How to handle city-based product selection and duplicate content?

[Nimbus3000]

Hi everyone,

I've been searching the interwebs for a solution to my problem, but haven't really found anything conclusive.

I've got a client with duplicate content issues; their website not only has a nation-wide website, but also 10 different sub-categories for different cities, with each subcategory having the same content as the main website.

The reason they wanted city-based websites was due to the changing product offerings in each city. So City 1 may not have all the products available that City 2 does. Needless to say this has caused some duplicate content issues as most sections of the website have been multiplied by 10.

When a visitor lands on any page of the website, they are greeted by a pop up asking for their location, which will then redirect them to their selected version of the website.

As the copy cannot really be changed enough for each city to make it unique, I've been looking into canonical tags, but this would mean the localised versions will not be indexed by Google.

Has anyone had any experience of a similar situation where the product range changes according to location, but it doesn't hurt SEO?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[TomRayner]

Hi there

In reality, you only have two options:

Rewrite the content on each localised page so it can pass as unique.

Or deindex/canonicalise the localised pages.

I'm afraid that's all there is to it.  If the client wants all of the pages to rank in Google, then they have to provide unique content for each page, or they run the risk of a duplicate content penalty.  There's no other way, I'm afraid.

What might be more achievable is to set up a main page for the products that are offered in the regions, with links going to each region's page.  Those regional pages should be noindexed.  It means those pages won't rank in Google, but on the flip side it means you only need to concentrate on ranking one page. If all your efforts head there, the amount of links and social shares it accumulates could make it a powerful page for your keyword.