Resolving duplicate text issues with a duplicate image?

[dunklea]

We are a listing site for programs overseas. Many of our listings are inherently the same content, because in many cases the same exact information applies. We have resolved duplicate content issues to some extent by making some of the content in these listings unique. However, for the rest of the content which is going to be the same for about 100 pages, we were wondering if its better to have an image in place instead of duplicate text content (this would basically be an image of the text in question). We know this is a problem, because this is inherently duplicate content as well (only its a duplicate image instead of duplicate text). However, what's the best solution to this problem, and is a duplicate image just asking for trouble, or might this actually be a good idea?

[RyanKent]

To directly answer your question, there are a few ways you can present content in a manner that is not readily crawlable for search engines: flash, iframe and images.

As far as good ideas, I much prefer to offer real content which is unique to the given area. Let's say you are a US-based site offering programs for attending universities overseas. Add some content specific to each country's page to make it unique.

If you present Malaysia as a country, talk about their universities by name, awards they have won, landmarks and other items of interest such as their incredibly diverse forests. You can also provide testimonials from satisfied clients. Testimonials can help establish a lot of relevancy as clients will often mention specifics about where they are from "John from Miami, FL" and where they visited.

In short, you will achieve better results if you work within Google's system then by trying to work around it.

[OptimizeSmart]

You should use rel=canonical tag on duplicate content pages. Google can read text embedded as an image through OCR algorithm. So duplicate image is not a good option. Moreover think how these images will increase the load time of the web pages.

[Ontarioseo]

Could you point me to a valid reference on that OCR issue?

[RDK]

Google won't index image-embedded text on a webpage (currently only .pdf documents)

If you want a little more insurance, which you won't really need, use your handy robot.txt or rel="canonical"

As usual, keep your eyes forward:

"While search engines may not use OCR for indexing the content of web pages now, that doesn’t mean that they might not in the future, and there are some indications that the search engines are developing a much greater proficiency in the use of optical character recognition."

Here's that article, including some great references.

Good luck.