Help with Duplicate Content Issue for pages...

[pauledwards]

I have pages with duplicate content, i want to put them on hold while i write unique content as i do not want to get marked down for it. I also want to keep the urls and use them again.
There are about 300 pages affected by duplicate content currently.

Am i best doing 302 redirects as it is temporary? to the origional source of the content, or canonical tags no index?

The pages are currently indexed and cahced by google, i want to use the url in the future for unique content to get it valued by Google.

Any advice much appreciated.

Kind Regards,

[SuperlativB]

Is there 300 pages that you considering 302 for?

[pauledwards]

Well yeah i have a few pages which have been duplicated content and i dont want to get penalised for duplicate content. However I want to eventually write unique content for them and use the urls. As they are cached and indexed already I am wondering what the best solution is. I dont want a perm re-direct as i want to use the urls again.

[magicrob]

302 redirect does indicate a temporary move, but how temporary is the move? If you're going to have this content sorted quite quickly then you might leave the pages as they are for now.

Are you falling short on ranking currently because of dupe issues?

Don't forget about using internal anchor text to inform Google which pages are relevant for certain keywords.

Cheers

Rob

[pauledwards]

Well i might need the re-direct to be there for up to 12 months, There's quite alot of content to do.

[magicrob]

Sounds like a lot of work!

If there's a lot of dupe content are the URLs also quite closely matched in terms of keyword use? Are you going to end up just consolidating a lot of the content on a smaller number of pages? If that's going to be the case then perhaps a 301 to the root domain, or to the best of the current pages, would be better.

Cheers

Rob

[pauledwards]

Thanks for the advice.

On further looking there's more of 100 pages which have duplicate content.

The urls are similar for example.

/destination

and then

/destination/keyword

I have been told to keep the urls and put unique content on as i go on progressing the site. I just don't know what the best way to do it is, whether it is 302, canonical, etc.

[Marcus_Miller]

I would just focus your efforts on creating unique, optimsed content for these pages. If they are just duplicate product descriptions,  they will know that and I doubt it having an major impact on the rest of the site.

What percentage of your site do these 300 pages account for? How quickly can you rewrite the content on the pages?

You could noindex but unless there was a proven impact that these pages are having on your unique pages I think you are likely wasting your time.

[magicrob]

Perhaps 302 to the folder (/destination/) until you're ready to use the content on a page. Implementing the canonical tag here probably won't make a difference as there will only be a small number of 'live' pages.

Good luck Paul

Rob

[pauledwards]

Thanks for the advice so far everyone.

Some of the pages are getting traffic etc and all seem to be indexed - up to 1000 it seems.

Its 3/4 paragraphs of text so a little more than a product description.

It's a difficult one to call, as i need to save the urls but not get penalised for duplicate content.

[OptimizeSmart]

I would suggest using the canonical tag on duplicate pages until you come up with new contents.

[pauledwards]

Can this work as a temporary thing?

So if i put a canonical tag in then take it out, once taken out and the page is crawled Google will then value it as unique content?

I just don't want to do anything which makes Google think its permanent.