Similar Content vs Duplicate Content

[Izoox]

We have articles written for how to setup pop3 and imap. The topics are technically different but the settings within those are very similar and thus the inital content was similar. SEOMoz reports these pages as duplicate content. It's not optimal for our users to have them merged into one page. What is the best way to handle similar content, while not getting tagged for duplicate content?

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

Izoox-

Sorry to tell you......Need to bite the bullet and rewrite it.

Couple of simple things you can do....

you can literally use a thesaraus on a bunch of words.

Restructure basic sentences and reformat.

Link a few of the terms.

Take words and bold them, underline them, use italics......

all of these things will help differentiate your content.

[loopyal]

Also, on one of them, add something completely different such as on the imap page, add a paragraph on the benefits of iMac, or about the port number or about the protocol. Be sure to add a screenshot and set the alt tags. There are plenty of small differences you could do.

[Izoox]

This shouldn't be too difficult a change then. We only have around 20 articles that were hit by this particular issue. Thanks for the response, and everyone was very helpful.