Home Page Blog Snippets - Duplicate Content Help?

[CRO_first]

Afternoon Folks-

I have been asked to contribute to a new site that has a blogfeed prominently displayed on the home page.  It's laid out like this:

Logo | Menu

HOME PAGE SLIDER

Blog 1 Title

• about 100 words of blog 1 Text

Blog 2 Title

• about 100 words of blog 2 Text

Blog 3 Title

• about 100 words of blog 3 Text

Footer:

--

This seems like an obvious duplicate content situation but also a way I have seen a lot of  blogs laid out.  (I.E. With blog content snippets being a significant portion of the home page content)

I want the blogs to rank and I want the home page to rank, so I don't feel like a rel canonical on the blog post's is the correct option unless I have misunderstood their purpose.

Anyone have any ideas or know how this is usually handled?

[Thriveworks-Counseling]

A blogfeed should be okay, meaning that the site won't be penalized for having it. But the feed's not going to help SEO, either. That blog really needs you to start writing some high-quality unique content ASAP if they want the search engines to rank their site.  Also, they should put your good original content at the top, above the fold, and start making the blogfeed a feature of lesser prominence. You're going to want google to see the good/original content first --Hope this helps!

[DirkC]

This seems like a pretty normal set-up, and there should not be any need to use canonicals in this case. Just one thing - although there is no such thing as an ideal number of words for a blog item, if your show 100 words of blog 1 on the home, and blog1 only has 120 words in total - it's probably not the best set-up (not for Google, and not for the users, as they would need to click to get only a little bit of additional information)

Update - I assume that blog1/blog2/etc are blog posts written on your site - if they are external blogs this page has little value

[CRO_first]

Thanks Anthony -

The content is solid and the posts are all original, so we should be square there.

So maybe a next step option would be to add Original, home page only, content between the slider and the Blog Feed?

For Example:

Logo | Menu

HOME PAGE SLIDER

ADD ORIGINAL HOME PAGE CONTENT

Blog 1 Title

• about 100 words of blog 1 Text

Blog 2 Title

• about 100 words of blog 2 Text

Blog 3 Title

• about 100 words of blog 3 Text

Footer:

--

[CRO_first]

Yep, all internal blog posts and the blogs are 400 - 1000 + words, so that should be covered as well.  Thanks for the advice though, I hadn't heard the warning about smaller blog posts.

[Thriveworks-Counseling]

CRO,

Clarity is happening now! When you say blog-feed, you're referring to original blogs actually on the site. NOT a blog-feed showing articles syndicated from some other site. That's a good thing, as I think those links (to your internal articles) will help your ensure those posts get indexed quickly, and might get some link juice too.

While I always think some original introductory content on the homepage is a good thing, now that I understand the blog-feed is to original articles on your actual blog, I won't worry much about where it is on the homepage. I'd simply put the original homepage content anywhere that is feels good for you and the end user.

--A

[DirkC]

It depends a bit on the topics you're discussing. For most sites, it's very difficult to get ranked on your homepage apart when people are looking for your brandname. If your site is mainly covering one topic - and all the blog post on your site are giving additional info on that specific topic or closely related topic it might work.

I would only add additional content on the homepage if it's adding value for the users - it's not really something which is needed for Google (example; when I search for "sports car" on google.co.uk - one of the top results is http://www.classicandsportscar.com/ - which has more or less the same setup as you describe = slider +links to other articles - no specific 'homepage' content)