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Russ in Vancouver
12-03-2011, 03:21 PM
Hello everyone,

Is there a way to have the same content (duplicate mirror site) on more than one site without being penalized?
I am building a new website and own mysite.com and mysite.ca
My plan is to have them be identical, or would it be better to just have one auto forward to the other one?

Thanks in advance

vangogh
12-03-2011, 04:35 PM
You don't want to have 2 sites mirroring the same content. What you want to do is have both domains point to the same site.

Pick which domain you want to be the main domain and then set up the other domain as an addon domain. Say you choose the .com as the main site. You'd set up a hosting account for mysite.com and build the site on it like usual. You want to get a hosting account that allows for addon domains. Most hosting accounts should.

Both domains will need to point to the hosting account by using the same name severs that the web host tells you to use.

The hosting control panel should have something to add the addon domain, which is generally a matter of typing in the domain and telling the server where to point it to. In your case you'd want to point it to the root.

Russ in Vancouver
12-03-2011, 07:54 PM
Thanks VG :)

billbenson
12-03-2011, 10:00 PM
While I agree with VG, sometimes there is a valid reason to have dup or similar websites. Think of all the sites selling HP printers with the same description. The way I would handle that is put the content that's dup in an iframe and put unique content on the page.

vangogh
12-03-2011, 11:24 PM
If all the sites selling the same HP printers have the same content, same prices, same everything, then why do we need more than one of them? Sites can sell the same products and come up with new content. The only reason it doesn't happen is because the people behind the sites prefer to take the easy way out and use the same content the distributor provides for them.

In Russ' case he's one person and not competing sites. No reason to run duplicate sites to then create competition with himself. From a search engine perspective it never makes sense for them to show the exact same content more than once in their results. It's a poor experience for searchers.


The way I would handle that is put the content that's dup in an iframe and put unique content on the page.

If you have some unique content then you don't need to hide the duplicate parts inside an iframe. It's ok to have part of the content be the same as part of content of other pages. If you think of it on a scale where one side of the scale is two pages being 100% duplications of each other and the other side being 0% duplication across the pages, your goal is to get as close to the 0% side as realistically possible. That doesn't mean 10% duplication is bad. It means it's worse than 5% duplication and better than 20% duplication.

billbenson
12-04-2011, 01:07 AM
I was expanding this thread beyond Russ's example. In his case, unique content is possible. Actually, as you pointed out, it is always possible. But as I pointed out, its not always practical. How do you make a spec of a common product unique??

So, make the dup content disappear in an iframe and come up with unique content. Is that necessary, will it help, hurt, etc... No idea!

vangogh
12-05-2011, 11:34 AM
I don't think you have to make every word of duplicate content disappear though. It is ok to have some of the same words on multiple pages. The issue is how much of the page content is duplicated. Moving some parts of the page to an iframe just to hide duplicate content doesn't make sense.


How do you make a spec of a common product unique?

For starters you can rewrite the actual sentences. Add some words. Remove a few. Reorganize them where you can. They don't need to be copied word for word.

Mostly though, you do more than just have the spec on the page. Write a brief review of the product. Create a video showing it in use. Allow others to rate and review it. Describe how the product can best be used. Tell people where it might not work as well. There's lots of content you can create about a product that go beyond specs. Specs aren't going to help you sell the product either since everyone carrying that same product will have the same specs.

You see so many product pages that are only a list of manufacturer specs, because people don't want to take the time to do any of the above. Copying and pasting specs is much easier. The problem is since everyone can and does do the same you end up with several to many sites that are all just copies of each other.

I'm not suggesting creating the unique content is easy, but no one said developing a successful business was supposed to be easy.

Karry
09-18-2013, 02:57 AM
Good point vangogh.

LGCG
09-19-2013, 02:34 PM
Could it be bad if we a few pages had the same title tags? Or is that not enough to count as "duplicate content"?

vangogh
09-26-2013, 11:37 PM
You generally want to make your title tags unique. Titles should be describing the content and since the content should be different, there's no reason why the title shouldn't also be different.

Harold Mansfield
09-27-2013, 05:02 PM
You can come up with obscure reasoning for almost anything.

Duplicate content sites are a waste of time.
Built and optimize your site for the traffic that you want to attract and then market it to your target demographic. Period.
Building multiple sites across multiple domains was never a good idea, even 10 years ago when everyone was doing it.

You don't see any successful marketers doing that, so why do people still think it's a good idea?

Who, what or how you get traffic is going to depend on how you market and advertise, not how many duplicate sites you have.

The only way this MAY make any sense would be if the sites were translated into different languages for different markets.

vangogh
10-02-2013, 01:38 AM
All true. The duplicate content sites were ways for some to make quick money with AdSense usually. It's surprising Google didn't slap them down right away, but I guess Google was making big money through them too.