Directory with Duplicate content? what to do?

[nchlondon]

Moz keeps finding loads of pages with duplicate content on my website.

The problem is its a directory page to different locations.

E.g if we were a clothes shop we would be listing our locations:

www.sitename.com/locations/london

www.sitename.com/locations/rome

www.sitename.com/locations/germany

The content on these pages is all the same, except for an embedded google map that shows the location of the place. The problem is that google thinks all these pages are duplicated content.

Should i set a canonical link on every single page saying that www.sitename.com/locations/london is the main page?

I don't know if i can use canonical links because the page content isn't identical because of the embedded map.

Help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

No do not do a canonical tag to one page because that's a bad user / search experience. Keep this structure on your site, but keep a few things in mind; I wanted to share an article from Search Engine Journal with ideas I was going to post as an answer.

One quick note that I will emphasize - your customers / audience in different locations is different, so make sure that the content on these location specific pages is specific to that audience. Things to think about:

• How long has that location been around?
• What services / products do you offer to that location only?
• Who works at this location?
• What are reviews specific to this location?
• Are there any specific partnerships / certifications in this location?
• etc.

You can definitely make each page unique with content, you just have to be logical / use common sense in what information a user or potential client would want about that location.

Hope this helps! Good luck!
P

[nchlondon]

Hello,

There are over 200 locations on the location page. If you click on a location you are then taken to a page with the address of the place followed by a google map showing where it is on a map. There isn't actually any written content and there really doesn't need to be any. So writing unique content is impossible.

Even though these pages all have a different address on them for some reason google still thinks its 'duplicate' page content because of the embedded map.

Any further help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[unirmk]

Hi Tertiary Education,

From the way you describe it your pages are being considered duplicate content becuase they are so very similiar, that is to say that they are near-duplicates if not actual duplicates.

It sounds like the content on those pages is somewhat thin- is there anything else on the page apart from the map? If the answer is "no", or "not much", then consider padding them out with (quality) content that serves your audience. I think this is what Patrick is referring to with his suggestions (forgive me if I am mis-interpreting you Patrick!), and I think he is absolutely right. Other things to consider as creating unique title and descriptions for each page (I mention it in case you have over looked it).

By adding valuable differentiated, content to those pages you will be differentiating one from the other as well as providing value to your users. As Moz sees these changes it should stop flagging them as duplicates, and as google re-indexes the pages it will begin to appreciate the differences between them and gradually index them as non-duplicate content.

Hope that helps