Dealing with duplicate content

[Timmmmy]

Manufacturer product website (product.com) has an associated direct online store (buyproduct.com). the online store has much duplicate content such as product detail pages and key article pages such as technical/scientific data is duplicated on both sites.

What are some ways to lessen the duplicate content here? product.com ranks #1 for several key keywords so penalties can't be too bad and buyproduct.com is moving its way up the SERPS for similar terms.

Ideally I'd like to combine the sites into one, but not in the budget right away.

Any thoughts?

[MagicDude4Eva]

Are you able to change the domain of buyproduct.com to shop.product.com and then have the shop's product pages and content which is duplicate have the same canonical? Not ideal as your shop would not feature any content.

If you are able to rework buyproduct.com then I would change the product page structure, enrich with hproduct data and other relevant markup (reviews).

[UnderRugSwept]

It seems as though combining the sites is your best option. If that is your long term goal, then spending countless time writing new content for one of them seems like a waste, especially if their rankings aren't suffering. However, that could change overnight, so I'd suggest to try to find a way to put combining them higher on your priority list. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful, but that is what I'd do if I were in your situation. I know you say it's not in your budget, but what's your budget going to look like if your site gets hit by the next Panda?

[NakulGoyal]

I agree with Gerd and Marisa. I would recommend you to consider doing a Cross Domain canonical tag on your buyproduct.com product pages and any other duplicate content to your product.com pages or vice versa, depending upon whichever one you want to keep in the search engines.

Since both your websites have strength and our gaining the SERPS (which does not guarantee that they can't fall tomorrow for getting penalized for duplicate content), I would suggest you take the opportunity to put a plan and strategy together and get this taken care of sooner then later.

[Timmmmy]

Thanks Gerd, Marisa & Nakul. All good feedback. I asked this yesterday with another layer pertaining to mobile and I think it complicated the question too much for anyone to understand or answer.

product.com/shop is the ideal solution and that will require the investment in a new "product.com".  Forgoing the SERP for buyproduct.com is likely the best option anyways considering it will be gone once investment is made.

Appreciate your responses.