Duplicate Contact Information
-
My clients has had a website for many years, and his business for decades. He has always had a second website domain which is basically a shopping module for obtaining information, comparisons, and quotes for tires. This tire module had no informational pages or contact info. Until recently, we pulled this information in through iframes.
Now however the tire module is too complex and we do not bring in this info through iframes, and because of the way this module is configured (or website framework), we are told we can not place it as a sub-directory.
So now this tire module resides on another domain name (although similar to the client's "main site" domain name) with some duplicate informational pages (I am working through this with the client), but mainly I am concerned about the duplicate contact info -- address and phone.
Should I worry that this other tire website has duplicated the client's phone and address, same as their main website?
And would having a subdomain (tires.example.com) work better for Google and SEO considering the duplicate contact info?
Any help is much appreciated.
ccee bar
(And, too, The client is directing AdWords campaigns to this other website for tires, while under the same AdWords account directing other campaigns to their main site? - I have advised an entirely separate AdWords account for links to the tire domain. BTW the client does NOT have separate social media accounts for each site -- all social media efforts and links are for the main site.)
-
Laura,
Yes thank you for your reply, this helps greatly.
Right now for the client, because they lack a good strategy for organic SEO, AdWords generates their greatest traffic. I hope to leverage this with a better organic approach for SEO, and help create a better AdWords strategy.
But all that said, I just wasn't sure about the contact info and address... now I can move on. Thanks again!
-
First of all, backlinks from Adwords campaigns do not help you with organic search rankings at all.
Secondly, this kind of duplicate content issue may not be as big a problem as you think. If Google detects two pages have the same or very similar content, it will choose the best one to display in search results and filter the other one out. So, you may not need to do anything.
On the other hand, if you are particular about which website should appear in search results for that content, you'll want to use the rel="canonical" tag to let Google know which page you prefer. You'll find more info about the canonical tag at the two links below.
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?hl=en
- https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization
I hope that helps!
-
Laura,
Thanks so much for your response.
I guess what I was thinking is if online directories have duplicate info that would be expected.
But if duplicate content information, and business name, were on two different websites ((each set up as a service or consulting business)), would it look like the two websites were trying to capitalize on search results -- especially if some outbound links (like AdWords) were coming to one site (tires, say) and also to the "main site" (brakes, and some tires).
Still you think this is OK?
ccee bar
-
Having the same phone number and address on two websites is not a duplicate content issue. It's very common because of business directories all over the web. If that's the only duplicate content you're worried about, then you're fine.
-
Subdomain is better than separate domain if you cannot have a subdirectory.
As for the duplicate content, regardless of a separate domain, subdomain, or subdirectory, I would canonical any of the duplicate pages to the authoritative content. If it's the main site, then I would canonical the other domain to it. Not sure of a reason why you would prefer the other domain to be the authoritative source, but if that is the case, then you would canonical the main site to the other domain.
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
-
Duplicate Pages #!
Hi guys, Currently have duplicate pages accross a website e.g. https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart**#!** https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart The only difference is the URL 1 has a hashtag and exclamation tag. Everything else is the same. We were thinking of adding rel canonical tags on the #! versions of the page to the correct URLs. But Google doens't seem to be indexing the #! versions anyway. Does anyone know why this is the case? If Google is not indexing them, is there any point adding rel canonical tags? Cheers, Chris https://archierose.com.au/shop/cart#!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Having problems resolving duplicate meta descriptions
Recently, I’ve recommended to the team running one of our websites that we remove duplicate meta descriptions. The site currently has a large number of these and we’d like to conform to SEO best practice. I’ve seen Matt Cutt’s recent video entitled, ‘Is it necessary for every page to have a meta description’, where he suggests that webmasters use meta descriptions for their most tactically important pages, but that it is better to have no meta description than duplicates. The website currently has one meta description that is duplicated across the entire site. This seemed like a relatively straight forward suggestion but it is proving much more challenging to implement over a large website. The site’s developer has tried to resolve the meta descriptions, but says that the current meta description is a site wide value. It is possible to create 18 distinct replacements for 18 ‘template’ pages, but any sub-pages of these will inherit the value and create more duplicates. Would it be better to: Have no meta descriptions at all across the site? Stick with the status quo and have one meta description site-wide? Make 18 separate meta descriptions for the 18 most important pages, but still have 18 sets of duplicates across the sub-pages of the site. Or…is there a solution to this problem which would allow us to follow the best practice in Matt’s video? Any help would be much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Hey Everyone, I have a question regarding duplicate content. If your site is penalized for duplicate content, is it just the pages with the content on it that are affected or is the whole site affected? Thanks 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Need help with duplicate content. Same content; different locations.
We have 2 sites that will have duplicate content (e.g., one company that sells the same products under two different brand names for legal reasons). The two companies are in different geographical areas, but the client will put the same content on each page because they're the same product. What is the best way to handle this? Thanks a lot.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rocket.Fuel0 -
Rel canonical and duplicate subdomains
Hi, I'm working with a site that has multiple sub domains of entirely duplicate content. So, the production level site that visitors see is (for made-up illustrative example): 123abc456.edu Then, there are sub domains which are used by different developers to work on their own changes to the production site, before those changes are pushed to production: Larry.123abc456.edu Moe.123abc456.edu Curly.123abc456.edu Google ends up indexing these duplicate sub domains, which is of course not good. If we add a canonical tag to the head section of the production page (and therefor all of the duplicate sub domains) will that cause some kind of problem... having a canonical tag on a page pointing to itself? Is it okay to have a canonical tag on a page pointing to that same page? To complete the example... In this example, where our production page is 123abc456.edu, our canonical tag on all pages (this page and therefor the duplicate subdomains) would be: Is that going to be okay and fix this without causing some new problem of a canonical tag pointing to the page it's on? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
HTTPS Duplicate Content?
I just recieved a error notification because our website is both http and https. http://www.quicklearn.com & https://www.quicklearn.com. My tech tells me that this isn't actually a problem? Is that true? If not, how can I address the duplicate content issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QuickLearnTraining0 -
My site is duplicated on the internet, please help.
I've been told that my site: "- your site is duplicated on the internet. Both www.joeyvalyphotography.com and joeyvalyphotography.com are valid internet addresses. This is a problem for SEO." I am wondering, what's the cause of this, and how it can fixed. Thanks In advanced, Joey
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gaji0 -
Cross-Domain Canonical and duplicate content
Hi Mozfans! I'm working on seo for one of my new clients and it's a job site (i call the site: Site A).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
The thing is that the client has about 3 sites with the same Jobs on it. I'm pointing a duplicate content problem, only the thing is the jobs on the other sites must stay there. So the client doesn't want to remove them. There is a other (non ranking) reason why. Can i solve the duplicate content problem with a cross-domain canonical?
The client wants to rank well with the site i'm working on (Site A). Thanks! Rand did a whiteboard friday about Cross-Domain Canonical
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/cross-domain-canonical-the-new-301-whiteboard-friday0