Question

Topic: SEO/SEM

Duplicate Content

Posted by AriRose on 3/17/2011 at 5:40 PM ET 125 Points
Quick question - we have a blog (www.cpehr.com/blog) and article directory on our website. Often, I will post the same post or article in both locations, since people will often navigate to only one or the other.

Is this best, or worst, practices? To do, or not to do?

Also, would the same (original) article posted to an article directory have a positive or negative impact either way?

Thank you.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Gail@PUBLISIDE on 3/17/2011 at 5:47 PM Member
    If the blog and article directory are on the same website, it would make little sense to post the same thing. I suggest to at least switch up the ledes and provide readers something fresh in each, should they visit both areas.
  • Posted by modza on 3/17/2011 at 5:49 PM Member
    Depends a bit on your objectives. If you're interested in making it easy for your existing readers/customers to find the content, it's fine to put the content where it's easiest for each group to find it. But from the SEO point of view, Google is not thrilled to see identical text in different places, and may penalize both sites. Similar is good; identical not so much. But that's only important if you're hoping to attract new people who happen to be using keyword searches.
  • Posted by excellira on 3/17/2011 at 6:51 PM Member
    Why not implement rel canonical https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139394
  • Posted on 3/18/2011 at 8:35 PM Accepted
    I fail to understand why the blog would be hidden at all, thus creating the duplicate issue/concern. Your website developer could've easily integrated the blog into the main website design, without changing the way the main design currently looks.

    Then you could use the blog post functionality to publish new posts (webinar, podcast, article, etc.), BUT you set up different page templates that pull in a specific category of posts. It's much more efficient and less confusing for the site administrator and the visitors.

    You can also embed 3-5 most recent blog post titles into your right hand sidebar to ensure that visitors can find them and get the sense that the website is frequently updates.

    Hope this is helpful.
    -Roland
  • Posted by excellira on 3/18/2011 at 8:45 PM Accepted
    I reread your post Ari and if the two sites are exactly alike I agree with Roland, there is little point in keeping both. If the the content is mostly different with occasional duplications then rel canonical will keep things straight.
  • Posted by AriRose on 3/21/2011 at 3:35 PM Author
    Thank you for the great replies. So it seems clear not to re-post my Blog entries as separate articles. So I have a follow up question -

    We have a Resources tab right off the home page, with Webinars, podcasts, and among other items - Articles. I feel it is important to keep the menu "Articles" there so visitors can see our industry expertise.

    Should I just link article titles to the corresponding blog post, or is that still redundant, and I lose nothing by simply removing the "Article" menu on the Resources page completely?
  • Posted by excellira on 3/21/2011 at 4:12 PM Member
    Provided the content is published on only one page, linking to a page on another domain/subdomain does not cause a duplicate content issue. However, you do run the risk of the user clicking away.

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