Same content but different title and meta info - might we be penalized?

Duplicate Content Question

[Bishop]

Would we get penalized for duplicate content if we had two articles on our site that were identical except for having different title tags and meta keyword/descriptions.

The reasoning is trying to target some of the other phrases within the content since it's generally believed it's best to target no more than three keywords or key phrases in the title and meta areas. Is this against the rules? Are we hurting ourselves doing this? What is a better way to achieve the same results.

Any guidance you could provide would be appreciated. Thanks!

-Bish

[texasville]

I wouldn't worry about using more keywords in the metas. I see top tens all the time with 10-20 keywords in their metas.
However duplicate content is just that. I believe that you will get penalized for dup content. I got hit just using paragraphs on a subindex page to key into the articles. They all went supplemental.

[tedster]

If you only do this for one page (well, two pages) on the entire site, it is unlikely that the entire domain would receive an actual penalty -- that's reserved for sites that are doing a lot of dupe content. But what usually happens is that only one page with that content can show anyway you slice it, and it may not the one you would prefer.

How about using different anchor text around the site, pointing to the particular page in two different ways? Perhaps create two different pages that contain different abstracts, each one emphasizing a different fact of the main article?

[oodlum]

What you are describing is akin to creating doorway pages, which are a definite no-no. If you want to target more keyphrases, write more articles.

[rjwmotor]

We run an ecommerce site that has several different styles in the same category. We used to use the same description on all pages within a category and changed only the titles, metas and style name(style 1,style2,etc..) It seems the pages will get indexed then picks one and sends most of the rest to the good old sup listings. We now TRY to write a somewhat unque description for each product which can be very cumbersome but is working to some degree.

As far as doorway pages, you still see them ranking in all SE's. I know of a site that did exactly what was suggested in the first post and these 4 doorway pages all rank for their targeted KW and have for about 2 yrs.

[annej]

The reasoning is trying to target some of the other phrases within the content since it's generally believed it's best to target no more than three keywords or key phrases in the title and meta areas.

Why not write a fresh article targeting the new key phrases? It could be simular to the other one. It wouldn't have to be long. That could take less time than it takes to follow this thread.