duplicate content - ses london
DESCRIPTION
A look at common causes of duplicate content on websites and how to address them.TRANSCRIPT
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Identifying, Removing & Preventing Duplicate Content
@SamuelCrocker
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
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Introduction
• Personally responsible for delivery for enterprise level clients in travel, retail/ecommerce, restaurants, entertainment, etc.
• Dealt with some really large, really ugly sites suffering from a number of these issues
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Before we begin…
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Single Site Issues
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Old Architecture & Hoarders*
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker *The worst offenders
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The First Step is to Clean House
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Target Suspected Duplicate Content First
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Unknown Properties
Known Properties
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An Idealistic Approach*
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Step 1
Identify Duplicate
Content
*In my experience a short-midterm “fix” only makes these issues worse and more expensive in the LT
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Now The Most Critical Part…
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Step 1
Identify Duplicate
Content
Step 2
Create a sensible
I/A
http://www.slideshare.net/a4uexpo/successful-information-architecture-richard-baxter
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Followed by the Delivery Part…
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Step 3
Create mapping
and rewrite rules*
Step 1
Identify duplicate
Content
Step 2
Create a sensible
I/A
*You’re going to need a lot of time for this: which page currently ranks, which page converts better, etc.
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Process is Important
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Step 4
Create a process
and STICK TO IT*
*obviously processes need to evolve, but don’t forget how quickly this can get out of control (again)
Step 3
Create mapping
and rewrite rules
Step 1
Identify duplicate
Content
Step 2
Create a sensible
I/A
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That’s Cool Sam, But In The Real World We Have Budgets
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
“That’s true [client], but organic traffic already accounts for [x]% of your online revenue - and by my estimates, getting this problem sorted could save you [x]% in PPC spend, as well as £x per month in link building - and contribute an additional [£X] in revenue... It would also greatly improve usability” “Just out of curiosity, how much money did you spend on TV and Display last year?”
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“Legacy” & Other Orphan Pages
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Ask for a full DB dump?
Dig through server logs?
Ask for a proper XML sitemap
External Links?
Yes No
301 to most relevant page, update links as
possible Lower Priority
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PPC Landing Pages
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Rel = canonical (if actually duplicate)
NOINDEX, FOLLOW also possible if not
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Templated Solutions
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Why Are You Doing it?
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
PPC Landing Pages?
Possible.
Plausible.
Not really.
Debatable.
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Why Are You Doing it?
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
SEO Benefit?
*I’m not saying you can’t rank this way anymore, I’m just saying you have to work a lot harder and it’s not a great user experience
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What You Should Be Doing
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Focus on the high converting pages
Create (at a minimum) some unique content.
Focus on the high volume search queries
Create (at a minimum) some unique content.
And if you know you’re never going to have unique content
for some pages – noindex.
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Product Descriptions
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Product Descriptions – Big(ish) Budget
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Big Budget
•Hire loads of in-house copywriters •Outsource quality UNIQUE content •Email newsletters for reviews (UGC) •Incentives for reviews (UGC) •Video product reviews + transcripts
•For every product •Video Sitemaps
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Product Descriptions – Smaller Budgets
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Smaller Budget
•Fiverr •Interns •UGC •Listen to Ralph
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Problems from Sites You Don’t Control
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Catch & Stop Your Competitors Scraping Your Content
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Not Shady Options
1. Create a script to automatically set-up Google Alerts for the first couple sentences of everything you publish.
2. Snippet test your own content from time to time.
3. Use rel=canonical (if scraping entire source), infrequent.
4. Use rel=author on all internal links (can also be done in content) – makes more sense for bloggers.
5. Monitor server logs for traffic spikes and carefully block IPs
6. When all else fails, DMCA
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Dealing with Relatively Innocent Image Theft
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Oh look, link targets!
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Less Innocent Image Theft/Hotlinking?
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Mobile Sites
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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The Single URL SEO Camp
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Champions
“Mobile copies of websites seem to me to be more likely to cause duplicate content issues, technical challenges, waste engineering resources and draw away attention from real mobile opportunities than to earn slightly higher rankings in mobile searches.”
- Rand Fishkin, 2011
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The Mobile Site Camp
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Champions
“In my experience, duplicate content doesn’t apply to the mobile paradigm.”
- Bryson Meunier, 2012
Source: http://bit.ly/xwHmeW
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A Mobile Specific Experience is Preferable
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
• A mobile specific experience is *usually* preferable based on the data I have seen (conversions, rankings, keyword targeting, etc.).
Source: Morgan Stanley
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BUT, a Separate Mobile Site Should Serve a Purpose
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Local monthly searches (mobile) Local monthly searches (desktop)
Car hire 8100 90500
Car rental 4400 33100
Car hire is 2.73x more searched than car rental
Desktop
Car hire is 1.8x more searched than car rental
Mobile
Target both terms on homepage. Focus on car hire.
In which case duplicate content shouldn’t be an issue anyhow.
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You Can’t Ignore Mobile, But Use Resource Wisely
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
• If you can achieve a better experience using style sheets and do not have the resource or need to target mobile users differently (with your content and/or UX) then a single URL solution will make your life easier.
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Problems With International/Multi-lingual Domains
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Translation & Other Issues from International Domains
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Bigger Budget
•Localise – do not translate •Never machine translate •Be wary of your local market resources (check Wikipedia) •ccTLD’s for all markets (personal preference) •Be very careful with your Geotargeting settings in Webmaster tools •Unique servers/physical addreses (ideally) for each country
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Translation & Other Issues from International Domains
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Smaller Budget
•Manual human translation preferred, even if direct translation. •If you must auto-translate, block non-unique pages with Robots.txt •Make sure you try to adhere to one language per URL •Hreflang: use with caution.
•Perhaps most appropriate for GB and US situations.
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Problems from Controlling Multiple Similar Sites, in the same niche.
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Multiple Brands/Sites, Same Niche?
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Choose a brand voice and stick to it.
*It can be a hassle but tying this into everything you do can help ensure unique content.
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Multiple Brands/Sites, Same Niche?
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Only speak to one audience at a time
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Multiple Brands/Sites, Same Niche?
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Prioritise and go with what converts!
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Rapid Fire Survival Tips: Questions You Should Constantly be Asking
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Why does this property exist?
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Who are we trying to target?
When do we want to send users here?
What terms tie into that user journey?
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Why did we choose this page/focus?
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
Know your strategy Support it with
numbers.
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Why are we joining this new platform?
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
What about problems on existing sites?
What resource would this require?
Where will this content come from?
What benefit do we expect?
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Finally: Is it worth rocking the boat?
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker
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Image Credits • Dolly - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/8169817/Dolly-the-Sheep-reborn-as-four-new-clones-created.html
• Overwhelmed: http://comerecommended.com/blog/2011/09/13/dealing-with-feeling-overwhelmed-at-work/
• Single- http://www.davidwygant.com/blog/being-single-means-no-bitching-allowed/7280/
• Hoarding: http://coverlaydown.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/messy.jpg
• Clean Office: http://www.momoy.info/uploads/interior-design/June-09/syzygy-office-02.jpg
• Pandshake: http://www.genzel.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Stephen-Harper-best-pm-ever.jpg
• Two Camps: http://www.summarynewspaper.com/high-winds-hit-the-two-camps-on-mount-everest/1735.html
• Sumo: http://www.quicksprout.com/images/littlebig.jpg
• Scrapers: http://seomemes.com/post/6314149329/scrapers-gonna-scrape
• Graffiti: http://raymondpward.typepad.com/newlegalwriter/2009/08/graffiti.html
• Pick your battles: http://www.etsy.com/listing/62656583/pick-your-battles-red-8x10-screenprint
London | 20–24 Feb, 2012 | #seslondon
@SamuelCrocker