4 Same pages..questions

[sardardolebole]

Hey guys...i just have a really quick question...i have duplicated 4 of my index pages...so now i have in a total of 5 pages...but they all have the same nformation.i.e. ..the pages are exactly the same...could u please tell me if this is okay to do..and google doesnt punish this...plezse let me know asap..as i dont want google to ban my site for doing this.. thanx in advance.

[jimbeetle]

Hi sardardolebole,

The question might be why do you need five duplicate pages? If absolutley necessary and maybe to be on the safe side, you might consider putting meta robots noindex tags on all but one of them.

Here's a very recent thread on the same subject:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Note that there are a lot of different opinions.

Jim

[mivox]

Yeah, that would be my question... why duplicate the pages in the first place?

[sardardolebole]

ok this is why...i have 5 different keywords that i want to highlight on..so one page for each...

[mivox]

If the pages are identical, they're not doing a very good job of highlighting a different keyword on each page...

Why not make a page of unique content for each keyword? That would do a much better job of highlighting each term separately (and then you wouldn't have to worry about Google, and would stand a better chance of attracting a wider variety of traffic as well).

[edited by: mivox at 7:40 pm (utc) on Dec. 26, 2002]

[sardardolebole]

actually i wansnt clear enough..sorry...i have these 5 pages...i have used the same layout and everything..the only thing i have changed in them is a bit of the content..the tile, metas, a little bit of content in the body..adn thats all....so, i dont konw if this would be called duplication or not

[jimbeetle]

sardardolebole,

I think this is where people might get into trouble with duplicate pages. When "doorway pages" were the buzzwords a few years back people filled up their sites with many, many "almost the same" pages, just tweaking title, description, keywords, etc.

The search engines took a pretty dim view of it. It's more recommended now that if you want to target slightly different keyword phrases that you make pages with different content.

Jim

[Terry_Plank]

If it was a real estate site, you could be fine with having just the keywords of "(city) real estate" changed on 5 different pages that are almost the same, since the content might be just about the different cities. But, in principle, I think it's good to get into the habit of spending the time to write good copy that has variety and emphasizes keyphrases that will please both search engines and visitors.

[sardardolebole]

ok..then i guess ..the solution would be to change the site content..but now there is another problem..my site has very little text...most of the space is just images..however i have used different alt texts for the 5 websites...woudl this be enough..if not then what can i do...

[mivox]

if not then what can i do...

Develop more content for your site.

[sardardolebole]

okay guys...i will try to alter the content or something..thanx for everybody's help..i really appreicate it..

[sardardolebole]

and a happy new year

[mivox]

:) Best of luck in the new year to you!