Duplicate content - no choice but. - Webmaster General forum at WebmasterWorld

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Duplicate content - no choice but.

edacsac

5:55 pm on Jul 28, 2010 (gmt 0)

This is beyond my expertise. I have my business site with lot's of well thought out, rewritten several times for grammer and presentation, copy. It's not a content site; just business details and things.

I need to change the business name, which means new site and domain. Am I going to get killed for duplicate content? I spent many nights reading and rewriting my copy until I was satisfied it was smooth and compelling.

Is this where I redirect the old site to the new site? We're talking completely different domain names.

phranque

12:24 am on Jul 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

you should first decide if there is any value in keeping the original domain alive and then decide of a site-wide redirect makes sense or a repurpose of the original site with perhaps some urls redirects on a case-by-case basis.
perhaps a backlink analysis will give you some clues for the best course of action.

Oimachi2

10:04 am on Jul 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

Be very careful about duplicate content. I just had a client that gave me duplicate content from site A to site B. He disapeared from Google for about 2 months (site B)...

Then my client payed someone in Bangladesh to rewrite everything from scratch and check everything out with copyscape.

Now he is back on top for both sites but it was very scarry...

encyclo

10:51 am on Jul 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

The content is only as duplicate as you want it to be. :) If you change the domain name and permanently redirect (301) to the same content with the same URLs, then you will not have any duplicate content at all. Google has a "change of domain name" option in their webmaster tools to tell Googlebot of the new domain. Expect a transitionary period in terms of ranking, and keep the old domain as a redirect for an indefinite period.

edacsac

4:03 pm on Jul 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

there's really no point in keeping the old domain. I could consider re-writing everything. It's good practice I suppose.

If I do a redirect and use the domain change in google, am I correct in hoping that I will redirect pages from the old site to the new site?

Thank you all for your replies!

nicolebeckett

10:27 pm on Jul 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

Do a 301 redirect. That will tell Google that you've changed names, and you will not face any duplicate content issues. Plus, you'll get to carry all of your existing backlinks with you to the new site, so you won't have to start your link building from scratch.

Without a 301 redirect, you're looking at a duplicate content nightmare. Even if you get rid of the old site altogether, all of the content on it has already been indexed by Google, so everything will still come up as duplicate content.