New Client Wants to Keep Duplicate Content Targeting Different Cities

[waqid]

We've got a new client who has about 300 pages on their website that are the same except the cities that are being targeted. Thus far the website has not been affected by penguin or panda updates, and the client wants to keep the pages because they are bringing in a lot of traffic for those cities.

We are concerned about duplicate content penalties; do you think we should get rid of these pages or keep them?

[RickyShockley]

It seems to me that Google would see all of that duplicate content and simply have 1 page ranking as the canonical page. If they are seeing organic traffic and rankings for multiple pages, I am not sure how long that will last. From what I understand, it would be best to start the slow process of making the content on each page somewhat unique.

[BeardoCo]

I agree with Ricky - I would slowly make all those pages unique in some way.  I still find it beneficial to rank to different city pages as long as they have prime content.  Google will eventually sift its way and find those pages as spam.

[KesilConsultingLLC]

Does the analytics support specific city search terms targeting those city specific pages, or going to the home page (or the canonical version of the duplicate content page)?

If it is the later, then you certainly should move those city specific keyword terms into the single version of the duplicate content in some creative fashion.

Regardless you still should remove the duplicate content, preferably sooner than later because they are certainly low value pages!

[Dr-Pete]

This is a tough situation. I tend to agree with Ricky - these are exactly the kinds of pages that have been hit by Panda, and there's real risk. In the old days, the biggest risk was that the pages would just stop getting traffic. Now, the impact could hit the rest of the site as well, and it's a lot more dangerous.

The problem is that it's working for now, and you're asking them to give up traffic in the short-term to avoid losing it in the long-term. Again, I think the long-term risk is serious (and it's not that easy to recover from), but the short-term pain to the client is very real.

What's the scope of the 300 pages compared to the rest of the site (are we talking a 400 page site or a 40,000 page site)? How many of these city pages are getting real traffic? My best alternative solution is to pin down the 10-20% of the city pages getting most of the traffic, temporarily NOINDEX the rest, and then beef up those well-trafficked city pages with unique content (so, maybe you're talking about 30 pages). Then, build out from there.

Give these pages real value - it's not only good for SEO, but it will probably improve conversion, too. The other problem with pages that just swap out a city is that they're often low quality - they may draw traffic in, but then have high bounce rates and low conversion. If you can show that you can improve the value, even with some traffic loss, it's easier to win this fight.