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Hey guys,

We're seeing Moz report "duplicate" content on pages like: mysite.com/interesting-category/ and mysite.com/interesting-tag.

Why exactly is this, and is there something that we should do about this? Obviously some of the same posts will intersect on pages like category, tag, author pages.

Thanks

Hey there,

The same-language relevant-content backlinks are by far more valuable. You can grab a couple high DA links with less relevancy, even diff languages, as long as it's not in an extremely spammy way or overdone. Ex - the article is about mountain passes in Russian and suddenly you link to your site saying "Buy cheap laptops".

Usually try to only link to your domain with no specific anchor text other than the domain name ex: MOZ.com .This way it can provide some value, but not look spammy. The key is not to do stuff that Google can track as a spam pattern and penalise you. Everything else can be helfpul.  Have a look at this rather older but still very much true / valid Whiteboard Friday vid:

https://moz.com/blog/high-value-tactics-futureproof-link-building-whiteboard-friday

Hope this helps

Hey Frank,

In this case it's a no-brainer. If things are just duplicate and then rotated around, it's clear that content can't be THAT qualitative. In this case I certainly think that going for it, and creating the kind of content that's absolutely the best. This way, you'll get a much more natural growth, Google will pick up on it and even if your domain is lower DA, you can rank better than him for certaim keywords for which you write really good content.

Hey Frank,

Thanks for the PM. I've had a look at the domain, it's not doing bad but it's not a juggernaut either. If you know your stuff with SEO, at least as much to really optimize your own website good, then I would definitely go for it. DA 50 is not really something that would be so hard to overtake, and the thing that's really strange for me, is the keywords that send the most organic trafic to them (run the domain on alexa.com). The terms seem to have absolutely nothing in common with the site's content (short of an article or two).  I would absolutely go for it Good content and some social marketing can really help. It's the type of niche where social can play a big role.

Hope this helps.

If you can send over the domain I can have a quick look and see if I can provide any helpful info. However, this being said, without knowing the niche that we're talking about, this site doesn't seem to be a joggernaut so i'd go for it with patience determination and the right approach you can start earning money rapidly on long tail kwds, and then go for the broad ones Step by step.

furthermore, perhaps you can get some really quality top notch links and kickstart your strategy

I'm not sure if I follow the "empty pages for which the client would purchase something" part. Are you referring to the site owner's company to purchase stock for those pages?

Hey,

I'm thinking about the basic things. First of all - Google won't take you seriously if you just have a couple of pages, which are new to his eyes, and with no links. More content (dofollow) will immediately mean that it sees you're trying to make an impact. + better chances of backlinks, shares. + better traffic since you have more pages. All of these would show Google that you're the real deal.

Hi there,

I'm not sure if you'll like my reply or not but this is something that we've done before when we faced a somewhat similar situation with a client. We implemented redirects using some regex code...basically filling out the spaces where you would have stuff like /us /us /es with regex jolly jokers so that any page which would fit the bill would be redirected with one smooth piece of code.

have a good day

Hey,

According to the latest updates, Google crawls the whole net within 1-2 weeks so...there you go. You can use the Moz tools to try and nail down the issues - perhaps links are not qualitative enough...?

thanks!

Hey,

this is not about content, but probably about a missing (meta) tag. Send over a screenshot with the error please?

thanks!

Hi,

well I think the answer quite shortly put is yes, it would affect the speed at which google would boost the new site as long as you're not uploading the content. If all of these are noindex the impact wouldn't probably be as big. Think of uploading the dofollow doindex content at least. That should be a good start.

Hey there,

I already posted this a few minutes ago but heck...it's just as helpful I guess. Rand just did a whiteboard Friday video about rel=canonical & redirect 3XX links which is right up your alley here.

I obviously can't explain it better than Rand, so have a look for yourself: https://moz.com/blog/rel-canonical

Cheers

Andy

Hey Kate,

The guys here @ Moz actually have a really awesome "whiteboard Friday" video on this exact topic, which pretty much covers everything and is much better explained than I could ever interpret it...so...here you go: https://moz.com/blog/rel-canonical

Have a nice weekend!

Hey Frank,

Long story short - it's never too late to hop on and compete unless you're going against something like Levi's. The thing is - at first you can target long-tailed keywords and rank really well for those, and earn a decent buck out of that until you can start growing your DA, backlinks, reputation, etc.

The way I see this - it's a question of..."will this domain get bigger at a faster rate than mine or not?". Per-se...if this domain gets 3-5-10 quality backlinks due to the quality of its content every day or two, then you probably shouldn't bother unless you have the team / skills / money needed to really come in with a bang and invest massively in your SEO.

If you think the content is average like you say - this might be worth a try.

Hope this helps

Hi Andreas,

Your advice is absolutely golden. Exactly what we thought! We're going to make sure to address this asap.

Thanks!

Hi guys,

We're running a software company which is also selling WP themes amongst other things. We've heard recently that footer backlinks like "Powered by BigBangThemes" might do more harm than good. Some clients usually forget to change them - so we want to make sure we stop including them in case this is true.

Thanks!

Dan,

Thanks for your time to address this question. Now it's all very clear. The problem wasn't that we don't want to invest time - but rather than there can be only so many ways in which you can present the same overall thing. It's clear now that there's no quick fire solution for this. Thank you for taking the time to address my question and help out.

Andy

HI Dan,

Thanks for the answer however it's still not very clear. What exactly do you mean by "beef up unique features"? To try and "rewrite" them in a different way for each different product? That may not be feasible with over 20 different products to present. So would there be any way of telling google that we "know" that's duplicate content and not be penalised for this?

Thanks for everything else - cleared things big time for us.

Hi guys,

We're planning on starting a Saas based service where we'll be selling different skins. Let's say WordPress themes, though it's not about that. Say we have an url called site.com/ and we would like to direct all seo juice to the mother landing page /best-wp-themes/ but then have that juice flow towards our additional pages:

/best-wp-themes/?id=Mozify
/best-wp-themes/?id=Fiximoz

/best-wp-themes/?id=Mozicom

Challenges:

1. our content would be formatted like this:
a. Same content - features

b. Same content - price

c. Different content - each theme will have its own set of features / design specs.

d. Same content - testimonials.

How would be go about not being penalised by SE's for the duplicate content, but still have the /?id=whatever pages be indexed with proper content?

2. How do we go about making sure SEO juice flows to the /?id pages too?Basically it's the same thing with different skins.

Thanks for the help!