Duplicate content penalty - how to avoid being banned
Two observations from a current project:On multiple domains 301 redirects are a must - anything else would most likely trigger the spam detectors.
You don't want new links pointing to the redirected ones as this would appear most unnatural and possibly flag them as doorway spam. Having multiple domains parked and pointing to your main site using 301's is the only way to go.
A roundtable with Matt Cutts states "The same content should never be accessible from different URL’s…ever!
More broadly "Presenters at the SES 2006 New York session, Duplicate Content Issues, discussed the dangers of duplicate content. It comes in many forms, like multiple domains for the same homepage content; multiple links to several domains for one site; and "doorway" pages, according to Anne Kennedy, managing partner at Beyond Ink. "
The same conference review provides this list:
Jake Baillie, TrueLocal's president, described the top six duplicate content mistakes:
Circular navigation - having different paths through a site should be avoided. Publishers should define a consistent way of addressing page content no matter what navigation path a user takes through a site.
Printer friendly pages - if these are html pages, robots.txt should be used to block search engines from indexing them.
Inconsistent linking - calling directory pages in an inconsistent manner, like /directory and /directory/, should be avoided.
Product-only pages - it is not good for a site to have product pages and SKU pages; they should be consolidated if possible.
Transparent serving domains - use 301 redirection instead of DNS aliasing to get users to a canonical site from multiple domains.
Bad cloaking - Don't use cloaking scripts you didn't write. Make sure your cloaking script is returning separate content for each URL being cloaked."
All sound advise...
posted by Jen @ 10:52 AM
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