Duplicate content across domains

chill986

I have a client with 2 websites - one is a trucking and rigging company that specializes in installation / moving / removal of safes (site #1), the other offers a product line of safes (site #2). I originally designed / implemented site #1 and was able to get "safe installation New York", "safe moving New York", and "safe removal New York" in the top 3 search results in. A little over a year ago, client was approached by another marketing company to create the site #2, who also provided commercial services that I don't. It was a business decision, and we remained in good relations. As a result Site #1 went to the new marketing company and they built Site #2.

Fast forward to about 3 months ago - Site #1 was infected with malware, client wasn't happy with new service, and asked me to take back the Site #1 ( and remove malware), and take Site #2, and re-work the SEO. SEO had dramatically fallen off for Site #1, so I've been working the SEO once I was able to get the malware completely removed and reviewed by Google.

Site #1 had been redesigned by the other marketing company, essentially retaining the content that I created. Site #2 has mostly new content, but under "Services", it references the same services that Site #1provides, but the content is exactly the same, except that references to the company for Site #1 also link to Site #1. So there is duplicate content for 5 pages on both sites. As it happens, Site #2 that SELLS safes, is ranking #2 for "safe installation new york" for exactly the same content as Site #1 that provides the services. Site #1 ranks >50 for the same keyphrase.

Why would this be? Has Site #2 taken the lead on this keyphrase because of the malware situation and now Site #1 is being penalized for duplicate content?

One other major change on Site #1 is that the web technician used Wordpress's built in page nesting (page is set as child to parent page - nested 3 deep in some cases). What are the consequences (if there are any) of having a page listed as (for example) oztruckingandrigging.com/services/safe/safe-installation vs. oztruckingandrigging.com/safe-installation? The reason I ask this is that when I Moz page optimize for the first one for "safe installation" I get a lower grade then when I Moz page optimize for the second one.

BlueprintMarketing

There is no real Google penalty for content duplication. Unless you're talking about stealing content which then digital millennium takedown acts

http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

It does not sound like you are talking about stealing content.

"Site #1 had been redesigned by the other marketing company, essentially retaining the content that I created. Site #2 has mostly new content, but under "Services", it references the same services that Site #1provides, but the content is exactly the same, except that references to the company for Site #1 also link to Site #1. So there is duplicate content for 5 pages on both sites. As it happens, Site #2 that SELLS safes, is ranking #2 for "safe installation new york" for exactly the same content as Site #1 that provides the services. Site #1 ranks >50 for the same keyphrase."

How can they rank identically for the same key phrases? It would make sense that a site being rebuilt completely would lose a tremendous amount of traffic in some cases.

Look in Webmaster tools for 404's look for issues with your site structure and try to find out as much as you can from the other company about the way it was built. It sounds like you're talking about nesting giving you a 404 is this correct?

I would make sure that the content is only on one of the sites and not being utilized on both of them as it does not help to have duplicate content. Please understand what I said about penalties and best practices are very different.

Respectfully,

Tom

chill986

I have no crawl errors / no 404s - and the nesting I refer to looks like this on the page manager dashboard in WordPress:

Services
-Safes (page parent is Services)
--Safe Installation (page parent is Safes)

So Services is a page, Safes is a page, and Safe Installation is a page. You can get to oztruckingandrigging.com/services/safes/safe-installation by going to oztruckingandrigging.com/safes/safe-installation, as well as oztruckingandrigging.com/safe-installation. I find it odd that the Page Optimization score is 92% for the first, but 96% for the last? Why would Moz Page Optimization see these two pages differently? All their Services are layed out the same way (i.e. safe moving, safe removal, safe storage have "Safes" as a parent and , of course, "Services" as the Safes parent.

And the site wasn't rebuilt completely, they changed themes (appearance) only, the page management structure (see page manager description above) - the content and general navigational structure remains the same. It just looks different, which should make no difference to Google.

I still am trying to wrap my head around the fact that Safewarehouseofnewyork.com's safe installation page is #2 for Safe Installation New York (behind homeadvisor.com 5 best safe installers in New York), whereas oztruckingandrigging.com's safe installation page (which has exactly the same content) ranks >51.

I am considering changing the safe warehouse site to have a landing page for Services with references and links to each safe service that they partner with OZ trucking on. Thoughts? I hate losing that #2 ranking, though.

BlueprintMarketing

Ok, You are using child and parent pages? That is what is causing the /safe/safe/ you are redirecting to a forward slash "/" but they're not duplicates because their 301 redirects they're not just forwarding there actually Telling Google this is no longer the URL is the new one.

I would have to see what you're using to create redirects it most likely is a regex or plug-in setting.

Are you using a particular WordPress hosting company?
Do you have a specific plug-in that you're using to create redirects?
Do you create redirects by using either PHP, Apache, Nginx or Varnish?
How familiar are you with your database?
Did you do a search and replace when you moved or migrated the site?

According to

http://www.redirect-checker.org/index.php

http://oztruckingandrigging.com/safes/safe-installation
301 Moved Permanently
http://oztruckingandrigging.com/our-services/safes/safe-installation/
200 OK

HTTP Headers

http://oztruckingandrigging.com/safes/safe-installation

301 Moved Permanently

http://oztruckingandrigging.com/our-services/safes/safe-installation/

200 OK

http://oztruckingandrigging.com/safes/safe-installation

redirects to

http://oztruckingandrigging.com/our-services/safes/safe-installation/ (forward /)

not

http://oztruckingandrigging.com/services/safes/safe-installation (no "/" it a 404)

404 Not Found

HTTP Headers

http://oztruckingandrigging.com/services/safes/safe-installation

404 Not Found

it 404's http://d.pr/i/19KcJ

http://oztruckingandrigging.com/safe-installation
301 Moved Permanently
http://oztruckingandrigging.com/safe-installation-news/ ( note the forward slash "/" on all these)
200 OK

>>> http://oztruckingandrigging.com/safe-installation

"The site wasn't rebuilt completely, they changed themes (appearance) only, the page management structure (see page manager description above) - the content and general navigational structure remains the same. It just looks different, which should make no difference to Google."

Changing the theme can modify a lot of code. Go into Google Webmaster tools or search console

Here https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

Then go to crawl errors and look for 404's obviously there are going to be some 404's when modifying themes because even if all your URLs stay the same way all your URIs will not. Either way, all your URLs will not stay the same way, and you change the theme.

After which I would strongly recommend using two toolsets right now you can use https://deepcrawl.com for free it will show you everything wrong with your site. Via https://app.deepcrawl.com

Another tool I would use that is extremely helpful is

https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ there is a free and paid version for right now try the free and I think you'll be happy with the results. Obviously, 99 UK a year is not much to pay.

http://www.siteliner.com/ is designed to show you duplicate content on page and redirects it is excellent at sniffing out duplicate content I would use all three tools.

"Why would Moz Page Optimization see these two pages differently? "

Because there are multiple words in the URL that make them different. Also, there may be some settings that are slightly different in your on the page I have not looked.

the safe installation page ( the links do not go live in less you make them you links.)

Rel="canonical"
http://safewarehouseofnewyork.com/services/safe-installation/

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chill986

My apologies - I should have referenced "our-services" instead of "services", no minor detail.

Are you using a particular WordPress hosting company?
I host the sites on my dedicated server and provide wordpress maintenance
Do you have a specific plug-in that you're using to create redirects?
I do, but I did not redirect these URLs
Do you create redirects by using either PHP, Apache, Nginx or Varnish?
I use a redirect plugin - but good point, it's possible that the previous developer added 301 redirects in .htaccess. I believe, though, that this is done by native Wordpress based upon the relationship between the primary domain, and the parent pages.
How familiar are you with your database?
Familiar enough to find issues in it via phpadmin. Again this is a Wordpress site, and it's not a frequent requirement that I modify the database directly
Did you do a search and replace when you moved or migrated the site?
The structure, domain and navigational URLs of the site did not change. I received a zip file of the database from the previous site manager, and I FTPd the files from the original location.

***ACTUAL QUESTION: I am not having a problem with the "function" of the site. My question relates to best practices for SEO - would it be better to have the URL be simply oztruckingandrigging.com/safe-installation or is it basically equivalent to have the URL be as it is, oztruckingandrigging.com/our-services/safes/safe-installation/ ***

Again, the site works the way it is supposed to - I do see a few 404s unrelated to this question that I need to clean up, and I very much appreciate the additional resources you have provided me. You put together a very thorough answer, but I think it wasn't clear the question I was actually asking. I do already have the free version of Screaming Frog, but I am unfamiliar with the others.

I still am not sure of the answer for the initial question regarding duplicate page content across two different sites and whether there is a penalty.

Thank you!

BlueprintMarketing

There is no official duplicate content penalty from Google. If that is what you are asking? Now it's two sites have identical conte there is no official duplicate content penalty from Google. If that is what you are asking? Now if two sites have identical content and Google Will give the domain with a higher authority the higher ranking for the exact same term. But this would mean that are identical in terms of every single manner except for Domain Athorthy the rights to the content only become googles concern when you file a digital millennium take down act. Or DMCA you would not do this in your situation you would only do this in a situation where somebody else is useing your content.

So when Google chooses the flight that gets the authority for the content they will choose one of the two sites or one of however many sites have not content on the index after which the sites with the identical content will not ran so when Google chooses the site that gets the authority for the content they will choose one of the two sites or one of however many sites have not content on their index after which the sites with the identical Content will not benefit from the content that is already indexed and ranking on a higher authority domain.

There are exceptions for every rule every site is unique Google needs to decipher which thinks is the best for the end-user remember Google is in business as a search engine for end-users not for us SEO , Devs, or site owners. The amount of factors that goes into the decision is so much higher than what I want to get into right now but if somebody has a higher rate has people with more time on site has proven that their site present a better user experience actually help make websites for

Google likes unique high quality fresh content and can figure out what is best for users there's a huge difference between a penalty and serving the ideal page to the end user. So while theoretically it is possible to rank #1 using identical content it is not something I would recommend.

I can see that you're hosting with Wiretree I am in a supermarket on my telephone right now so I will lose my mind when I am not in front of my computer however I just wanted to update you on Content and please excuse any spelling or grammar glitches.

Tom

BlueprintMarketing

There is a saying in SEO cool links do not change. If you are creating new links ideally, in my opinion, the shorter the URL the better. As long as it is of course descriptive

"I am not having a problem with the "function" of the site. My question relates to best practices for SEO - would it be better to have the URL be simply oztruckingandrigging.com/safe-installation or is it basically equivalent to have the URL be as it is, oztruckingandrigging.com/our-services/safes/safe-installation/."

I would recommend a URL like a number one over number two

http://oztruckingandrigging.com/safe-installation (for usability this is much better considering the length of your domain as well)
http://oztruckingandrigging.com/our-services/safes/safe-installation ( you have the same word twice in this URL not good)

See

**Duplicate content is addressed here in an extremely thorough manner. **

http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/duplicate-content-problems/ (This is the most relevant and thorough)
https://youtu.be/6hSoXutuj0g
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=en
https://blog.kissmetrics.com/myths-about-duplicate-content/

imagine what Google does to sites that reuse content and imagine if it's a different domain only one will be indexed ( most of the time) a great explanation is in this video. This might not feel like it is relevant to multiple domains but it is because all of it's in Google's index already.

https://youtu.be/nMrYeUWlslY?t=5m41s

Using duplicate content across domains, I do not suggest using because of what I stated above that the site would more authority will take all credit for the content.

I hope this helps,

Tom

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BlueprintMarketing

FYI I thought I would let you know I was going through your navigation and noticed in the product section you are making a new window or tab most of the time when clicking a link that is on the same domain.

http://safewarehouseofnewyork.com/products/superior-safe-company/ click first read more

The reason I'm bringing this up is much more important you mentioned that you were hacked.

I clicked on a URL in your product area which took me to a third-party company selling the product. What bothered me was several errors when I checked it using Sucuri.net

I found out that the site is compromised, and I would recommend if it is under your control letting the people who administer the site know ASAP you do not want to link to a hacked site.

https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/results/www.ftknox.com/store/

If your site was hacked and you are linking directly to these other sites inside your products area, I would not divert people from my site unless I had an excellent reason.

If these are under your umbrella you will want to fix this ASAP

You can check for malware and get sites fixed very easily using https://sitecheck.sucuri.net/

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| Website Malware | php-error-fatal-error?v6 | http://www.ftknox.com/store/ ( View Payload ) |
| Website Malware | php-error-fatal-error?v6 | http://www.ftknox.com/vaults/the-maverick-vault/ ( View Payload ) |
| Website Malware | php-error-fatal-error?v6 | http://www.ftknox.com/store/ ( View Payload ) |
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chill986

I don't have direct control, but I believe there is a strong partnership (perhaps even a partial ownership) between my client and the target site. I didn't develop the safewarehouseofnewyork.com site, I have only been tasked with working the SEO. But this sounds really bad - I'm heading out the door (to the beach, it's Sunday ), and will look into this more thoroughly when I return.

I never did like the way the site designer didn't incorporate the products into the site and goes to a different site based on product line. Not the way I would do it, but maybe the client was trying to keep the cost down.

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