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
-
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!
-
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.
-
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!
-
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...
-
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!
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
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 does Google read multiple Geo Shape Schema Mark Up?
Hi Guys, I posted a question recently about "Can I have multiple areaServed mark up on one domain?" and the responses I got was no. My client work predominantly in the South East of England in specific towns, so I wanted to be able to list all the areas they service. However, after being told no, I went ahead anyway and put in multiple areaServed markup on the page to see if this generates any errors and it isn't when I run it through the Structured Data Testing Tool. I don't get any errors by doing this, so hurray! But... What I want to understand (which I can't find the answer anywhere), is if this is okay, and how will Google read my markup? Will Google see that we are in multiple areas across the SE of England and push my content up before other sites, or is this just going to confused Google? By putting in all these areas into the website as multiple locations, will Google identify that person X in area Y fits the areaServed mark up I've added and push my content to them? Overall... has anyone else used multiple areaServed markup and can validate that this works? hHpEyQf
Local Website Optimization | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
One locations page, or multiple pages?
Hi, I represent a franchisor who does all marketing- including local seo- for our franchisees. I've read a lot about local SEO and understand the basics, but have some remaining questions. 1- If our typical territories are quite large and encompass more than one major city, should we create multiple location pages for the same franchise owner? I believe the answer should be yes from an SEO stand point, but the problem is that most of our franchisees naturally just have one business address (their home). Since PO boxes and virtual offices aren't the way to go, what's the best course of action? And when I say major cities, I'm really talking about major cities (and not just small towns/boroughs). Can they just use a friend's/relative's address? 2- There's a lot of info out there about "locations pages," but it's not really clear whether or not you should really just have ONE page for each location, or several pages with different content? For instance, it looks like a lot of businesses are creating just one, "home-page" looking landing page for their individual locations, with everything from services to testimonials on just that one page. Is this preferred over creating several different local pages for that one location? The latter is what we currently do. From the user stand-point, it looks like each franchise location has it's own "mini website" on our main website. For instance, a landing page optimized for the local business name, a local services page, a project/photo gallery page, local review page, etc. It seems like a lot less work just building one landing page for each location, but is the payoff the same? I'm torn between the two strategies- is it really worth the extra work (in terms of traffic + local ranking) to build out the individual pages for the one location? Thanks Moz Community!
Local Website Optimization | | kimberleymeloserpa0 -
Using geolocation for dynamic content - what's the best practice for SEO?
Hello We sell a product globally but I want to use different keywords to describe the product based on location. For this example let’s say in USA the product is a "bathrobe" and in Canada it’s a "housecoat" (same product, just different name). What this means… I want to show "bathrobe" content in USA (lots of global searches) and "housecoat" in Canada (less searches). I know I can show the content using a geolocation plugin (also found a caching plugin which will get around the issue of people seeing cached versions), using JavaScript or html5. I want a solution which enables someone in Canada searching for "bathrobe" to be able to find our site through Google search though too. I want to rank for "bathrobe" in BOTH USA and Canada. I have read articles which say Google can read the dynamic content in JavaScript, as well as the geolocation plugin. However the plugins suggest Google crawls the content based on location too. I don’t know about JavaScript. Another option is having two separate pages (one for “bathrobe” and one for “housecoat”) and using geolocation for the main menu (if they find the other page i.e. bathrobe page through a Canadian search, they will still see it though). This may have an SEO impact splitting the traffic though. Any suggestions or recommendations on what to do?? What do other websites do? I’m a bit stuck. Thank you so much! Laura Ps. I don’t think we have enough traffic to add subdomains or subdirectories.
Local Website Optimization | | LauraFalls0 -
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 | | Noriel0 -
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 | | HeaHea0 -
How does duplicate content work when creating location specific pages?
In a bid to improve the visibility of my site on the Google SERP's, I am creating landing pages that were initially going to be used in some online advertising. I then thought it might be a good idea to improve the content on the pages so that they would perform better in localised searches. So I have a landing page designed specifically to promote what my business can do, and funnel the user in to requesting a quote from us. The main keyword phrase I am using is "website design london", and I will be creating a few more such as "website design birmingham", "website design leeds". The only thing that I've changed at the moment across all these pages is the location name, I haven't touched any of the USP's or the testimonial that I use. However, in both cases "website design XXX" doesn't show up in any of the USP's or testimonial. So my question is that when I have these pages built, and they're indexed, will I be penalised for this tactic?
Local Website Optimization | | mickburkesnr0 -
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.bfz0 -
Single Site For Multiple Locations Or Multiple Sites?
Hi, Sorry if this rambles on. There's a few details that kind of convolute this issue so I'll try and be as clear as possible. The site in question has been online for roughly 5 years. It's established with many local citations, does well in local SERPs (working on organic results currently), and represents a business with 2 locations in the same county. The domain is structured as location1brandname.com. The site was recently upgraded from a 6-10 page static HTML site with loads of duplicate content and poor structure to a nice, clean WordPress layout. Again, Google is cool with it, everything was 301'd properly, and our rankings haven't dropped (some have improved). Here's the tricky part: To properly optimize this site for our second location, I am basically building a second website within the original, but customized for our second location. It will be location1brandname.com/secondcity and the menu will be unique to second-city service pages, unique NAP on footer, etc. I will then update our local citations with this new URL and hopefully we'll start appearing higher in local SERPs for the second-city keywords that our main URL isn't currently optimized for. The issue I have is that our root domain has our first city location in the domain and that this might have some negative effect on ranking for the second URL. Conversely, starting on a brand new domain (secondcitybrandname.com) requires building an entire new site and being brand new. My hunch is that we'll be fine making root.com/secondcity that locations homepage and starting a new domain, while cleaner and compeltely separate from our other location, is too much work for not enough benefit. It seems like if they're the same company/brand, they should be on the same sitee. and we can use the root juice to help. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | kirmeliux0