Are templates considered duplicate content?
-
We have a line of products that are all using the same template or shell for a website structure. All have different content relating to a specific product or service, but being its a line of different products under one family, we use the same colors and template structure for consistency and branding purposes.
It was just brought to my attention that using a template like this across multiple sites could raise duplicate content flags as google is reading the same template code and may not differentiate that its a family product line of sites.
Does anyone have any feedback on whether this could be true or not?
-
I think if you have very thin content and the source code is the bulk of the content lets say 80% source code 20% unique google may not look favorably on that.... Google has algorithms that put cookie cutter sites in a lower position than custom sites so it is important to have your code somewhat unique.
But only have 2 of the sites the same probably is not "the" problem it mainly to penalize people who buy these money making sites for $500 that look the same as 200 other sites except for the content
-
Where I work we provide both template and custom solutions with templates being, obviously, more affordable. Although we do very well with the customs our templates sell far more and of those there are, of course, templates that sell better than others.
We have never had any issues between websites that decide on the same templates. Never.
Due to my practical experience with different properties using the same templates I have to say that I disagree with the assertion that the html and css (and jquery and everything else) that goes in to the template construct would be considered duplicate content. I have always believed, and still do, that "duplicate content" refers only to the subject matter that is published on the website. Nothing else.
-
We have multiple family lines of products. this one family line has been pretty stagnant and an seo firm pointed that out to us in trying to gain our business. I wanted to see if there is any merit to their suggestion.
-
I believe that you are safe with this. So long as the delivered content, that is the content that a visitor will see/read on site, is different from site to site (not just a little different but actually different) than you should be perfectly fine. Are you seeing issues of some sort? What brought this about?
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 to measure the penalty of duplicate content if we populate our provider bios on WebMD?
I work for a large healthcare system and we have an initiative to populate 2,500 of our our provider bios on WebMD. The proposed method for providing content is to supply it via API, in exactly the same way provider bio content appears on our site. When my colleague and I pointed out this would be an anti-practice as it would be disseminating duplicate content, we were asked to weigh: The penalty of the duplication The time and resources necessary to provide an alternative method (i.e., is there a programmatic way to supply unique content to WebMD) A few other questions we are investigating is if we can include links to each provider bio from WebMD to our main site. If this is the case, we can include a very short intro and direct users to our site if they want to learn more. The benefit of being included on WebMD is showing up for searches pertaining to expertise/specialties, as this will open our system to new users who likely won't search our providers by name. Any advice on how to measure the potential effect of displaying duplicate content on WebMD, considering their impressive domain authority?
Branding | | Account-Owner2 -
Ecommerce // indexation and duplicate
Hello moz community, We have 3 website that are e-commerce based that go as follow : 1.0 www.product.com ( french ) 2.0 www.anotherproduct.ca ( for the canada english ) 3.0 www.anotherproduct.com ( for the usa market in english again ) Those 3 website are configured inside WPML ( wordpress ) and are build with woocommerce. Most of the pages beetween anotherproduct.ca and anotherproduct.com are identical or close to be. We want to have a good indexation and to absolutely avoid duplicate content. Any help would be appreciated ! CHeers,
Branding | | ydesjardins2000 -
Duplicate Content and Indexing issues
Hey guys, I have a client whom has an existing site www.currentdomain.ie and we have created a new site with a new domain name www.newdomain.ie. They do not wish for it to be redirected. They wish for two sites to have the exact same content just with different logos. So for example if you search for current domain the search results present to you www.currentdomain.ie as the number 1 search listing and the same if you searched for their new domain. I'm trying to understand how google might index the two sites if side wide canonical tag were implemented on either of the sites to get over the duplicate content issue. How would google index the brand name of each site if one site canocilised? I don't want to encourage this client with this idea as it appears to be nonsensical but I thought I should first understand fully what the SEO implications might be. Thanks Rob
Branding | | daracreative0 -
Prominent newspaper covered my content but did not link
Hi, I've seen this question asked and answered by SEO's somewhere in the past but can't seem to find it. A press release we created was covered in a nice article by a very prominent newspaper, with a mention of us but no link. The paper is so prominent that you hesitate for a second to write them and ask for the link, but of course, it doesn't hurt to ask. One mistake I made was issuing the release but not really pointing it at a piece of relevant content besides our company web site. This is not part of the question but is a good tip fo' learning and growing - the information we released was highly compelling but we should have taken the time to create a beautiful, linkable asset on our site. Anybody with advice on the best way to ask for a link? Is it asking the author? I assume I am not going to get this. I think this article will be syndicated -- if it gets picked up elsewhere, do you think it's worth the time to ask those papers?
Branding | | reallygoodstuff0 -
Guest blogging & duplicate content
This feels like a question I should know the answer to and I'm a tad embarrassed to ask, but the part of my brain that gets tripped up by somewhat simple things sometimes, is begging to ask just to confirm my understanding. I want to make sure I have it right it prior to giving advice. When one guest blogs I assume that it is critical to create content that is original and unique to that one instance of the guest blog. That means, do not also put that post on your own blog and do not submit it to any other blogs for inclusion. This is both for duplicate content issues and also to respect and not put in jeopardy for duplicated content, the blog owner you are guesting for. Is this correct? Are there any scenarios in which there might be a deviation of this "rule"? Like some use of canonicals or anything else?
Branding | | gfiedel0 -
Has anyone had success with product page rel=author? Can I protect the content but dump the face on the SERPS?
Hi, Is there a way to get the benefits of rel=author for protecting site content but to disconnect that from the face photo on the SERPS? We added rel=author to our unique and individually written product descriptions and reviews. This has led to a decrease in click thru thus far. I suspect this is because when searching for a product to buy the user sees the face and thinks "review" or at least "not corporate". I don't nec. want to dump rel=author in the sea yet for our ecom pages, has anyone had success with product page rel=author? Four our keywords, we are the only company of 10 well known travel sites that have the face in the SERPS, far from improving our CTR, it has trashed it. Any ideas?
Branding | | xoffie0 -
Unique Content around GEO targets
Is there a way to produce SEO, google friendly Unique Content to ad to long tail pages, that will provide user value? Emample: 1800medigap.com we want to rank for keywords that are geo specific: Medicare Supplemant Insurance Balitmore Maryland Denver Colorado Medigap Insurance ......
Branding | | jdcline0