Issue: Duplicate Page Content

[DougHoltOnline]

For duplicate page content, how different should pages be? For example, I have seven locations and on each location page, we offer a discount. The discounts are the same currently and open into a pop-up window. So it looks something like this:

mysite.com/locationA/dicount

mysite.com/locationB/discount

mysite.com/locationX/discount

The pages are identical. Should I change the verbiage on each page or let it be? I noticed that our organic search rankings have dropped since our site upgrade and this is one item that SEOMOZ has noted.

Thanks!

DHO

[GoodAtMarketing]

If the content that exists on the page is identical then yes, it is duplicate content and may negatively impact your site. You can set up a canonical tag to one page and let the search engines know that the content is pulling from one place.

However, if you are optimizing these pages and building links to them the canonical will not be a good solution. If these pages are targeting keywords you will need to build unique content for each page.

[JonathanLeplang]

Yes, you may be hit.

I know that it's not always easy but you should develop clean and single contents for each one of these pages.

You can also use the canonical tag or not index 'the discount page' using