Some Content The Same

[smithandco]

Hello.

I am about to publish some landing pages that target different industries that we are trying to market to.

X for Accountants
X for Financial Advisors
X for Fitness Trainers
X for X

While a good portion of the content is unique on each page "the benefits of using X for accountants" some of the content on the page is duplicate which explains more about how our software works (the features), this will be the same content on every page.

Is this considered duplicate content? What should I be aware of in term of Google rankings and penalties?

Thanks,
David

[ChrisAshton]

It is considered duplicate. It isn't a huge deal if it's only a portion of the page, the bigger issue is that it will be essentially ignored on all but one of those pages - think of that section like a black spot that search engines won't "see".

If it makes up the majority of your content on these pages you're going to have a bad time, but if it's just a small section amongst quality content I wouldn't be too worried from a ranking perspective.

Having said that, a better way to deal with this type of situation is to have a separate page that talks about how your product/service works rather than duplicating the same bit of content page after page. It lets you go into more detail since anyone reading it obviously wants to know all about it, and it means much easier editing if this process ever changes, too.

Something else to consider is that, admittedly with very little info to work with here, it sounds like your content may be falling into the common trap of telling users what you want them to know rather than offering the info they're looking for. For most users, exactly how your process works may be of 0 importance to them until they're comfortable with what you have to offer, at which point an "our process" type of page is perfect for their next step; "this sounds great, but do they provide xyz with it as well?".

If this is correct for your users, that's even more reason to avoid duplicating this same bit of content on these pages - you'd be taking on the risks of content duplication for the sake of presenting users with info they may not care about at this stage of the buying process.

If a separate page for this isn't an option for some reason, you might find Rand's WBF on essentially the same topic to be a helpful explanation. I know he's talking about duplication of external content but the concept is the same.