New Client Wants to Keep Duplicate Content Targeting Different Cities
-
We've got a new client who has about 300 pages on their website that are the same except the cities that are being targeted. Thus far the website has not been affected by penguin or panda updates, and the client wants to keep the pages because they are bringing in a lot of traffic for those cities.
We are concerned about duplicate content penalties; do you think we should get rid of these pages or keep them?
-
This is a tough situation. I tend to agree with Ricky - these are exactly the kinds of pages that have been hit by Panda, and there's real risk. In the old days, the biggest risk was that the pages would just stop getting traffic. Now, the impact could hit the rest of the site as well, and it's a lot more dangerous.
The problem is that it's working for now, and you're asking them to give up traffic in the short-term to avoid losing it in the long-term. Again, I think the long-term risk is serious (and it's not that easy to recover from), but the short-term pain to the client is very real.
What's the scope of the 300 pages compared to the rest of the site (are we talking a 400 page site or a 40,000 page site)? How many of these city pages are getting real traffic? My best alternative solution is to pin down the 10-20% of the city pages getting most of the traffic, temporarily NOINDEX the rest, and then beef up those well-trafficked city pages with unique content (so, maybe you're talking about 30 pages). Then, build out from there.
Give these pages real value - it's not only good for SEO, but it will probably improve conversion, too. The other problem with pages that just swap out a city is that they're often low quality - they may draw traffic in, but then have high bounce rates and low conversion. If you can show that you can improve the value, even with some traffic loss, it's easier to win this fight.
-
Does the analytics support specific city search terms targeting those city specific pages, or going to the home page (or the canonical version of the duplicate content page)?
If it is the later, then you certainly should move those city specific keyword terms into the single version of the duplicate content in some creative fashion.
Regardless you still should remove the duplicate content, preferably sooner than later because they are certainly low value pages!
-
I agree with Ricky - I would slowly make all those pages unique in some way. I still find it beneficial to rank to different city pages as long as they have prime content. Google will eventually sift its way and find those pages as spam.
-
It seems to me that Google would see all of that duplicate content and simply have 1 page ranking as the canonical page. If they are seeing organic traffic and rankings for multiple pages, I am not sure how long that will last. From what I understand, it would be best to start the slow process of making the content on each page somewhat unique.
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
-
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 -
My company's product is referred to by two different names (SVN and Subversion). When cleaning up our Title tags, is it OK to use either name to keep the title tags around 70 characters?
I am cleaning up title tags that are too long or not correct. In our title tag we reference our product (a version of OSS source code). This product is often referred to as both SVN or Subversion. When writing Title tags is it OK to use one or the other depending on the length of the Title Tag? For instance: Contact Us | Free SVN & Git Hosting | Bug & Issue tracking | CloudForge vs **About CloudForge | Free Subversion & Git Hosting | Bug Tracking ** | |
On-Page Optimization | | CollabNet0 -
Duplicate Content for Men's and Women's Version of Site
So, we're a service where you can book different hairdressing services from a number of different salons (site being worked on). We're doing both a male and female version of the site on the same domain which users are can select between on the homepage. The differences are largely cosmetic (allowing the designers to be more creative and have a bit of fun and to also have dedicated male grooming landing pages), but I was wondering about duplicate pages. While most of the pages on each version of the site will be unique (i.e. [male service] in [location] vs [female service] in [location] with the female taking precedent when there are duplicates), what should we do about the likes of the "About" page? Pages like this would both be unique in wording but essentially offer the same information and does it make sense to to index two different "About" pages, even if the titles vary? My question is whether, for these duplicate pages, you would set the more popular one as the preferred version canonically, leave them both to be indexed or noindex the lesser version entirely? Hope this makes sense, thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Duplicate title tag
Hello,
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
My site have problems with duplicate title, they were reported from google webmaster. For example:
/extra-services/car-pick-up-service-146.html (1) /extra-services/transportation--car-rails--146.html (2) According to my sitemap the first URL is right (1). But the second URL is wrong, I don't know it occur here.0 -
What is the best way to resolve duplicate content issue
Hi I have a client whose site content has been scraped and used in numerous other sites. This is detrimental to ranking. One term we wish to rank for is nowhere. My question is this: what's the quickest way to resolve a duplicate content issue when other sites have stolen your content? I understand that maybe I should firstly contact these site owners and 'appeal to their better nature'. This will take time and they may not even comply. I've also considered rewriting our content. Again this takes time. Has anybody experienced this issue before? If so how did you come to a solution? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | sicseo0 -
Duplicate content on ecommerce
We have a website that we created a little over a year ago and have included our core products we have always focused on such as mobility scooters and power wheelchairs. We have been going through and updating product descriptions, adding product reviews that our customers have provided etc in order to improve on our SEO rankings and not be penalized by the Panda update. We were approached by a manufacturer last year about their products and they had close to 10k products that we were able to upload easily into our system. Obviously these all have standard manufacturers descriptions many sites are also using. It will take us forever to go through and change all of these and many products are similar to each other anyway they just vary in size, color etc. Will it help our rankings for our core products to simply go through and delete all of these additional products and categories and just add them one by one with unique descriptions and more detailed information when we have time? We aren't really selling many of them anyway so it won't hurt our sales. I'm clearly new to SEO and any help at all would be greatly appreciated. My main website is www.bestmedicalsuppliesonsale dot com A sample core category that we have changed descriptions for is http://www.bestmedicalsuppliesonsale.com/mobility-scooters-s/36.htm A sample of a category and products we simply uploaded would be at http://www.bestmedicalsuppliesonsale.com/Wound-Care-s/4837.htm I'm open to all suggestions I would just like to see my traffic and obviously sales increase. If there are any other glaring problems please let me know. I need help!
On-Page Optimization | | BestMedical0 -
Duplicate Title question
Thanks Mozzers in advance for any insight into what I'm sure is a basic SEO question. I'm working with a resort in the great state of Maine. Their home page title reads Maine Resorts, Resorts in Maine, (company name). The site has about 400 URL's and over half of the URL's utilize the first keyword phrase of the home page title, "Maine Resorts." Predominately, I find them used on the Accommodations pages (pages that describe each room with a picture) which I would label as deeper pages and non-conversion type pages. The page titles themselves are not exact duplicates of the Home Page Title but might read something like "Maine Resorts, Company Name, Accommodation Listing." My concern is that the heavy use of "Maine Resorts" as the first phrase in over 200 plus pages might be competing against the home page and pulling the home page ranking down. Thanks for any help given!
On-Page Optimization | | hawkvt10 -
Crawl Diagnostics - Duplicate Content and Duplicate Page Title Errors
I am getting a lot of duplicate content and duplicate page title errors from my crawl analysis. I using volusion and it looks like the photo gallery is causing the duplicate content errors. both are sitting at 231, this shows I have done something wrong... Example URL: Duplicate Page Content http://www.racquetsource.com/PhotoGallery.asp?ProductCode=001.KA601 Duplicate Page Title http://www.racquetsource.com/PhotoGallery.asp?ProductCode=001.KA601 Would anyone know how to properly disallow this? Would this be as simple as a robots.txt entry or something a little more involved within volusion? Any help is appreicated. Cheers Geoff B. (a.k.a) newbie.
On-Page Optimization | | GeoffBatterham0