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Short answer: Avoid it.

You want to avoid duplicating any kind of copy from one website to another as much as possible. If there's a need to do it (for instance, a blog post from the parent company could be useful to the audience of a smaller company) there's always the ability to use a canonical to identify the preferred (original) source in order to help Google identify which one should be given credit/indexed. Even with that, a canonical is simply a suggestion and not a definite order. Google can choose to ignore it if it wishes.

But in the instance of website copy that talks about a product or service where you want the ability for both pages to rank, I would invest the time in rewriting the content so it's specific to that website and avoid duplication as much as possible. As an example, the company that provides after-sales support has a definite point of differentiation. That could become a good chunk of the copy to help dilute it, along with rewriting the other parts of the copy as well. If you're trying to rank both websites for similar (or the same) keywords, you're going to end up forcing Google to make a choice between the two if a good chunk of the second website is just a replication of the first.

Investing the time in unique copy will be worth it. Hope this helps.

Hi there,

I do have a great recommendation for a company that handles content ideation, creation and management called Passion Fruit Creative Group. I'm unsure of the prices, since they really vary depending on the type of content and other needs, but I've personally worked with both of the co-founders in the past and they're excellent.

Here's a link to their website and contact form so you can check them out and get in touch:

http://passionfruitcreativegroup.com/contact/

I really wouldn't rule out individuals or shops that say they need 2-3 months to do the link audit, removal, and reconsideration. Even with successful cleanup, 2 months to start ranking again is an extremely short time period. I've worked on projects in the past (at a different company) where sometimes there were multiple cleanup attempts and reconsiderations that needed to be filed, and rankings started to climb back to where they were around the 7 or 8 month mark, but still weren't fully recovered to where they were pre-penalty. Penalty recovery is a very complicated and there are a lot of factors that go into it. Nothing is really guaranteed, so it's going to be very hard to find someone that's going to put in the footwork and effort only to possibly not be paid in the instance that they can't gain immediate success in your allotted time frame.

I suggest taking the time to find someone who really knows what they're doing, has a track record, but don't bind them to a specific time frame. Go with quality of work and expertise first. If the majority of your revenue is dependent on Google (which isn't a good thing to begin with) work on other ways to drive leads while cleanup and reconsideration is worked on.

Just my thought. Good luck.

Daniel,

I've worked on a few site migrations, and it does take some time for rankings to pick back up. One recent one that I worked on took about 3-4 weeks to get relatively close to where rankings were pre-migration. As long as you're positive you used 301 [permanent] page to page redirects and not 302s, the rankings should eventually get back to where they were.

If you tweaked any of the titles from what they were previously, that could also have something to do with it.

I would also hold off on creating a lot of geographical and genre landing pages that weren't there previously. Let Google have some time to crawl the site as it is without needing to constantly index more content. In the meantime, it may be worth working on getting some fresh links to the new site while the redirects/rankings fully take.

Give it some time. Good luck!

Short answer: Avoid it.

You want to avoid duplicating any kind of copy from one website to another as much as possible. If there's a need to do it (for instance, a blog post from the parent company could be useful to the audience of a smaller company) there's always the ability to use a canonical to identify the preferred (original) source in order to help Google identify which one should be given credit/indexed. Even with that, a canonical is simply a suggestion and not a definite order. Google can choose to ignore it if it wishes.

But in the instance of website copy that talks about a product or service where you want the ability for both pages to rank, I would invest the time in rewriting the content so it's specific to that website and avoid duplication as much as possible. As an example, the company that provides after-sales support has a definite point of differentiation. That could become a good chunk of the copy to help dilute it, along with rewriting the other parts of the copy as well. If you're trying to rank both websites for similar (or the same) keywords, you're going to end up forcing Google to make a choice between the two if a good chunk of the second website is just a replication of the first.

Investing the time in unique copy will be worth it. Hope this helps.

I really wouldn't rule out individuals or shops that say they need 2-3 months to do the link audit, removal, and reconsideration. Even with successful cleanup, 2 months to start ranking again is an extremely short time period. I've worked on projects in the past (at a different company) where sometimes there were multiple cleanup attempts and reconsiderations that needed to be filed, and rankings started to climb back to where they were around the 7 or 8 month mark, but still weren't fully recovered to where they were pre-penalty. Penalty recovery is a very complicated and there are a lot of factors that go into it. Nothing is really guaranteed, so it's going to be very hard to find someone that's going to put in the footwork and effort only to possibly not be paid in the instance that they can't gain immediate success in your allotted time frame.

I suggest taking the time to find someone who really knows what they're doing, has a track record, but don't bind them to a specific time frame. Go with quality of work and expertise first. If the majority of your revenue is dependent on Google (which isn't a good thing to begin with) work on other ways to drive leads while cleanup and reconsideration is worked on.

Just my thought. Good luck.

Hi there,

I do have a great recommendation for a company that handles content ideation, creation and management called Passion Fruit Creative Group. I'm unsure of the prices, since they really vary depending on the type of content and other needs, but I've personally worked with both of the co-founders in the past and they're excellent.

Here's a link to their website and contact form so you can check them out and get in touch:

http://passionfruitcreativegroup.com/contact/

Daniel,

I've worked on a few site migrations, and it does take some time for rankings to pick back up. One recent one that I worked on took about 3-4 weeks to get relatively close to where rankings were pre-migration. As long as you're positive you used 301 [permanent] page to page redirects and not 302s, the rankings should eventually get back to where they were.

If you tweaked any of the titles from what they were previously, that could also have something to do with it.

I would also hold off on creating a lot of geographical and genre landing pages that weren't there previously. Let Google have some time to crawl the site as it is without needing to constantly index more content. In the meantime, it may be worth working on getting some fresh links to the new site while the redirects/rankings fully take.

Give it some time. Good luck!