 1 paying customer a day convert on this 2nd website and I do not want to loose them, however, I know that I am getting penalized by the search engines because of this duplicate content. Please let me know the best way of going about this. PS: I have read about 301 redirects, canonicalizing URLs, and other methods but do not know which one to choose. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | threebiz0