A lot of news / Duplicate Content - what to do?

[JohnPalmer]

Hi All,

I have a blog with a lot of content (news and pr messages), I want to move my blog to new domain. What is your recommendation?

1. Keep it as is. old articles -> 301 -> same article different URL
2. Remove all the duplicate content and create 301 from the old URL to my homepage.
3. Keep it as is, but add in the meta-tags NoIndex in duplicate articles.

Thanks !

[DirkC]

Hi

1 if you choose scenario 1 you will still have the duplicated content. This could be solved by adding a canonical url on the duplicates pointing to the original version.

2 if you want to remove the duplicates it is best to do a 301 to the original version, not to your homepage

3 scenario 3 is valid if you are sure that you have no external links pointing to the duplicates.

with the modifications above all 3 scenarios will be a valid approach

regards

Dirk

[JohnPalmer]

Hey Dirk,
I decided to go on option 3#.
I'll keep all the duplicate content but ill add there Noindex. and all the old links will do 301 to new url's right?

[DirkC]

Hi John;

Internal links should indeed be changed to the url's you keep.
On the duplicates - it's best to put a noindex,follow - that way the value from the external links to the page is still beneficial for your site (if this article is still valid http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml)

To be honest - for duplicate pages that have incoming external links - I would rather 301 them to the original article (or put a canonical to the original). I

rgds

Dirk