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.
How much to change to avoid duplicate content?
-
Working on a site for a dentist. They have a long list of services that they want us to flesh out with text. They provided a bullet list of services, we're trying to get 1 to 2 paragraphs of text for each.
Obviously, we're not going to write this off the top of our heads. We're pulling text from other sources and trying to rework.
The question is, how much rephrasing do we have to do to avoid a duplicate content penalty? Do we make sure there are changes per paragraph, sentence, or phrase?
Thanks!
Eric
-
Thanks, Thomas.
-
Very good, thanks Syed.
-
Perfect, Ryan. Rand touched on what I was really after with this video. We don't care if these couple of particular pages are indexed. We're trying to build a local search presence for this client, so we'll do that with the rest of the site. I was just worried that the rest of the site would be penalized if there was some dupe content on a page or two. His example of the children's hospital licensing content applied to our case.
-
If it doesn't pass copyscape.com then it won't get past the search engines. It's best to hire a content writer, or have the businesses write their own content. Either way, checking copyscape is always a good idea.
-
Check out this video: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-friday-dealing-with-duplicate-content
It will give you a much more thorough answer than just a percentage of uniqueness. But if you want that kind of answer I mostly hear guesses between 20% - 40% unique content.
-
Changes should be on deepest level - words/ phrases. Rephrasing alone is not enough if the words used are exactly same.
Also, to get most bang for SEO campaigns/ traffic, I'd try avoiding having content that is 're-written' from just 1 source. I would use many sources and sort of give a 'new take' on this newly merged comprehensive consolidated content piece. As I mentioned in another post, this huge content piece with a "new take" leads to your article being considered original and unique, and it also adds to likelihood of it attractive a lot more links than just a re-written piece would.
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
-
Query Strings causing Duplicate Content
I am working with a client that has multiple locations across the nation, and they recently merged all of the location sites into one site. To allow the lead capture forms to pre-populate the locations, they are using the query string /?location=cityname on every page. EXAMPLE - www.example.com/product www.example.com/product/?location=nashville www.example.com/product/?location=chicago There are thirty locations across the nation, so, every page x 30 is being flagged as duplicate content... at least in the crawl through MOZ. Does using that query string actually cause a duplicate content problem?
Technical SEO | | Rooted1 -
How to deal with duplicated content on product pages?
Hi, I have a webshop with products with different sizes and colours. For each item I have a different URL, with almost the same content (title tag, product descriptions, etc). In order to prevent duplicated content I'am wondering what is the best way to solve this problem, keeping in mind: -Impossible to create one page/URL for each product with filters on colour and size -Impossible to rewrite the product descriptions in order to be unique I'm considering the option to canonicolize the rest of de colours/size variations, but the disadvantage is that in case the product is not in stock it disappears from the website. Looking forward to your opinions and solutions. Jeroen
Technical SEO | | Digital-DMG0 -
Headers & Footers Count As Duplicate Content
I've read a lot of information about duplicate content across web pages and was interested in finding out about how that affected the header and footer of a website. A lot of my pages have a good amount of content, but there are some shorter articles on my website. Since my website has a header, footer, and sidebar that are static, could that hurt my ranking? My only concern is that sometimes there's more content in the header/footer/sidebar than the article itself since I have an extensive amount of navigation. Is there a way to define to Google what the header and footer is so that they don't consider it to be duplicate content?
Technical SEO | | CyberAlien0 -
Duplicate Content and URL Capitalization
I have multiple URLs that SEOMoz is reporting as duplicate content. The reason is that there are characters in the URL that may, or may not, be capitalized depending on user input. A couple examples are: www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-sale www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/Houses-for-rent www.househitz.com/Pennsylvania/houses-for-rent There are currently thousands of instances of this on the site. Is this something I should spend effort to try and resolve (may not be minor effort), or should I just ignore it and move on?
Technical SEO | | Jom0 -
Duplicate content problem from an index.php file
Hi One of my sites is flagging a duplicate content problem which is affecting the search rankings. The duplicate problem is caused by http://www.mydomain.com/index.php which has a page rank of 26 How can I sort the duplicate content problem, as the main page should just be http://www.mydomain.com which has a page rank of 42 and is the stronger page with stronger links etc Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ocelot0 -
How to resolve this Duplicate content?
Hi , There is page i get when i do proper menu navigation Caratlane.com>jewellery>rings>casualsrings> http://www.caratlane.com/jewellery/rings/casual-rings/leaves-dew-diamond-0-03-ct-peridot-1-ct-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html When i do a site search in my search box by my product code number "JR00219" The same page is appears with different url http://www.caratlane.com/leaves-dew-diamond-0-03-ct-peridot-1-ct-ring-18k-yellow-gold.html So there is a duplicate content. How can we resolve it. Regards, kathir caratlane.com
Technical SEO | | kathiravan0 -
Mod Rewrite / .htaccess avoid duplicate content
I have been searching and testing for hours but cannot find a solution. I am able to get a URL to display with out the file exntension. i.e domain.com/file instead of domain.com/file.php The problem is both versions of the URL above work, therefore a duplicate content issue. How can I force the URL with the file extension not to resolve and give a 404 error? Or just redirect to the non extension URL? IF it helps here is my code. Options +FollowSymLinks
Technical SEO | | MiamiWebCompany
RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.php -f
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ $1.php [L,QSA]0 -
Duplicate Content issue
I have been asked to review an old website to an identify opportunities for increasing search engine traffic. Whilst reviewing the site I came across a strange loop. On each page there is a link to printer friendly version: http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes That page also has a link to a printer friendly version http://www.websitename.co.uk/index.php?pageid=7&printfriendly=yes&printfriendly=yes and so on and so on....... Some of these pages are being included in Google's index. I appreciate that this can't be a good thing, however, I am not 100% sure as to the extent to which it is a bad thing and the priority that should be given to getting it sorted. Just wandering what views people have on the issues this may cause?
Technical SEO | | CPLDistribution0