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Anyway, we have 2 auto sites, and produce our own content in the form of new car reviews. We have 2 sites, both slightly different (one performance orientated, one general consumer) and have reviews on each site. URLs are different (differenty server name), servers on different IP.
page structures are slightly different on each site as we have slightly different content management, so I assume google should spider and index them ok. All article text is untouched though. I just wanted to be sure!
Opinions? experiences?
Stay away from having exact duplicate content, as you run the risk of having one of the site's dropped. If the site's are different in topic, as one is consumer and one performance based, why not write content specifically for each?
Simply, the main reason we don't write specific cotent for each site is the extra cost involved. Content isnt cheap. Our content is high quality and therefore expensive to produce.
We are a strong and profitable business, operating a successful susbcription model (testament to conetnt quality).
We want to reduce cost, not increase it!
Unfortunately, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. Duplicate content, no matter how high
quality, can get you dropped. You may wish to consider very carefully which of the two sites you
want each of the articles to be visible to search engines on. Tell the search engine robots not to
index the article on the other site using robots exclusion. This will have to be managed carefully
to avoid mistakes.
If you want to save money, you should consider combining the sites into one, and simply having a
performance and general consumer section. Sharing the content between the two sections would then
be fine, since each resource would exist in only one (the only one) domain.
Jim
if the structure AROUND the articles is different, especially the titles and the headlines, the content of the articles should not be a reason for beeing dropped. the reason why i guess this way is this: there are major News-Feed sites out there, starting with CNN or the Linux oriented sites, which deliver news in form of RDF articles.
If duplicate content in form of a subset of information would mean to be dropped, a lot of Linux homepages would run a risky race.
But if you just exchange some colors and font styles... who knows.
Different titles, different headlines, different menu structure, different links around the articles should not bust you.
my 2 cents!
What is the policy about posting site URLs on here?
I can respond to emails/messages to show you the sites if you wish..
What you need to avoid completely is duplicate content, even if you have different "templates". The principle is why have the same content on two places on the Web? Google does not want to provide SERPs which link to the same content, though their URLS and titles make it look like they are very different. A small amount is fine, such as headlines, excerpts from articles etc, but it sounds like your duplicated content would be more expansive..
Both of our sites have different content, and serve different demographics. These reviews, in content, are relevant to each site adn each demographic. We have strong traffic to each site, and in response to an earlier idea to combine sites, this simply would not be economically or strategically smart. (see the sites in my profile).
I would love to have review in both sites, because of the google traffic in partuclar that would be generated.
You can put your URL in your user profile, and change it if you want to discuss a different site
later.
You're getting warnings here from some people (including me) who have been burned because they put
up duplicate content and their sites got dropped completely. Some of us (like me) did it
accidentally (through lack of expertise and/or technical foul-up), and some tried it to increase
exposure, but the end result was the same. If you want to try this, then please do it very
carefully and incrementally, all the time remembering that at some point the search engines may well
drop both sites, and then your traffic will drop a little or a lot, depending on which search engine
it is, and how you rated in that engine. It "would be nice" to be able to do what you seem to be
intent on finding a way to do, but the search engines do not like it and call it spam. You can try,
sure, but you are playing with fire here.
Search this site for "PR0" and "been banned" to hear the wails of the multitides who have gone
before...
So far the point above about news feeds is the only hope. If it is true that the news feeds are
actually served from the multiple sites mentioned, then changing the "framework" around the text may
be enough to prevent a disaster. But if those feeds are "live" from a common newsfeed server, then
that content does not in fact exist on multiple servers, and you're back to square one - you'll have to
do the same thing to make it work.
And also remember that the rules could change tomorrow...
Jim
Sites in my profile for those interested in having a peek.
Sorry to disappoint you: my advice will not be what you would rather read.
Your plan is a definitive no-no. For several reasons. I'll just name a few coming up my mind within a few seconds:
1. The negative image you are building up in the mind of you visitors. When somebody will search for 'Engine performance Porsche' for example, and your reviews are exactly the same in both sites, whatever the design and layout tricks you use, this searcher will see exactly the same phrases coming up duplicated in his search results. It will be clear immediatly that there is duplication. And believe me: this irritates all searchers. It also makes clear your company is using tricks, which is very negative and extremely difficult to make up for.
2. Google, or whatever search engine in the near future, will discover identical content. No trick will indefinitely mislead the search engines. The penalty will be severe for your sites, traffic and credibility. Rebuilding this up will cost you a lot in money and time.
3. The advice has been given above: make slightly different reviews, adapted to your targeted audience. Would that cost so much more? I can understand your cost concern, but you have to discount the cost of point 1 and 2 when you compare your options. Doing this, I am quite confident writing slightly different reviews is not much more expensive...
Whatever the tips and tricks you could use, all are meant to mislead search engines and your visitors. You know it, and the visitor will know it. Personally I have no respect nor trust in a company misleading me, whether it is first by misleading a search engine or not. I would not read nor go back to the site, and certainly not purchase from this company.
Be fair and your visitors will reward you. Even if the cost is a little higher. If you have a successful and profitable company and site, don't put it at risk. Really. It takes a long time to build up trust, traffic and credibility. It takes very little to destroy it.
I wish you the best!
Penalties aside, if you put the same content on two pages, people will link to both of them - the result is quite likely to be that you will rank 18th and 27th for searches on "Porsche engine performance" instead of ranking 6th!
We have different content management systems for each site. Each site serves a different purpose, and a different demographic. Very few visitors to one site will visit the other.
Articles are displayed differently on each site.
For example, reviews are broken up into 4 or 5 pages on one, and are displayed as 1 page on the other.
I assumed that with the proliferation of syndicated content on the net proves that we would not have a problem. In effect we are syndicating this content to another site. We are not trying 'tricks' or deception to get more traffic. We have a very valid use for the display of this content on both sites as both sites use completely different business models and kcikibng traffic off to one or the other would jeopardise our income.
I also do not expect the content to affect rankings negatively. Each content page on each site should rank differently, not only because of the other site content and links, but because inbound links from external sites will most likely come from different sites.
Have you looked at our sites Danny??
Cheers,
Huppy
But your sites are confusingly similar... I can easily imagine getting confused between the .com and .com.au versions (I quite often forget the .au or add it by mistake).
Both sites have very different layout!
The first in my profile has .com and other domains, all pointing to the same site.
The second is .com.au only.
Cheers, and thanks for yor comments guys.
Don't think we will be very worried about it!
If the two URLs were recognised by Google as being exact duplicates then you would likely have the better ranked one listed, and the other removed. The good news is that the one that remains in Google tends to get credited with the backlinks of both. That's a real bonus.
As the content on each page is not likely to be similar, I don't see a problem.
