Semi-duplicate content yet authoritative site
-
So I have 5 real estate sites.
One of those sites is of course the original, and it has more/better content on most of the pages than the other sites. I used to be top ranked for all of the subdivsion names in my town. Then when I did the next 2-4 sites, I had some sites doing better than others for certain keywords, and then I have 3 of those sites that are basically the same URL structures (besides the actual domain) and they aren't getting fed very many visits. I have a couple of agents that work with me that I loaned my sites to to see if that would help since it would be a different name. My same youtube video is on each of the respective subdivision pages of my site and theirs. Also, their content is just rewritten content from mine about the same length of content.
I have looked over and seen a few of my competitors who only have one site and their URL structures arent good at all, and their content isn't good at all and a good bit of their pages rank higher than my main site which is very frustrating to say the least since they are actually copy cats to my site. I sort of started the precedent of content, mapping the neighborhood, how far that subdivision is from certain landmarks, and then shot a video of each. They have pretty much done the same thing and are now ahead of me.
What sort of advice could you give me? Right now, I have two sites that are almost duplicate in terms of a template and same subdivsions although I did change the content the best I could, and that site is still getting pretty good visits. I originally did it to try and dominate the first page of the SERPS and then Penguin and Panda came out and seemed to figure that game out. So now, I would still like to keep all the sites, but I'm assuming that would entail making them all unique, which seems to be tough seeing as though my town has the same subdivisions.
Curious as to what the suggestions would be, as I have put a lot of time into these sites.
If I post my site will it show up in the SERPS?
Thanks in advance
-
Thanks Andy,
My thoughts here, as I just answered Russ, is that I will keep two sites (the two best performing ones, but go ahead and add great content to one, and that should help me, right? I ask because the other site that is similar is still getting moderately good traffic and it is a site for one of my other agents so it's not really tied to me, so by making my site better and better, it will make hers less and less similar right?
-
Thanks Russ,
That is pretty much what I ended up doing with my site, to where I made it a bit overwhelming for someone to compete with me and as I got super busy (because of the work that I did to my site) others have copied my sites and have started doing what I was doing. I still have higher Domain Authority than they do, and as I get more time like I have now, I will be doing more writing and researching, etc. That has been my goal all along, the only problem is one of the other sites that I have one of my agents on, has a site, pretty similar to mine, but she still gets great leads and makes money off of the site, so I don't want to quickly can that site even though it's very similar to my site. Thoughts on that?
-
Hi,
I would strongly urge you not to run multiple sites. If Google catches on to this, you will end up with a penalty for all of them. This would be seen as a way to try and 'game' the search engine by trying to find ways to get more exposure for keywords. What you will also find is that you are competing against your own sites in terms of keywords, which is never an area you want to get in to.
Look at it from Google's eyes - if they were to ask you why you have 5 sites, what would be your answer? I promise you that they wouldn't let you get away with it.
Best thing to do here is ditch all but one site and concentrate, as Russ suggests, on amazing content. Pull everything back to within one domain and create pages to target specific keywords, but don't make it spammy. Well researched content will win every time and can result in great SERP placements.
-Andy
-
Focus on one site for the time being and make it, without question, objectively, the best site in your area. Blow the competition out of the water. I'm talking thousands of words of content, interviews with neighborhood HOA members, guides to neighborhood schools, recommendations of local restaurants and businesses (great backlink opportunities, syndicated content from GreatSchools or other sites, etc. Literally make it so no other website even wants to compete with yours. Be the best. Don't divide an conquer, just conquer.
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 page content on numerical blog pages?
Hello everyone, I'm still relatively new at SEO and am still trying my best to learn. However, I have this persistent issue. My site is on WordPress and all of my blog pages e.g page one, page two etc are all coming up as duplicate content. Here are some URL examples of what I mean: http://3mil.co.uk/insights-web-design-blog/page/3/ http://3mil.co.uk/insights-web-design-blog/page/4/ Does anyone have any ideas? I have already no indexed categories and tags so it is not them. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 3mil0 -
Concerns of Duplicative Content on Purchased Site
Recently I purchased a site of 50+ DA (oldsite.com) that had been offline/404 for 9-12 months from the previous owner. The purchase included the domain and the content previously hosted on the domain. The backlink profile is 100% contextual and pristine. Upon purchasing the domain, I did the following: Rehosted the old site and content that had been down for 9-12 months on oldsite.com Allowed a week or two for indexation on oldsite.com Hosted the old content on my newsite.com and then performed 100+ contextual 301 redirects from the oldsite.com to newsite.com using direct and wild card htaccess rules Issued a Press Release declaring the acquisition of oldsite.com for newsite.com Performed a site "Change of Name" in Google from oldsite.com to newsite.com Performed a site "Site Move" in Bing/Yahoo from oldsite.com to newsite.com It's been close to a month and while organic traffic is growing gradually, it's not what I would expect from a domain with 700+ referring contextual domains. My current concern is around original attribution of content on oldsite.com shifting to scraper sites during the year or so that it was offline. For Example: Oldsite.com has full attribution prior to going offline Scraper sites scan site and repost content elsewhere (effort unsuccessful at time because google know original attribution) Oldsite.com goes offline Scraper sites continue hosting content Google loses consumer facing cache from oldsite.com (and potentially loses original attribution of content) Google reassigns original attribution to a scraper site Oldsite.com is hosted again and Google no longer remembers it's original attribution and thinks content is stolen Google then silently punished Oldsite.com and Newsite.com (which it is redirected to) QUESTIONS Does this sequence have any merit? Does Google keep track of original attribution after the content ceases to exist in Google's search cache? Are there any tools or ways to tell if you're being punished for content being posted else on the web even if you originally had attribution? Unrelated: Are there any other steps that are recommend for a Change of site as described above.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PetSite0 -
Category Pages For Distributing Authority But Not Creating Duplicate Content
I read this interesting moz guide: http://moz.com/learn/seo/robotstxt, which I think answered my question but I just want to make sure. I take it to mean that if I have category pages with nothing but duplicate content (lists of other pages (h1 title/on-page description and links to same) and that I still want the category pages to distribute their link authority to the individual pages, then I should leave the category pages in the site map and meta noindex them, rather than robots.txt them. Is that correct? Again, don't want the category pages to index or have a duplicate content issue, but do want the category pages to be crawled enough to distribute their link authority to individual pages. Given the scope of the site (thousands of pages and hundreds of categories), I just want to make sure I have that right. Up until my recent efforts on this, some of the category pages have been robot.txt'd out and still in the site map, while others (with different url structure) have been in the sitemap, but not robots.txt'd out. Thanks! Best.. Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
Duplicate page content errors stemming from CMS
Hello! We've recently relaunched (and completely restructured) our website. All looks well except for some duplicate content issues. Our internal CMS (custom) adds a /content/ to each page. Our development team has also set-up URLs to work without /content/. Is there a way I can tell Google that these are the same pages. I looked into the parameters tool, but that seemed more in-line with ecommerce and the like. Am I missing anything else?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | taylor.craig0 -
Can a website be punished by panda if content scrapers have duplicated content?
I've noticed recently that a number of content scrapers are linking to one of our websites and have the duplicate content on their web pages. Can content scrapers affect the original website's ranking? I'm concerned that having duplicated content, even if hosted by scrapers, could be a bad signal to Google. What are the best ways to prevent this happening? I'd really appreciate any help as I can't find the answer online!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RG_SEO0 -
Duplicate Content - Panda Question
Question: Will duplicate informational content at the bottom of indexed pages violate the panda update? **Total Page Ratio: ** 1/50 of total pages will have duplicate content at the bottom off the page. For example...on 20 pages in 50 different instances there would be common information on the bottom of a page. (On a total of 1000 pages). Basically I just wanted to add informational data to help clients get a broader perspective on making a decision regarding "specific and unique" information that will be at the top of the page. Content ratio per page? : What percentage of duplicate content is allowed per page before you are dinged or penalized. Thank you, Utah Tiger
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
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 -
301 redirect for duplicate content
Hey, I have just started working on a site which is a video based city guide, with promotional videos for restaurants, bars, activities,etc. The first thing that I have noticed is that every video on the site has two possible urls:- http://www.domain.com/venue.php?url=rosemarino
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdeLewis
http://www.domain.com/venue/rosemarino I know that I can write a .htaccess line to redirect one to the other:- redirect 301 /venue.php?url=rosemarino http://www.domain.com/venue/rosemarino but this would involve creating a .htaccess line for every video on the site and new videos that get added may get missed. Does anyone know a way of creating a rule to rewrite these urls? Any help would be most gratefully received. Thanks. Ade.0