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.
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
-
Duplicated Content on Wordpress Mobile&Desktop versions- Is it bad for SEO?
Hello, I use a Wordpress theme for displaying mobile and desktop versions separately. The problem is that if you use tools like screaming frog or if you look at the code (view source), you can detect duplicated content. But if you're browsing on your mobile you will see only the content I have created for the mobile version and the same if you're looking at the desktop version, you will only see the desktop content.
On-Page Optimization | | AlphaRoadside
Is this creating an SEO problem? If it is, please let me know why and if it has a solution. Thanks in advance.0 -
Duplicate content query
I'm currently reauthoring all of the product pages on our site. Within the redesign of all the pages is a set of "why choose us?" bullet points and "what our customers say" bullet points. On every page these bullet points are the same. We currently have 18% duplicate content sitewide and I'm reluctant to push this. The products are similar but targeted at different professions, so I'm not sure whether to alter the text slightly for the bullet points on each page, remove the bullet points entirely or implement some form of canonicalisation that won't impact the profession-specific pages' ability to rank well.
On-Page Optimization | | EdLongley0 -
SEO and dynamic content
I am working on a project right now and I am looking for some advice on the SEO implications. The site is an e-commerce site and on the category pages it is using an external call to retrieve the products after the page is loaded. How it works is all content on the site is loaded, then after that a js script appends an ID and loads all of the product information. I am unsure how Google will see this, anyone have any insights?
On-Page Optimization | | LesleyPaone0 -
Duplicate Content for Event Pages
Hi Folks, I have event pages for specific training courses running on certain dates, the problem I have is that MOZ indicates that I have 1040 duplicate content issues because I'm serving pages like this https://purplegriffon.com/event/2521/mop-practitioner I'm not sure how best to go about resolving this as, of course, although each event is unique in terms of it's start date, the courses and locations could be identical. Will Google penalise us for these types of pages, or will they even index them? Should I add a canonical link to the head of the document pointing to the related course page such as https://purplegriffon.com/courses/project-management/mop-management-of-portfolios/mop-practitioner. Will this solve the issue? I'm a little stuck on what to do for the best. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks. Kind Regards Gareth Daine
On-Page Optimization | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Nice looking ecommerce menus with featured product categories - bad for SEO due to duplicate content?
My ecommerce website has menus which contain 'featured product sub-categories'. These are shown alongside the other product sub-category links. Each 'featured product category' includes a link, an image (with link) and some text. All menu content is visible to search engines. These menus look nice and probably encourage CTR (not tested!) but are they bad for SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | Coraltoes771 -
E-commerce store having same content different language pages
Hello, I have an e-commerce store operating on PrestaShop. I have four languages Fr, De, En and Nl. The url for each page changes like Example.com/en/product1 Example.com/fr/Product1 Example.com/de/product1 Example.com/nl/Product1 All these pages have same content about product1 but translated in respective language. Is it considered as duplicate content? Should I suppose to write different content for each page?
On-Page Optimization | | MozAddict0 -
Duplicate content "/"
Hi all, Ran my website through the SEOMOZ campaigns and the crawl diagnostics give me a duplicate error for these urls http://www.mysite.com/cat1/article http://www.mysite.com/cat1/article/ so the url with the "/" is a duplicate of the one without the "/" Can someone point me out to a solution to solve this ? regards, Frederik
On-Page Optimization | | frdrik1230 -
Archetecture to avoid content duplicate
Hi, I have lots of duplicate stuff and I need a better site architecture. http://www.furnacefilterscanada.com/ We are selling furnace filters. All furnace filters are sold in 50 different sizes, each sizes comes in 3 different qualities, Bronze, Silver and Gold. Total: 150 products. Right now I have created many categories and subcategories for furnace filters sizes. When the client pickup is sizes, he will end-up to the products page with 3 different options, Bronze, Silver and Gold. They can then compare the filter a select the one he wants to purchase. The problem is, it is not possible to provide different content for each filters, Gold has a description, Silver has another one and also Bronze. The only text that will change in the descriptions, is the filter size. This makes Duplicates text description. Not good when you what to index your site. The positive things to 150 different products, is the page title. example 16x25x4 furnace filters. Those exacte tem get search in Google. A new site architecture with 3 categories, Gold, Silver and Bronze & 50 variables by products (filters sizes) might not be the best options, because no filter size will be index. Can you please help me to find the best architecture in a SEO point of view? Also what about the top navigation bar menu, what is the best options in using it? Right now it is use for Legal, Contact, Policy and I fill it is a wast, those page only get less then 1% clicks. It might be more convenient to use those for categories for example, what is your recommendations in a SEO point of view? Can I create a information page in the left navigation menu and includ all the standard page, like: Policy, Legal ... If I do, will I get penalize by Google? Thank you for your help. We have puts lots of money in AdWords before, but now the next step is to come home organics. I'm using SEOmoz tools, read there new book, and I want increase traffic. I just need your help. Thank you, BigBlaze
On-Page Optimization | | BigBlaze2050