Opinion on Duplicate Content Scenario

[MeridianGroup]

So there are 2 pest control companies owned by the same person - Sovereign and Southern. (The two companies serve different markets) They have two different website URLs, but the website code is actually all the same....the code is hosted in one place....it just uses an if/else structure with dynamic php which determines whether the user sees the Sovereign site or the Southern site....know what I am saying? Here are the two sites:  www.sovereignpestcontrol.com and www.southernpestcontrol.com. This is a duplicate content SEO nightmare, right?

[Chris.Menke]

Yep, that's duplicate content.  Two different URLs with essentially the exact same content = duplicate content, regardless of the architecture behind the URLs.

[Chris_CM]

Hi Joseph,

This is definitely not the ideal scenario.  If the two brands are targeting separate markets, why would the copy need to be the same?  Your two options would be to change the copy on one of the sites, or just redirect one to the site that is currently performing better.

Hope this helps,

Chris Wilson