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I'd take duplicate content over thin content.  There are tons of eCommerce sites out there with duplicate product descriptions.  I don't think that Google is going to penalize you, per se, they just might not include your pages in the search results in favor of whatever site they think is the originator of the content.

The reason I think duplicate content is better is users.  Either way your search traffic is probably not going to be too great.  With duplicate, the SE's may ignore your pages and with thin content you haven't given them a reason to rank you.  But at least with some real content on the pages you may be be able to convert the visitors you do get.

That said, I like Egol's suggestion.  Don't write new product descriptions yourself.  Hire a bunch of people to do it so they can crank out the new content real quick.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

I wouldn't sweat the drop in the rankings with Google.  It's a new site.  There's usually a little movement that can happen, especially with exact match domains.  Just work to build the site up through quality content and maybe trying to get some links from relevant industry related sites (i.e. sites that list places that offer NABCEP training, industry blogs or online magazines, etc).  I don't recommend much intentional link building any more, but there are usually some industry sites which make sense to try to get linked from.

Do the above and do a great job with the training you offer and your site will get the rankings.

Also, don't become a slave to the keyword density percentage.  Write for your audience.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Great response Tom!

Are they two truly different stores, as in two different companies?  If so, a redirect would seem odd to users.  If they are shopping on one site, they would expect the products listed on the site to be sold there and when they click on a link to a product they expect to stay on that site.  Breaking those expectations by listing products that that site doesn't offer and/or redirecting people to a different site would be confusing and possibly cause them to leave.

I like Schwaab's alternative suggestion.  At first put a message on the product pages indicating that the product is no longer available through that site, but that the product can be purchased on your sister site.  After while, for the sake of visitor usability/experience, I would still remove the product pages (and internal links to them) entirely from the one site that does not offer the products anymore.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Heather,

I'm confused as to what the duplicate content is.  The three Dallas pages you mentioned have different content.  Sure there's a decent amount that's the same from the site-wide content (nav menus, etc.), but each has different text and information about different locations that are available.  How is it duplicate?

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

The example page you provided has a good amount of content before the blog snippets.  I think from an SEO standpoint this format would be fine.  Just optimize the unique text at the top and choose related blog posts for the snippets.  I wouldn't have more than 3 or 4 blog post snippets at the bottom just because I think it will start to look messy for users.

I also like ReferralCandy's response.

Hi Antoine,

Since this is a really big project, you may want to consider outsourcing it.  The biggest part of the project is creating a database (or spreadsheet) of all the old page URLs and their new corresponding page URLs.  That work doesn't require much skill.  So, you may be able to save tons of time hiring a contractor through odesk (or some other site) and it wouldn't have to cost a lot.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

While I haven't tested this, I haven't heard that you can't have schema and authorship on the same page.  Google has been pushing people to do both.  So, I can't imagine that they would do something like that.  As for authorship and publishership, they are two sides of the same coin and both are supposed to be used, though I think publisher is supposed to be used on the homepage.  Even still, I seriously doubt that using one would block the other.

It's quite possible that the changes to the link structure affected the way PageRank is flowing through the site and thus the authority of pages.  It's also possible that changes in Google (like the Penguin 2 update, the EMD update, and others) have affected the PageRank of both pages and the entire site and that those effects just happen to coincide with the website move.

Without a detailed investigation into the site, I can't really say what may have caused the problem and, even with a detailed investigation, it may not be possible to figure it out at this point.  It may be better to simply evaluate the site as it is now.  Look for ways you can improve the on-page optimization and internal link structure first.  Then work on creating great content, connecting with others, and building up the authority of the site.

Kurt

PS - The other thing to keep in mind is that the Google Toolbar PageRank isn't reliable at all.  Even Matt Cutts has said not to pay much attention to it.  I would focus more on traffic and rankings than the Toolbar PR.

Looks good.

I agree with Vadim.  There's constant fluctuation in the authorship and the schema stuff.  Google's still trying to figure all that out.  The only manual potentially manual action I've seen Google take related to authorship is if the author's image isn't a faceshot.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Lesley,

That sounds fine.  I was thinking of these general site search pages I keep coming across, where someone stuck Google site search or something onto their site and then Google returns one of those pages.  Often times there's nothing even relevant in the search.  The big thing for me is that I want to find what I was looking for when I click through a search result.  I don' want to find another search results page.  That said, if the results page is a list of products that I'm searching for, then I've found what I'm looking for.

Based on your last description, it sounds fine to me and I don't think it would be considered poor quality.  It's basically just a category page and I always recommend to ecommerce clients that they optimize their category pages.

Sounds good.

Kurt

Chris,

With the switch to the new URLs was there also a change in the navigation menus and internal linking structure?

Kurt

Were the 301 redirects setup for every page (i.e. every page redirects it's old URL specifically to it's new URL) or did you do a blanket redirect (i.e. all pages redirect to the homepage or some category pages)?

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

It's hard to know how Google will respond, but I can tell you that I find search results pages in the search results all the time.  Personally, I can't stand it.

The two factors that I think will play into whether Google does something about this is:

1. Will they think these pages are poor results?
2. Will search results pages in Google results become a widespread enough issue that they take the time to deal with it?

I guess one more question to ask would be whether, if they do address it, whether they would penalize sites or just remove the pages from the search results.

My guess is that they probably would find most of these pages to be poor quality results.  I don't know if they'll get around to doing anything about it, but if they did, I think they would just remove the pages from the results, not penalize people.

That's my $0.02.

Personally, I hope this doesn't become widespread because I really don't like site search pages in the Google results.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

It could be personalization.  I've also seen that Google is experimenting with new card-style layouts just like this.  When Google does layout/formatting experiments, people will often see varied results.  It's the nature of a A/B type test.  Because you have two sessions (your using two browsers), you may see two different layouts.  I think you may have just stumbled across Google's experiment.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

[Quote]Ahh, I read it as ..."then 301 redirect to the old URL."[/Quote]

Hah!  I did the same thing first.  Then I had to rewrite my response.

Chris, the 301 redirect from the old page would transfer most of the link authority the old page has, redirecting any links to the old page to the new page.  So, it's not like having a completely new page with no links.  That said, you are right that having the keyword in the URL is losing value.  So, it's probably not worth it, though I don't know that it would hurt to do it.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

Ah, thank you for the clarification.

In that case, here are somethings you do:

• Review the on-page SEO of the articles and see if they are fully optimized for the keywords.  If not, then optimize the pages, but try not to fall into the trap of over-optimizing.
• Update the articles and republish them.  Freshness can affect rankings.
• Create a new version of the article and publish that.  I'm not talking about spinning, but rather if it's been a while since the article was written and perhaps there are some new things that could be added or old things that should be removed, you could create a new version.  In fact, in some situations, you may have articles that can be redone every year.
• Try to build some links to the articles.
• Share the articles on social networks and with bloggers in your niche who  might find the articles interesting and useful.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com

I agree with Devanur, that you should wait if the change just happened.  Rankings are constantly fluctuating and are especially volatile after an update.  It's always good to let the dust settle a bit.

That said, if you find that your rankings continue to stay down (or it's already been a couple weeks) then you'll need to investigate the cause.  I wouldn't just assume the issue is with Penguin.  Start by checking to see if you've received any notifications of a violation of guidelines.  If not, check to see if there is a correlation between when your rankings dropped and any particular known Google update. If so, proceed with the appropriate means of addressing the issues related to that particular update.  If there is no obvious corresponding update, then analyze your site and it's link profile and check to see if there are any glaring issues either in the structure/functionality of the site or issues with the content or link profile of the site.  Start by addressing the obvious issues and then continue to do your best to continue to improve the site's content and authority.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but figuring out what caused a site to lose rankings is something that usually takes detailed investigation of the specific site and situation.

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com