Fascinating Technical SEO Question & Solution

Open to hearing any others advice here:

I've got a new client whos website has a shit ton of powerful backlinks, but very bad rankings. Upon investigation, i discovered the problem: 75% of their website is duplicate content.

Basically, their site is a community/glorified message board, but instead of crappy looking message board threads, they are souped up to look like pretty blog posts, with images and fancy headers. Sounds good right? Problem is, each user submitted post is basically a repost of their own content from their own individual blogs, so this website has about 10,000 blog posts, 70% of which are copy/paste from each of these users' own blogs. (Users are doing this to build backlinks and also get referral traffic from my client site to users blogs. It's a win-win for both sides).

My job as SEO manager is to increase traffic thru rankings. The ranking opportunity lies in the homepage and main category pages, all of which don't really rank at the moment, and i suspect its bc of the duplicate content.

I believe that the solution is to canonical each of the blog posts on my client site (only duplicate content posts). However, it's quite tricky to propose to management, bc approximately 50% of their organic traffic actually comes from these duplicate content posts. So if we canonicaled at scale, we'd take a big organic hit. But my strong suspicion is that after a few days/weeks, the homepage and category pages (targeting some big ass keywords) will begin to rise in rankings, once we remove all of the duplicate content.

Curious if people have seen similar things with other sites.

Thanks

If half the traffic comes from those duplicate posts, removing them would massacre that site. Also, I would think over whether they are really an issue if they are bringing in traffic.

Sounds dangerous, I wouldn't do that. Duplicate content shouldn't affect the whole website that badly. What is the competition like, do they have strong backlinks too?

You can try to improve the content on the home and category pages. Are they already well optimized?

See if there's a way to encourage users to add a bit of unique content when they post an entry.

Sounds more like on-page seo or inter-linking is an issue.

I'd be working on the cat pages first - make sure they are well linked to from inside the site - so they are getting power from any external backlinks, make sure they are well optimised (not over optimised) check their backlink profile, anchors etc.

And check out the competition in terms of content, on-page, offpage etc.

Work specifically on the worst areas first and any improvement will be noticeable, rather than trying to change areas that are already performing well - as @Nargil said that's (potentially) a recipe for disaster.

Technically for Google that would be the right thing to do, but as said above would kill a substantial amount of organic traffic you won't ever get back.

Are these posts self-referencing back to themselves - The post xxx originally appeared on yyy.com

That may be a non invasive way of informing Google that the post is acknowledging the source - but a lot of work if not already there!

bathead said:

Are these posts self-referencing back to themselves - The post xxx originally appeared on yyy.com

That may be a non invasive way of informing Google that the post is acknowledging the source - but a lot of work if not already there!

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That's a good point actually.

davids355 said:

Sounds more like on-page seo or inter-linking is an issue.

I'd be working on the cat pages first - make sure they are well linked to from inside the site - so they are getting power from any external backlinks, make sure they are well optimised (not over optimised) check their backlink profile, anchors etc.

And check out the competition in terms of content, on-page, offpage etc.

Work specifically on the worst areas first and any improvement will be noticeable, rather than trying to change areas that are already performing well - as @Nargil said that's (potentially) a recipe for disaster.

Click to expand...

I mostly agree. there is a bit of optimization to do before i take any drastic measures like canonicaling

PlofAtayuga said:

Sounds dangerous, I wouldn't do that. Duplicate content shouldn't affect the whole website that badly. What is the competition like, do they have strong backlinks too?

You can try to improve the content on the home and category pages. Are they already well optimized?

See if there's a way to encourage users to add a bit of unique content when they post an entry.

Click to expand...

very strong backlinks. homepage already optimized fully. but cat pages hardly optimized, which is my first order of business. re: your last point, ive considered that, just a bit tricky

Nargil said:

If half the traffic comes from those duplicate posts, removing them would massacre that site. Also, I would think over whether they are really an issue if they are bringing in traffic.

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logically i agree, but can you deduce that just bc a page ranks organically with duplicate content means google is okay with it and therefore not hurting the site?

logically i agree, but can you deduce that just bc a page ranks organically with duplicate content means google is okay with it and therefore not hurting the site?

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If this was an issue, the duplicate content would not even be indexed or completely gone from Serps. Even if it hurts the site, killing majority of the traffic by removing it is suicidal.

It depends from your goal... Do you want more traffic or more sales/conversions?

I reduced a 8000 page website to a 100 page website this year. I basicly deleted all the duplicate content and redirected all the deleted urls to the homepage. The overal traffic dropped with 80% but the rankings of my moneypages improved (not immediately, after a couple of months when google indexed all the changes, it takes time).

You don't need the traffic imo if it isn't converting.

But if I was in your shoes... I would discuss "a strategy of choice" with the management first

there is no guarantee that you will later rank for the "big ass" keywords, as the competition might be stronger. there are many factors to taker into account here. personally i would keep it since it brings traffic and just work on-page to target the bigger keywords you are after.

slightly off topic: this forum is too funny. if someone asks a question like that in the blackhat section nowdays, the replies would be "its the dublicate content thats the problem, remove it yes, replace it with original content, you risk being deindexed, you can't rank with duplicate content" ..now you ask the question in the whitehat section and you get "duplicate content doesn't hurt, keep it" nobody bitching about how bad duplicate content is and that its 2017 and we only need unique high quality manually written content blah blah blah <add more nonsense here> to rank. so pro tip for people who just start out: apparently if you look for help with blackhat seo on BHW just ask it in the whitehat section

I would not touch the website if it makes money you/the company is counting on. Changing it always involves a risk. If you/the company can afford to lose it in order to make more money go ahead and aim for the stars!

itz_styx said:

there is no guarantee that you will later rank for the "big ass" keywords, as the competition might be stronger. there are many factors to taker into account here. personally i would keep it since it brings traffic and just work on-page to target the bigger keywords you are after.

slightly off topic: this forum is too funny. if someone asks a question like that in the blackhat section nowdays, the replies would be "its the dublicate content thats the problem, remove it yes, replace it with original content, you risk being deindexed, you can't rank with duplicate content" ..now you ask the question in the whitehat section and you get "duplicate content doesn't hurt, keep it" nobody bitching about how bad duplicate content is and that its 2017 and we only need unique high quality manually written content blah blah blah <add more nonsense here> to rank. so pro tip for people who just start out: apparently if you look for help with blackhat seo on BHW just ask it in the whitehat section

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Well if he came with this prior to making a site, I would advise against doing it like this, but there's a golden rule which overrules everything and that is - If it makes money, don't touch it.

or "never change a running system" ..yes but still kinda contradicting view ..so "duplicate content is bad don't even try, but if it makes money do it". so derp..why not just do it in first place if it works ?
anyways nevermind i don't want to hijack the thread

itz_styx said:

or "never change a running system" ..yes but still kinda contradicting view ..so "duplicate content is bad don't even try, but if it makes money do it". so derp..why not just do it in first place if it works ?
anyways nevermind i don't want to hijack the thread

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Well this is not entirely duplicate, but the site got lucky. It's a forum and some kind of a social platform, if it were a normal site, who knows. I would never plan a site with this in mind, no need to take risks before I even start. Plus, the fact that it's getting traffic doesn't mean it's holding the site a bit underwater. I guess we won't figure that out without risking the traffic in this case.

its not necessarily "luck", just think of linux MAN page mirrors, thats my favorite example. there are hundreds of domains mirroring them and all have 1:1 the same text and still rank and get indexed. google themselfs say that about 25% of the whole www is duplicate content and thats ok. there is so much misconception in the SEO world about content, so yes if you copy a site 1:1 then its bad, but otherwise it usually isn't a problem. the worst that can happen is that google doesn't index that page on your site, but it won't harm your site or get it deindexed. that being said if its indexed and drives traffic its perfectly fine otherwise google wouldn't index it at all.

itz_styx said:

its not necessarily "luck", just think of linux MAN page mirrors, thats my favorite example. there are hundreds of domains mirroring them and all have 1:1 the same text and still rank and get indexed. google themselfs say that about 25% of the whole www is duplicate content and thats ok. there is so much misconception in the SEO world about content, so yes if you copy a site 1:1 then its bad, but otherwise it usually isn't a problem. the worst that can happen is that google doesn't index that page on your site, but it won't harm your site or get it deindexed. that being said if its indexed and drives traffic its perfectly fine otherwise google wouldn't index it at all.

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Yep, that's what I believe personally as well. You either get indexed or you don't. I have never seen a duplicate content penalty myself to be honest. Feels like some mythical creature at this point.

indeed never had that either. well matt cutts already said in a video that the duplicate content penalty is a myth ..not that you should always listen to what he said (mostly it was better to do exactly the opposite lol) but in this case its fairly safe to believe him without having to read between the lines