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I have to agree with Linda: Option 2 is your best option by far. Not only do you not continually have to manage, maintain, and remove/add these pages all the time, but they'll retain their link-juice and SEO properties.

However, I would disagree that this would require a lot of work as far as coding is concerned - even if there are thousands of pages. All you need to do is have each search page set to show set groups/images/products when results=0. Depending on how your site is coded, it could be very simple, or at least fairly easy to do.

You'll have to be a lot more specific. Try answering at least some of these questions so we can help you:

1. What content is being duplicated?
2. Where are the duplicates?
3. Is this all internal (on your site only)?
4. Are you receiving any duplicate content warnings from Moz, Google, etc.?
5. In what way does it "keep[s] growing?"
6. What kind of content is this?

Once you provide answers to some of these questions, I'm sure we'll be able to help you fix the issue.

Definitely. It's important to always keep track of the criteria for any project - no matter how simple it may be. Just make sure that whenever you update or change the structure of your site(s), that you update the excel as well.

I would also recommend you take this transitional period to commit an audit of your site, structure, keywords, titles, metadescriptions, etc. Not only will that help you measure the differences in traffic and conversions between the old site and new, it may expose weaknesses in your site that you can improve.

Good luck!

Ah, I misunderstood what you were saying. But yes, that's correct. You can, however, build up a certain degree of reputability as long as your base domain has a history of reputable behavior and ranking - but I wouldn't advise making this a regular method for your site.

Hi Ikkie,

If you mean a companion site, then I would say it depends on what content you plan to host on it and how that content will not only differ from your main site, but how it'll add to it.

If you mean a campaign site, then I'd say so long as the campaign is strong and you're doing a lot with social media to promote it, then I can't see it being a bad idea.

I hope that helps, and if not, please provide more details so we can help you out as best as possible.

Hi again Catinas,

I would say that, ultimately, worry less about SEO and more about what's best for visitors/customers. Especially because Google tends to think like a potential customer, so if you stick with that in mind, you should be OK.

That being said, as a gamer myself, I think the best method would be to keep your content dynamic. Also, is the article you mention actually useful for customers, or is it really only for SEO purposes? Because Google's becoming more and more savvy with its algorithms, and you may want to rethink that particular strategy. Good luck!

If by "switch around daily" you mean you'll be using the same 10 items, but changing the order in which they appear, I wouldn't worry all that much about the SEO effect of it.

If you mean that you'll be changing the 10 products that show, my concern would be less with SEO and more with UX. If I come to a website and see Items A-J are the "top 10", seeing items K-T as the "top 10" the next day or any other time would lead me to believe that "top" doesn't actually mean anything.

Often, pages on a website will have different means by which they're reached. As an example, the logo on a website's top-left often links to the homepage, but the link (initially) would be something like: websitename.com/ref=logo or something to that effect. This is the same sort of issue as websitename.com/ and websitename.com/home being the same page. What's recommended in these instances is to create a 301 redirect for every duplicate page, to the base. Meaning, you would redirect websitename.com/home to websitename.com/, which tells search engines like Google that the prior should be replaced in search and in access to the latter.

This may help you find other duplicates that you have by searching **site:websitename.com **in Google (all one word, no spaces). This shows you every page on a website and can help you keep track of what pages you need to take care of.

If I understood what you're saying, it seems as though you may have mistaken page title and URL for the same thing. You can alter a page title without affecting the URL and vice versa. For example, in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), the blue text shown for each result is the page title, while the URL is in green text.

Now, with that said, page titles shouldn't exceed about 150 characters. This is because after this point, the title will be truncated and the entire title will, therefore, not be shown (only part of it will).

Regarding switching the URLs back to their originals, I'd recommend simply changing them back to what they were rather than redirecting them. Either way, it sounds like this whole endeavor has hurt your SEO, and either method may have implications. When you do this, any URL that is not hardcoded should be fixed by WordPress automatically. What this means is, while links populated internally (ex: in menus, navigation, footer)  should be changed by WordPress without you having to do anything - though I'd strongly suggest you double-check these manually. However, the hardcoded links (ex: links in body text, images, some widgets) might not be resolved by WordPress automatically. These you will probably need to tend to on your own. Meaning, if in the second paragraph of blog article A, you link to blog article B: you'll probably need to edit the page for blog article A and replace the old URL with the new.

If you need any clarifications or further help, please ask! And sorry if I mistook anything you'd said.

I think that's fine - typically, the more specific the content of a page, the more specific (longer) a URL should be to it. I think that's a fine way of doing it, though if you want to compromise length and specificity, you could always remove the "region" section and use sector/city/business-name.

Another option would be to add 301 redirects and **rewrites **so that while the actual URL will be as long, the way it looks is shorter. That might be an option to consider if you're concerned with the aesthetic and not the functionality.

Hope that helps!

So long as you set your 301 redirect up correctly, it's not an issue. A 301 tells Google that Page-A should permanently direct to Page-B. Because this is often done to replace or update a page, Google and others will know that the similarity / duplicitous nature of the pages is likely due to that very same thing.

I'd de-index them, since it's not only likely duplicate content, but it's also content you didn't create. I suggest erring on the side of caution.

I don't think this is something you should take any speculation about. I suggest doing concurrent A/B testing for these terms; meaning, you should optimize the page for Keyword A for a month or so and record the data, and the next month, optimize it for Keyword B to compare your KPIs. That way, you have hard data backing whatever decision you make.

If, however, you don't want to do any A/B testing, or have time constraints, (and I can't stress enough that this advice should only be taken under those conditions) choose the higher-volume keyword as your primary and the lower as your secondary keyword. Optimize, and leave it for a bit. After a while, tweak things more toward the lower and, if your KPIs improve, tweak again. If your key data points get worse, however, then it's fair to assume that the higher-volume keyword is better for your traffic and such.

Hi there Astute Media,

Unfortunately, what you have here is the definition of duplicate content. The body text of the page is exactly the same on both pages. Even though your titles are different (and even then, not by much), Google sees that the body text is exactly the same.

It doesn't help that the page has 2 short paragraphs of text, either. These two things are big red flags to Google that a website is spam - but there are ways you can fix this.

My suggestion would be to write something specific to each page. Meaning, the second page is for a hotel rather than the resort - maybe add information about the hotel, or what general complaints have been filed. Another option would be to have 1 page with the information in your body text, and have links to pages that go to the specific resort/hotel/etc. This would require a redesign of your site's navigation, so you may wish to go with the prior rather than the latter.

Either way, I can tell you that you DO need to do something to fix the duplication. Good luck!

When it comes to NAP, it should be as close to an exact match as you're able to achieve. Inconsistency in this area - while not the biggest detriment you can have - should be avoided.

That depends on the UX and UI. If it makes sense that someone looking at one support document may be interested in others, or other support-related content in general, I would absolutely go with Option 3. However, if the product support pages are absolutely meant to only be related to the specific product, then Option 1 or 2 (which sound like they're the same thing) would be fruitful.

I, myself, would go with Option 3 without question. But it really depends on your navigation and such.

Anchor text and other link-related text will definitely count toward keywords and overall in content, as it's an item on the page. As to whether or not these would push your page toward being seen as stuffed, depends wholly on three things:

1. Is the rest of your content heavy with that keyword?
2. Do the pages to which they link have content that isn't absolutely related to the topic suggested in the anchor text?
3. Are there a lot of links with anchor text like this?

If the answer to any of these questions is "yes", then you may want to reconsider things a touch. The short answer is, yes, the anchor text for links is counted as part of the content of a page, and therefore will effect all aspects to which content can be hinged.

I'd place them in the resource center. Pumping the SEO of product pages is great, but being a resource of information is both good for SEO and great for customer retention / growth. Furthermore, if you or a customer were to send someone the link, having it on a product page may seem more aggressive. Sometimes it's better to gain a lot of people churning in your sales funnel than it is to gain a few new sales.

I'd recommend you do neither.

If you set them to no-index, these issues won't matter, but you won't have lost the pages and whatever value they pose. Plus, it's generally good to keep any pages that aren't of their own accord, detrimental.

However, if you'd rather not do this, I'd look more favorably on removing them than fixing each one. That's a lot of work for very little reward - most likely, at least. Really, the answer depends on how much time you have and how fixing them would weight against the benefit(s) of doing other things.

While it won't necessarily have SEO implications, I'd suggest steering away from duplicate headings, if only because it can be redundant for anyone consuming your content. It could be argued that, this sort of duplication could reduce your ability to diversify your keyword usage.