Dealing with thin content/95% duplicate content - canonical vs 301 vs noindex

[JamesFx]

My client's got 14 physical locations around the country but has a webpage for each "service area" they operate in.

They have a Croydon location. But a separate page for London, Croydon, Essex, Luton, Stevenage and many other places (areas near Croydon) that the Croydon location serves. Each of these pages is a near duplicate of the Croydon page with the word Croydon swapped for the area.

I'm told this was a SEO tactic circa 2001. Obviously this is an issue.

So the question - should I 301 redirect each of the links to the Croydon page? Or (what I believe to be the best answer) set a rel=canonical tag on the duplicate pages).

Creating "real and meaningful content" on each page isn't quite an option, sorry!

[JamesFx]

Re-reading http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world

I don't think I have any choice except to use rel=canonical tags and work at improving page content. Adapting this question to ask the speculative "how much does duplicate content hurt my ranking"

[donford]

Hi James,

you in fact come up with the answer I would have suggested.

One thing to think about is the purpose of why these pages come into existence and why it was a tactic 10+ years ago...

The reason I would think is.. keywords.

Croydon  Lift Repair
Essex Lift Repair
London Lift Repair
....

Depending on the clients website and using my example service, if they happened to have a very strong presence for the keyword lift repair, then you probably could easily incorporate those longer keywords London Lift Repair onto the main lift repair page and simply canonical the subpages.

If they don't have a strong presence on the root keyword (lift repair) but do show good results for the longer keyword results (London Lift Repair), then all you have to really worry about is 14 pages of content. Which in the scheme of a website is not that much.

I would think that it would be a good idea to include, content, physical address's phone numbers, map results on this page. Also if possible, contact some of the clients and ask them if it is okay get their opinion and thoughts on the service that was provided and use that as "What Others Are Saying". section on these pages. If they are hesitant maybe offer their business a free  follow link, which could sway them in the right direction. From there you could talk about the unique things about each branch, could be employees, service equipment, local community involvements, clients, high profile contracts etc...)

The short is you're on the right track and I hope my thoughts helped you get on.

Don

[MiriamEllis]

Hi James,

The way this was done is not good, but the idea is right. If the client has 14 different offices, it is a standard best practice to create a unique page for each of them, and, yes, that means unique content. too. Rather than dealing with re-directs and rels, my advice is to reconsider your stance on creating meaningful content for each page. You just need to find a unique story to tell for each page. If the client is a service business, then doubtless, he's got a unique story from each service area to share. Put a minimum of 400 engaging words together, put the complete NAP(name, address, phone), a map of the service area, 5-10 local testimonials, maybe a video of the client at work in the local area and, bingo, you've now got a strong page that's been locally optimized for the community it serves.

Are you sure this isn't an option? It will take some effort/funding, but the business needs to understand the importance of taking a high quality approach to presenting themselves on the web, or they are going to be overrun by competitors who are willing to make these efforts.