10 replies to this topic

[Pete]

I have two sites which could benefit (from a users point of view) in having duplicate pages.

e.g. I have a recording site which has a page about recording saxophones, which is quite a long and (so I have been told) useful article. But I also have a saxophone site, and it would be useful to also have that article on there.

So I've copied the content from on to the other and one of them has a robots.txt disallowing it, which i presume is OK for Google.

However was wondering if I would be OK to use the same content without the disallow, but paraphrase it on one page:

e.g. instead of "A good rule of thumb for close placement" I could put: "for close placement it's generally OK to…" and so on.

Is there any reason this would not be a good idea? I can imagine they might both be competing for the same keywords, and so instead of one high SERP, I might get two lower?

[iamlost]

It's an interesting quandry that many/most of us, I expect, have been in one way or another.

The theoretical 'proper' way, based on the idea of the web linking documents of interest, would be for the site without the recording saxaphone page to, within a descriptive paragraph, link out to the page. However, given not only the commercialisation of copy but how such is interwoven with search engine ranking each site on a subject is ipso facto forced into duplication of information.
Note: I am am using duplication as being the duplication of information NOT the duplication of copy.

As both sites are yours linking may be a viable option.
If the recording saxaphone page were on a competitor's site then, while you still could, it likely would make greater commercial sense to duplicate the knowledge and compete directly.

Please note: whether done manually or by software simply spinning existing content is far from a best practice. If it is so valuable that it merits duplication then it deserves being written from scratch to a higher value level than the original.

The Shady Practice of Spinning Articles... by Miriam Ellis, Search Engine Guide, 25-January-2012 is a timely exposition.

[SEOigloo]

Thanks for the link, Iamlost. I must say, I find myself quite disgusted by that spinning practice.

Pete - what you are attempting to do is, of course, different than what I was targetting in the cited article. However, my advice would be to find a genuinely different slant to take on the same topic and rewrite the article. This saves you the awkwardness of having to manipulate your robots.txt. and gives you the peace of mind to know that you aren't duplicating anything.

For example, what if the page on one site was aimed at recording studio techs and the other was aimed at musicians (as in, what to look for in a quality studio tech)? Your advice and knowledge on the subject will be the same, but by writing specifically for two different audiences, you would two good articles instead of just one.

Edited by SEOigloo, 30 January 2012 - 04:52 PM.

[DonnaFontenot]

If the goal is merely to satisfy users by giving them the content at either place, perhaps you could serve it up within an iframe on one site, pulling it from the other site into the iframe. I'm not suggesting it's necessarily the best option, but it is an option to consider.

[Pete]

Thanks for the replies folks, all useful stuff.

Donna, I don't quite get how that would work, unless both sites referenced the iframe.

If site 1 had a normal page (no iframe) and site 2 referenced that page in an iframe, it would have site 1's header and navigation rather than just the content.

To have just the content in an iframe, there would need to be a third page (just the article) that both sites referenced each in an iframe. I think.

And I get the feeling it would still, appear either duplicate contents, or it wouldn't get indexed properly. I'm not too sure about frames.

[Michael_Martinez]

I'm leaning toward experimenting with iframed boilerplate myself. My approach will be to NoIndex the iFramed pages. If nothing else, the search engines should see far less duplicate content that way.

Just keep in mind that not all browsers can load the iFrames. Make sure you're not excluding a significant portion of your visitors from important content.

[DonnaFontenot]

Site 1 would have the article content as a separate file with just basic html used within it. Site 1 would do an include to grab the file and plunk it where it needed to go...either via a php include or shtml include or whatever you use for includes. Site 2 would merely iframe the file. I *think* that would work, and would mean that Site 1 would get the content indexed as normal, but Site 2 would not. The content would be seen as part of site 1. Now...on the individual content page itself, you may need to include a rel=canonical to the site 1 full page, so the file doesn't get indexed separately. Again...not sure this is the best way and in fact, it might be a bad way...but it is an option that I think should at least be mentioned.

[Pete]

Site 1 would have the article content as a separate file with just basic html used within it. Site 1 would do an include to grab the file and plunk it where it needed to go...either via a php include or shtml include or whatever you use for includes. Site 2 would merely iframe the file. I *think* that would work, and would mean that Site 1 would get the content indexed as normal, but Site 2 would not. The content would be seen as part of site

Aha, thanks I didn't think of that. Currenlty I don't have any includes so I'll need to learn about that.

1. Now...on the individual content page itself, you may need to include a rel=canonical to the site 1 full page,

I was under the impression rel=canonical had to be within the same domain.

[DonnaFontenot]

I don't believe it does any longer, however, it doesn't matter in this case, because I'm talking about placing the rel=canonical on Site 1's individual content file itself - and pointing the rel=canonical back to Site 1's page that includes it. So in this case it will be within the same domain.

[Pete]

I don't believe it does any longer, however, it doesn't matter in this case, because I'm talking about placing the rel=canonical on Site 1's individual content file itself - and pointing the rel=canonical back to Site 1's page that includes it. So in this case it will be within the same domain.

Gotcha!

[glyn]

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