• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Local SEO
        4. Local Website Optimization
        5. Duplicate content question for multiple sites under one brand

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Duplicate content question for multiple sites under one brand

        Local Website Optimization
        3
        8
        1428
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • KHCreative
          KHCreative last edited by

          I would like to get some opinions on the best way to handle duplicate / similar content that is on our company website and local facility level sites.  Our company website is our flagship website that contains all of our service offerings, and we use this site to complete nationally for our SEO efforts.  We then have around 100 localized facility level sites for the different locations we operate that we use to rank for local SEO.  There is enough of a difference between these locations that it was decided (long ago before me) that there would be a separate website for each.  There is however, much duplicate content across all these sites due to the service offerings being roughly the same.  Every website has it's own unique domain name, but I believe they are all on the same C-block.  I'm thinking of going with 1 of 2 options and wanted to get some opinions on which would be best.

          1 - Keep the services content identical across the company website and all facility sites, and use the rel=canonical tag on all the facility sites to reference the company website.  My only concern here is if this would drastically hurt local SEO for the facility sites.

          2 - Create two unique sets of services content.  Use one set on the company website.  And use the second set on the facility sites, and either live with the duplicate content or try and sprinkle in enough local geographic content to create some differential between the facility sites.

          Or if there are other suggestions on a better way to handle this, I would love to hear any other thoughts as well.

          Thanks!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • DonnaDuncan
            DonnaDuncan @KHCreative last edited by

            Just FYI, someone specifically asked if canonicalizing a page will prevent it from being indexed last year on Moz. It's was a good discussion. Pay particular attention to what Dr Pete has to say on the matter.

            Sounds like you have a plan! Great.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • KHCreative
              KHCreative @DonnaDuncan last edited by

              Great questions Donna.  We rank in both the local search results area and organic search.  Typically it looks like the home page is what shows in the local search results area, and then either the home page or services pages in the organic area for a geo-optimized search term.  I didn't realize though that doing a canonical could keep the services pages from showing in the local area.  Even though that might not hurt us immediately from what I'm seeing, I think I'm hesitant to risk that.

              I think in the short term I'm going to keep the status quo going and focus on citations and reviews as you said.  We have a pretty good strategy in place for that.  I do think I will change up my duplicate copy on the facility sites so it is different than our company site, and just live with the duplicate content across the facility sites for now.

              For the long-term we have been considering adding a locations section to our company website that has a single page for each location we operate, and then I would add a link on each page to get to their dedicated site.  I'm hopeful that if we invest some time growing that section and adding unique content for each location over the next 1-2 years, that we could eventually discard our dedicated facility sites.

              Thanks for your help!

              DonnaDuncan 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • DonnaDuncan
                DonnaDuncan @KHCreative last edited by

                What pages are folks landing on when they do a local search? If it's the services page, you'll lose the ability to rank for those pages locally if you do a canonical. Are you showing up for local search terms in organic search results or local search results? If you go with a single site and dedicated local pages with local phone numbers, you'll be able to rank in both organic and local search results.

                If your facility pages "tend to perform about the same as other local companies that are our biggest competition" and your goal is to gain an advantage, I'm thinking your best bet might be to grow your citations and reviews. I'm usually a big fan of consolidation so you can maximize the value derived from your SEO efforts, but it would be very disruptive to transition to a single site. Is management prepared and willing to shoulder that?

                If you're not ready to rock the just boat yet, perhaps you should do an apples to apples comparison of your local facility sites to your competitors to see if a boost in citations or reviews could help bump you higher.

                I'm just not hearing a pressing need from you...

                KHCreative 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • KHCreative
                  KHCreative @DonnaDuncan last edited by

                  Hello Donna,

                  Thanks for your reply.  I will try and answer these questions the best I can.  I appreciate the help!

                  Our company flagship site preforms very well.  We rank top 10 nationally for many of our top keywords (although they are not highly competitive terms).  This website of course has an extremely higher number of links than our facility sites, and we are pretty active on social channels.  And all of the facility sites do link back to this site as the parent.

                  The facility sites perform okay from an analytics standpoint.  They rank in the top 10 for a handful of keywords that are geo-targeted.  They tend to perform about the same as other local companies that are our biggest competition, but there are some companies similar in size to us that are stronger in SEO with a single domain and dedicated local pages.

                  The facility sites we have were actually created over 10 years ago when SEO wasn't near as big.  Management felt that giving each site a local feel was what our customers wanted to see.  Our customers are definitely very local, or they are doing a local search for the area they are interested in.  We are a healthcare company, so we get family members looking for services for their parents or dependents that may live somewhere else.

                  Nothing has really fundamentally changed recently with how we do business.  I'm just trying to make the best use out of the sites we have, and hopefully can come up with something to improve our sites performance and of course impress our executive team!

                  Thanks!

                  DonnaDuncan 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                  • KHCreative
                    KHCreative @StickyWebz last edited by

                    Thanks for the reply StickyWebz.  Yea the facility sites are good for the user I think.  They were originally created many years ago before we were focusing on SEO, because our senior management wanted each location to have a local feel.  They felt you were choosing the individual facility more than the brand.  And there is some good unique content on the sites... just unfortunately nothing that is keyword rich.  All of the services pages with our good keywords are the ones that have duplicate content.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • DonnaDuncan
                      DonnaDuncan last edited by

                      Hi KH,

                      What are your analytics telling you? Which site or sites are performing well? Were there overriding reasons to take that direction a few years ago and now the business has changed? Are most of your customers local? Is proximity important to them?

                      Logically I would expect results to be not as good as they could be if your efforts were consolidated into a single domain with dedicated local pages but am curious to hear answers to those questions first.

                      KHCreative 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • StickyWebz
                        StickyWebz last edited by

                        Are these micro sites / facility sites actually good for the user, or just done for SEO purposes? If they aren't created with the user in mind you will probably not be rewarded for them in the long run.

                        That being said, if the micro sites must stay up you should rel canonical them.

                        KHCreative 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • waqid

                          Multiple Locations Same City

                          I have a local seo campaign im trying to reconfigure. Lets say i am a dwi lawyer and i have multiple locations. These are merely examples for cities and keywords. Home page is Criminal defense lawyer - this is the term we should be targeting. Maybe i can target the state name, but i am losing so much SEO weight by not leveraging this home page as the main page for this term. Then we have a location page in south Boston  that is "S Boston DWI lawyer" as the title tag. Then we have another location page north Boston that is "N Boston DWI Lawyer" as the title tag. I can leave the city name off the home page title tag,  but then what do i do with these pages that are pretty much competing with one another? I know the home page will not rank since none of the locations point to it, and only to a location page. I was thinking about creating one page with both locations and having both G map listings go directly there, but that doesn't make sense because other locations do not have the same setup. Or choosing the most central location and pointing that to the home page and let the rest have a locations page. Finally the home page will not rank well for any major  terms. The location page does rank for the fictional south Boston DWI lawyer, but the other listing does not show up. The home page does not show up in the first ten pages either.  One other aspect is that the home page ranks for terms that I am not even targeting. These pages are all targeted on specific keywords so that they do not overlap or compete, but some pages are the services main outline, but the location pages have their own version. I have removed all mentions of the same keyword from the home page.  I made a few wchanges about 2 weeks ago and already noticed movement in rankings days later.

                          Local Website Optimization | | waqid
                          0
                        • Kevin_P

                          Google for Jobs: how to deal with third-party sites that appear instead of your own?

                          We have shared our company's job postings on several third-party websites, including The Muse, as well as putting the job postings on our own website. Our site and The Muse have about the same schema markup except for these differences: The Muse...
                          • Lists Experience Requirements
                          • Uses HTML in the description with tags and other markup (our website just has plain text)
                          • Has a Name in JobPosting
                          • URL is specific to the position (our website's URL just goes to the homepage)
                          • Has a logo URL for Organization When you type the exact job posting's title into Google, The Muse posting shows up in Google for Jobs--not our website's duplicate copy. The only way to see our website's job posting is to type in the exact job title plus "site:http://www.oursite.com". What is a good approach for getting our website's posting to be the priority in Google for Jobs? Do we need to remove postings from third-party sites? Structure them differently? Do organic factors affect which version of the job posting is shown, and if so, can I assume that our site will face challenges outranking a big third-party site?

                          Local Website Optimization | | Kevin_P
                          1
                        • Cantor-Crane

                          How many backlinks from one domain?

                          How many backlinks from one domain is too many? 1? 3? 10? For example, directory listings. If you have 5 separate links to one website in lets say DMOZ (good for you!), is it really only "juicy" one time? Or each one just as awesome? What about multiple guest articles on a related website?  If I had 2 or 3 articles on one website that each have different contextual links, is it just the same as if I had one article?

                          Local Website Optimization | | Cantor-Crane
                          0
                        • Noriel

                          Local SEO - Multiple stores on same URL

                          Hello guys, I'm working on a plan of local SEO for a client that is managing over 50 local stores. At the moment all the stores are sharing the same URL address and wanted to ask if it s better to build unique pages for each of the stores or if it's fine to go with all of them on the same URL. What do you think? What's the best way and why? Thank you in advance.

                          Local Website Optimization | | Noriel
                          0
                        • HeaHea

                          Schema markup for a local directory listing and Web Site name

                          Howdy there!   Two schema related questions here Schema markup for local directory We have a page that lists multiple location information on a single page as a directory type listing.  Each listing has a link to another page that contains more in depth information about that location. We have seen markups using Schema Local Business markup for each location listed on the directory page.  Examples: http://www.yellowpages.com/metairie-la/gold-buyers http://yellowpages.superpages.com/listings.jsp?CS=L&MCBP=true&C=plumber%2C+dallas+tx Both of these validate using the Google testing tool, but what is strange is that the yellowpages.com example puts the URL to the profile page for a given location as the "name" in the schema for the local business, superpages.com uses the actual name of the location.  Other sites such as Yelp etc have no markup for a location at all on a directory type page. We want to stay with schema and leaning towards the superpages option.  Any opinions on the best route to go with this? Schema markup for logo and social profiles vs website name. If you read the article for schema markup for your logo and social profiles, it recommends/shows using the @type of Organization in the schema markup https://developers.google.com/structured-data/customize/social-profiles If you then click down the left column on that page to "Show your name in search results" it recommends/shows using the @type of WebSite in the schema markup. https://developers.google.com/structured-data/site-name We want to have the markup for the logo, social profiles and website name.  Do we just need to repeat the schema for the @website name in addition to what we have for @organization (two sets of markup?).  Our concern is that in both we are referencing the same home page and in one case on the page we are saying we are an organization and in another a website.  Does this matter?  Will Google be ok with the logo and social profile markup if we use the @website designation? Thanks!

                          Local Website Optimization | | HeaHea
                          0
                        • EvolveCreative

                          Schema for same location on multiple sites - can this be done?

                          I'm looking to find more information on location/local schema. Are you able to implement schema for one location on multiple different sites? (i.e. - Multiple brands/websites (same parent company) - the brands share the same location and address). Also, is schema still important for local SEO? Thank you in advance for your help!

                          Local Website Optimization | | EvolveCreative
                          0
                        • Mr.bfz

                          How to target a site to only specific US states?

                          Hey Guys, Does anyone have experience or can point me to the right documentation about geo targeting possibilities for specific states in the US or specific areas in the world. Local SEO does not apply in my case, since my website is not a business nor have a physical address. My website offers information that is only relevant for specific states in the US, how can I leverage my I optimisation to gain more exposure in those specific states? I really appreciate any help. A

                          Local Website Optimization | | Mr.bfz
                          0
                        • LincolnSmith

                          International Site Geolocation Redirection (best way to redirect and allow Google bots to index sites)

                          I have a client that has an international website. The website currently has IP detection and redirects you to the subdomain for your country. They have currently only launched the Australian website and are not yet open to the rest of the world: https://au.domain.com/ Google is not indexing the Australian website or pages, instead I believe that the bots are being blocked by the IP redirection every time they try to visit one of the Australian pages. Therefore only the US 'coming soon' page is being properly indexed. So, I would like to know the best way to place a geolocation redirection without creating a splash page to select location? User friendliness is most important (so we don't want cookies etc). I have seen this great Whiteboard Friday video on Where to Host and How to Target, which makes sense, but what it doesn't tell me is exactly the best method for redirection except at about 10:20 where it tells me what I'm doing is incorrect. I have also read a number of other posts on IP redirection, but none tell me the best method, and some are a little different examples... I need for US visitors to see the US coming soon page and for Google to index the Australian website. I have seen a lot about JS redirects, IP redirects and .htaccess redirects, but unfortunately my technical knowledge of how these affect Google's bots doesn't really help. Appreciate your answers. Cheers, Lincoln

                          Local Website Optimization | | LincolnSmith
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        • Digital Marketers
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.