Themes - Crosslinking vs. Duplicate Content.

Dilema?

[gethan]

I've read masses of fantastic info here, and am now producing/converting my latest site as a themed one. I have one (major?) dilema - the posts I have seen indicate that both crosslinking and duplicate content is bad .. which is worse and what should I do in this situation?

I've organised the site into two sections that get the pyramid approach. erm ... desperately trying to think of a generic example... books will do.

http*//url/Genres/ - lists all the genres
http*//url/Genres/Horror/ - lists all the horror books.
http*//url/Genres/Horror/the-hollow-man-id.html - details on a specific book.

now --

http*//url/Authors/ - lists all the authors
http*//url/Authors/Dan-Simmons/ - my favorite author atm - all his books.
http*//url/Authors/Dan-Simmons/the-hollow-man-id.html - yikes duplicate content !

What should I do - I currently have links from both

http*//url/Authors/Dan-Simmons/
http*//url/Genres/Horror/

to http*//url/viewbook.php?id=12 - option 1

option 2 - is the duplicate content as above.
option 3 - is to make the Horror category crosslink to Dan-Simmons/title-id.html.

What should I do? Are there any more options?

The site is dynamically generated so I don't really want to make individual 10% different content based on if its a Dan-Simmons vs. Horror link.

If anyone wants to see the real world example, profile, portfolio, first in list.

Thanks for any help, advice or suggestions :)

Gethan

[paynt]

Hi Gethan,

If it’s ok I think I’ll jump in here. You’ve used one of my buzzwords and I see no one has touched this yet.

Linking will draw some interest and different opinions, even for those of us who work with themes so expect varied ideas.

I couldn’t resist though because this deals with a very relevant and real world situation that may occur. Unfortunately we’re dealing with dynamic script and that in itself will create a unique set of problems in itself.

I’ll give you an idea of how I would link with a disclaimer that being it’s dynamic you’ll have to find a more technical wizard than me to make the suggestion work.

If I see the problem correctly you want to link

http*//url/Genres/Horror/the-hollow-man-id.html
to
http*//url/Authors/Dan-Simmons/the-hollow-man-id.html

and you are worried that the content is the same and you have a mirror so you wouldn’t want to link the two together. Is this correct?

If so there really shouldn’t be a problem here as these two pages would ideally NOT have identical content, if themed correctly (i.e. – in a pure form – or purer form). The reason is this.

Themes are created or emphasized in the order they are presented.

http*//url/Genres/Horror/the-hollow-man-id.html

Then is about Genres > Horror > the hallow man

And

http*//url/Authors/Dan-Simmons/the-hollow-man-id.html

is about authors > Dan Simmons > the hallow man

To understand the process of themes this point should be very clear. Our end may be the same but the means of getting there and the path are different so the content will really be different, or enough so that you will not have a mirror but rather two very similar topics that ideally would be linked together.

In other words the

Genres/Horror/the-hollow-man

Page is all about genres not authors in general or even specific. That is a totally different perspective that this line begins with. And this page is all about horror not specific to Dan Simmons. They of course are both about The Hallow Man but you see they cannot possibly in a purely themed world contain identical content nor should they.

Authors/Dan-Simmons/the-hollow-man

Of course then is all about authors, a very specific idea and theme, then specifically about Dan Simmons that is very different then horror in general because although Dan Simmons writes about horror he is NOT horror.

Does this make sense? If so then there should be no reason to not link the pages if the themes are themed purely and the pages are not nor would they be mirrors.

How you adapt that theory to dynamic script is beyond my ability so I leave that part to greater minds than mine. And this is just my two bit anyway :)

[gethan]

Thanks Paynt.

I think I understand what your suggesting - I should produce seperate content for

/Genres/Horror/the-hollow-man.html - emphasising the Horror aspects,

/Authors/Dan-Simmons/the-hollow-man.html - emphasising Dan Simmons.

With my site I only have one bit of gumph to use as the "review" text. Would it be enough to manipulate the titles, headers (H1's etc) to put the emphasis on the appropriate theme?

Eg.

/Genres/Horror/the-hollow-man.html

<title>The Hollow Man - Horror</title>
<h1>The Hollow Man</h1>
<h2>Horror</h2> # link to genres horror
by Dan Simmons
"review blurb"

/Authors/Dan-Simmons/the-hollow-man.html

<title>The Hollow Man - Dan Simmons</title>
<h1>The Hollow Man</h1>
<h2>by Dan simmons</h2> # link to author dan simmons
"review blurb"

I think this is going to be a little close to the duplicate content for the SE's. Is there anyway to avoid writing two lots of copy?

In my real site "Dan Simmons" would be writing the blurb (no not really:) someone not famous) and it isn't possible to get two different versions of this... especially not putting the emphasis on one aspect as opposed to the other.

[mivox]

So "Dan Simmons" is your reviewer, and hollow_man_whatever.html is the page upon which his review resides?

Why not make genre/horror/hollow_man.html a publisher's synopsis of the book's plot, with a "Click Here for Dan Simmons' review" linking it to the review blurb (authors/Dan_SImmons/hollow_man.html)...

Then on the review blurb page have a link for "Click Here for Story Synopsis" linking back to the genre/horror/hollow_man.html page?

[paynt]

With my site I only have one bit of gumph to use as the "review" text. Would it be enough to manipulate the titles, headers (H1's etc) to put the emphasis on the appropriate theme?

That is of course the first step but I suggest giving not only the search engines but the searchers relevant content related to the purpose of the page. You win with both in that situation.

Mivox has a terrific suggestion. I’d probably see if I could adapt my site to this excellent idea :)

I think this will take two bits of copy but you of course then get twice the bang not to mention the linking and promotional possibilities.

[gethan]

Thanks for the help Mivox and Paynt... I wish the publishers synopsis was an option for my site - thats where the comparisons stop - it was working so well till then ;)

(aside: mulling over doing a book review site :) - I read 2 novels a week.)

I think my best option is to write some additional copy myself for one of the sections and use the official description under one of the sections.

I hope both the SE's and punters like my efforts - and I've definetly learnt a lot from putting some theory into practice.

Cheers

Gethan

[paynt]

Good luck, If you'd like to sticky me with your url I can take a peek and perhaps give you a more specific suggestion based on your actual content.

Let us know how it all turns out for you though, at least.