Forum Moderators: not2easy
Also, to take it one step further, what if I created content for "light blue widgets" and used the same content as "blue widgets"? Or for geo searches, "city1 blue widgets" using the same content as "city2 blue widgets?"
As you can see I'm quite confused. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Problem is still Google's filters, though. Maybe someone can post here with a general rule of thumb-- how much duplicated content is too much?
But perhaps you might have something when it comes to repeating things when one page is optimized for one city, one for another. You could probably reuse much of your content and your users, if they visited both pages which would be unlikely, would probably understand. But again, duplicate content filters-- at the very least, rewrite the content so it's not perfectly identical in any significant amount.
I still, as a copywriter, would be happier the more unique content there was, and the more of an effort you made to make each page different. But I can see how there are time and attention-span constraints in operation...
For SE related purposes, you can have pages on the histories of all three, but just rewrite it to be unique. Write the history of redwidgets first, then three days later, write the history of bluewidgets, writing ONLY from memory. Do not even look at the redwidgets for inspiration. The end result *should* be something different enough that it won't get hit with the duplicate penalty. Then, three days later, write the history of the greenwidgets.
On that same note, if you have multiple pages that you want to do for each color, write all the red ones one day, then do all the blue three days later, etc. And simply write the a few keywords for reference of each one (ie. widget history, why people choose red, red is most popular for..., etc.)
Once you get the hang of rewriting, you should be able to do it on the fly, writing with enough differences that you won't get caught out. But until you reach that point as a copy writer, the above should work ;)
Usabilty is throwing a monkey wrench in my plans, and, after some thought on this end, I may have found a way to narrow my question a bit more.
Let's say I'm focusing on two very specific search terms that are, in a sense, the same thing (blue widgets and blue thingamabobs). Since I don't think I'll be able to rank highly on both terms with one page, I'm thinking of creating two pages, one for each term.
Question is, (not thinking of usability at this point) will I get penalized by Google or other engines by having two pages of similar content? Or, will I stand a better chance of getting two highly ranked pages (one for each search term).
Hopefully someone else will chime in as others have got to be facing the same issues with searches getting more and more targeted.
Jenstar's idea is pretty good. I've done that before-- wrote something, didn't like it, put it away, wrote the same thing from scratch later, and came up with wildly different ways of saying the same thing. I've found that to work well for the kind of writer's block where you know what you have to say but don't know how to say it. I actually have found that writing the rough draft by hand helps because then I have to transcribe it and can do a lot of editing while transcribing.
I hadn't thought of the side effect of that helping with the Google duplicate content penalty.
If you take it a little further, you do end up with unique content for the two pages. Making it slightly different enough that a user wouldn't think his time was being wasted for reading both would be a worthwhile little extra something.
