Is This Duplicate Content Or Not?

[carsonben]

I have a new local business client that offers several related services in his industry. What he has done in the past is buy a domain and then all the other extensions that are available, plus he will buy domains with a slight alteration of the original domain e.g. roofreplacementservice com,.net.org.us.biz etc. and then he'll buy roofreplacementservices with all the other extensions and then he'll buy roofreplacementservices or needanewroof etc. with all the additional extensions.

Now, he has maybe 10 - 30 domains all with the exact roofing website. He also uses adwords for these and has them all grouped in different ad groups and none of them are really getting any activity.

My questions are, is this duplicate content that is perhaps being penalized by panda and should he do 301 redirects or either remove the websites on all the additional domains and then concentrate on driving traffic to his main .com or .net sites in each of his service categories.

He has 100's of domains that he has purchased that he wants me to put sites up and manage his adwords. Some of the domains are keyword related and some are not - just different variations.

What would be the best action for this situation?

Any help will be appreciated.

[awj888]

if there are exact match value for these domains then it could be worth setting up multiple landing pages (not with the differnet extentions but just the .com variations) and have unique content on those which then directs potential client to the main business site. the other extentions unless trademark related are not going to be giving much value. if samedomainmatch.com/.us/.net/.org etc and youre going after exact match keywords then you can keep these other domains but redirect them to the .com> another option would be to use them to set up some kind of blogging network which will create SEO links for the main business page. theres lots of options and depends if your client minds about spending renewing all those domains each year if they dont really bring all that much back for him!

[carsonben]

He actually buys the additional domains for competitor protection, but since they all have the same website on them I didn't know if this was hurting or not.

And yes, he is spending literally hundreds of dollars each month on renewals.

Yes, I'm thinking on the same lines - have unique content on the higher rated .com or .net domains. It will get a bit challenging as how much unique content can you have about roofing services or landscape services.

So, what should I do with the content on all those insignificant extensions? Delete or some kind of redirect?

One more question, have all these duplicate websites hurt the seo of the main brand?

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by carsonben

And yes, he is spending literally hundreds of dollars each month on renewals.

That makes no sense. Most renew yearly. For "hundreds" a month, you would
need to be renewing about 30 domains a month, or a total of 360 or so a year.

That's a crazy management nightmare.

But big sites do this with no problem. Gasbuddy uses this to the max.

They have hundreds of domains, like arizonagasprices, texasgasprices, etc.
and they all have the same stuff, and point to gasbuddy.com.

But the average person would not, and I repeat, would not be buying
hundreds of domains, renewing them, spending tons of money on
nothing, just for one site. A dozen, maybe so.

Pau

[carsonben]

Originally Posted by paulgl

That makes no sense. Most renew yearly. For "hundreds" a month, you would
need to be renewing about 30 domains a month, or a total of 360 or so a year.

That's a crazy management nightmare.

But big sites do this with no problem. Gasbuddy uses this to the max.

They have hundreds of domains, like arizonagasprices, texasgasprices, etc.
and they all have the same stuff, and point to gasbuddy.com.

But the average person would not, and I repeat, would not be buying
hundreds of domains, renewing them, spending tons of money on
nothing, just for one site. A dozen, maybe so.

Pau

But that is exactly what he is doing. He hired me to fix all of this and it's confusing as heck. I think he has close to 500 domains and I don't know how someone let him get this far with this kind of marketing.

I'm trying to get a handle on why and how he is choosing the domain names. Some are kw related and some are service related, but rarely search terms a homeowner would use.

It's just over kill, but I want to have a way to explain some kind of workable strategy for him. The additional extensions are so competitors can't use them.

So, he has 124 hosted sites with 75% of the domains with duplicate site content, IOW 20 domains all with the same site content, images and layout. And 350 more domains just waiting to have sites built. It's like everytime he could think of some kind of term or phrase - he bought it!

I feel like his previous web person took advantage of him. So, how should I proceed with this client?

[down]

A lot of good answers already posted by other fellow warrior above. Just want to add, do redirect all domain to main domain you used.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by carsonben

But that is exactly what he is doing. He hired me to fix all of this and it's confusing as heck. I think he has close to 500 domains and I don't know how someone let him get this far with this kind of marketing.

I'm trying to get a handle on why and how he is choosing the domain names. Some are kw related and some are service related, but rarely search terms a homeowner would use.

It's just over kill, but I want to have a way to explain some kind of workable strategy for him. The additional extensions are so competitors can't use them.

So, he has 124 hosted sites with 75% of the domains with duplicate site content, IOW 20 domains all with the same site content, images and layout. And 350 more domains just waiting to have sites built. It's like everytime he could think of some kind of term or phrase - he bought it!

I feel like his previous web person took advantage of him. So, how should I proceed with this client?

Domain hording!

The guy has a serious problem If all he keeps doing is buying domains then holding them with no ROI at all.

Stop the madness, sell them all, except for a single domain, then build the site out.

[yukon]

Don't mess with redirects, that's just useless for this situation.

[Barry Unruh]

Wow, I smell opportunity....

Does he really want to dominate the roofing market in the area that badly?

Imagine if he could put together a consortium of small roofing companies providing them all with simple websites utilizing all of his existing domain names with all of the quote requests flowing through his office.

Most of these small roofing companies have no clue how to market online or how to get new business. With your assistance he could become the "master contractor" over the entire group of them while building an SEO funnel from all these unique websites pointing back to his single primary domain...

I'd suggest you start thinking bigger for his business, instead of smaller for his website..

You could be the person responsible for building out websites for dozens of small roofing companies and making an overall online marketing strategy and quoting system.

Imagine the possibilities...he has...he just doesn't know how to pull it off.

[carsonben]

Thank you - these are all good suggestions for this client. He has several local residential and commercial improvement companies and I believe the best move is to concentrate on simply driving traffic by multiple means to his main niche sites and leaving the other variation domains parked or redirected.

Then work on his Adwords campaigns and make sure they are optimized with the best keywords and bids and that everything is in the proper adgroup. Also, to comb over any reports and see where the most immediate action is needed.

[James-]

Thats not duplicate content. Thats seen as syndicated content.
You only suffer from the 'duplicate content' problem when say you have 2 pages of the same content on your site.

In your case, the site that put the content up first will have the unique goodness that google loves, and the rest of the sites will just not be seen as valued as its copied.