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Hidden Duplicate content

by Lukas
4 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Google has gotten me obsessive about duplicate content.

Question: If you run an international site and have
domain.com/topic/europe
domain.com/topic2/europe

is that duplicate on a file-name level?

If I have a lead gen site with the same insurance form on the right side column, same questions, same everything, is that considered duplicate content? difference is the content in the middle, all else, navigation, right side column is similar

Let's say your nav menu on the home page has 5 different drop-down menu topics. Once I arrive to topic1, should that nav menu now be laser relevant to the topic and lose the other 4 topics? They are ALL related in some manner, example; education.
#content #duplicate #hidden
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    Originally Posted by Lukas View Post

    Google has gotten me obsessive about duplicate content.

    Question: If you run an international site and have
    domain.com/topic/europe
    domain.com/topic2/europe

    is that duplicate on a file-name level?
    You should already know it's not duplicate, you added the number 2 to one URL.






    If I have a lead gen site with the same insurance form on the right side column, same questions, same everything, is that considered duplicate content? difference is the content in the middle, all else, navigation, right side column is similar
    No, it's not duplicate, you said the content is unique.






    Let's say your nav menu on the home page has 5 different drop-down menu topics. Once I arrive to topic1, should that nav menu now be laser relevant to the topic and lose the other 4 topics? They are ALL related in some manner, example; education.
    That's up to you, what your selling & who your selling to. If your education site is targeting the 50 states in the US, traffic from Iowa doesn't need to see links for the other 49 states.
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  • Profile picture of the author linkassistant
    Originally Posted by Lukas View Post

    Question: If you run an international site and have
    domain.com/topic/europe
    domain.com/topic2/europe
    is that duplicate on a file-name level?
    domain.com/europe/topic
    domain.com/europe/topic2

    seems more logical to me, but perhaps you have reasons for doing it that way. Anyhow, there is no such thing as duplicate content on a file-name level. Oftentimes a site would have duplicate URLs, which happens because of different parameters (sorting, tracking, etc.) But that's a different story.

    Originally Posted by Lukas View Post

    If I have a lead gen site with the same insurance form on the right side column, same questions, same everything, is that considered duplicate content? difference is the content in the middle, all else, navigation, right side column is similar
    There was a vid by Matt Cutts on this exact subject In a nutshell, it's OK to have a template like that, but you'd better keep it short (it shouldn't constitute the majority of the page's content).

    Originally Posted by Lukas View Post

    Let's say your nav menu on the home page has 5 different drop-down menu topics. Once I arrive to topic1, should that nav menu now be laser relevant to the topic and lose the other 4 topics? They are ALL related in some manner, example; education.
    I'd do what's best for the user. Just make it easy for people for get around the site.
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  • Profile picture of the author Lukas
    Glad to hear it is not considered duplicate. You never know with how ultra-picky they are.

    Yukon, I agree with the Iowa concept.


    LinkAssistant,

    domain.com/europe/topic
    domain.com/europe/topic2

    the topic is more important than the location so I think Google will rank it accordingly plus my peers/competing sites do it that way. I was just thinking outside the box of just focusing on unique Title,Desc and content H1/h2 tags that can be swapped out for each city+KW...

    Last Question (hopefully): How would you handle those H1 tags for main kws spread across 50-100 pages with city+kw assuming meta title/desc are unique too?
    I've done:
    Car Insurance Rates in Iowa,
    Insurance Rates: Individual and Group Discounts in Kansas
    Expert and Certified Insurance Agent in Maine
    New Hampshire Affordable Insurance Plans
    Vehicle Insurance Vermont
    Rhode Island Insurance Plans - Satisfied 1000s

    It appears to me that if you are a brand, you can do city+kw swap and no harm.
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    • Profile picture of the author linkassistant
      Originally Posted by Lukas View Post

      It appears to me that if you are a brand, you can do city+kw swap and no harm.
      If you are planning to have very different content/marketing message for each location, you should be fine.

      But if those pages have similar content (besides unique titles, descriptions, H1-H2 tags), they'll fit the description of doorway pages as per Google's Quality Guidelines:

      Some examples of doorways include:
      ...
      Multiple pages on your site with similar content designed to rank for specific queries like city or state names
      I know many people do this. The question is whether you are willing to take the risk.
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