Duplicate content across domains?

[pilgrimquality]

Does anyone have suggestions for managing duplicate product/solution website content across domains? (specifically parent/child company domains) Is it advisable to do this? Will it hurt either domain? Any best practices when going down this path?

[LoganRay]

Patrice,

Any time this question comes up, it always raises a larger question of why? What is the purpose of 2 different domains if they contain the same content? It's almost always inadvisable to do this, but there are a few use cases where it's necessary. If you could provide some more details on the why, I can help answer your question a little better.

Alternatively, if you don't have a solid "why" or it doesn't come to you immediately, you might consider scrapping one of the domains

[pilgrimquality]

Hi Logan, Thank you for your response! Simple reason...our parent company is adding content about our products to their site. So the additional, duplicate content would be added to their site.

[LoganRay]

Did your name change? Or did I pull Patrice out of nowhere?!? haha

Anyway, if it's product detail pages you're referring to, you don't have too much to worry about. According to John Mueller of Google (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-rewriting-product-descriptions-22254.html) duplicates at the product level aren't a big deal. However, if you have any way to differentiate your pages, I would recommend doing that. Can you add a product review section? Q&A? Anything like that to create content unique to _your _versions of the products would be beneficial.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Roxanne

There's two general ways you go can:

1. Will the pages be exactly the same or very similar (like 95% or more)? If so, and you want to be 100% sure Google ranks the right one and consolidates their signals, you can use a Canonical tag. Point it from the page you don't want to rank to the page you do want to rank.

2. If the pages are different - different content, menus, functionality (can you purchase on one but not the other?) etc... then don't use a canonical - but do everything you can to

a) make them different,

b) make it clear to users the products exist in both places,

c) cross-link them if you can,

d) try consistently promote one over the other.

I also _highly _recommend you check out this great new post on duplicate content by Alexis - it's one of the best I've seen!