Hello, I am going to present a situation we are facing with two
websites. I am hoping your expertise will clarify this situation.
There are 2 websites. Site A sells gifts for
women including antique jewelry. It is listed in the directories for
antique jewelry and does well in the search engine rankings for many
keywords. The site is owned by 2 women.
Site B owned by one of the women involved in site A,
sells wedding gowns, antique jewelry and wedding accessories on the
second site. It ranks well in the search engines for many keywords
and is in bridal directories.
The question is as follows, if the two sites were to combine their
antique jewelry and put the entire collection on both sites. Being 2
separate businesses, would that be considered duplicate pages? Is this
something that would set off a red flag to the search engines and in
any way could it be considered spam?
The 2 business owners are looking at the fact the combined collection
of all the jewelry would get double exposure if it were on 2 places on
the web. They would get the traffic from the jewelry directories and
the traffic from the bridal directories as many brides also buy
antique jewelry.
With the increasing cost of online advertising, it seems cost
effective to have the jewelry in more than one place if at all
possible.
Over the past years, we have tried very hard to follow all the rules,
so we would not do anything that would be against the rules. When it
was suggested to us to put all the jewelry on both sites, I started
investigating. I decided I should go to the source and find out the
answer to this question.
Thank you for your time. Paisley

Hello Paisley,

I commend you for following the rules, and don't blame you for being
concerned about duplicate pages and possibly being penalized. And you
are right that exhibiting the jewelry on both sites would increase the
exposure and add an additional market for your jewelry.

For the record, the concern about 'duplicate pages' usually has to do
with the absolutely identical site under different domain names
submitted, or worse a lot of domains whose only copy points to the
same site.

However, to be on the safe side, I think the easiest way to avoid any
confusion and problems is to do this:

One site is for brides and the other site is for the antique jewelry.

On the site that you want to add the jewelry to, change the copy
enough, the title of the page enough and your metatags enough that
they are not duplicate pages at all, even if the jewelry offered on
each is the same.

In other words, if you're adding the jewelry to the bride pages,
change the page enough to reflect the theme of the bride's site, make
a few adjustments to any descriptions to stay within the site's theme,
and you can avoid any problem with "duplicate" pages, and enhance the
site.

For anything from the bride's page you are adding to the gift/jewelry
site, do likewise, remove references from the bride's theme and add
enough to make it consistent with the gift/jewelry site.

It doesn't matter if the purchase is made form the same source, but if
you change those little details, they aren't duplicate pages, even
though they may offer the same merchandise.

That should eliminate any problems.

I didn't use a search term here, but instead offered what seems a
creative, common sense method to stay within the rules and increase
exposure for your products.

Good luck to both of you,
Serenata

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Request for Answer Clarification by ksp-ga on 18 May 2003 21:56 PDT

Would it matter if both sites were laid out in the same form, with the
same basic graphics? In the beginning(5 yrs ago)we thought if the
sites looked the same it would be easier to the customers we sent to
look at each site. We tried to simplify and made them basically the
same in lay-out, and the over all look of the site. They have the
exact same graphics but in different colors.
 Are you saying if a thumbnail page has 9 items per page, the 9 items
cannot be the same on each site. Are you telling me they need to look
different on each site or just have different wording and titles?
I am very surprised at you answer and I thought it would be very much
against the rules. This really opens up things for us. Thanks so much.

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Clarification of Answer by serenata-ga on 18 May 2003 22:03 PDT

I'd not worry about the page layout nor the colors, nor the fact that
you have the same jewelry laid out on the pages

I am assuming each page has its own unique title (it should, you know)

So for the gift/jewelry, the title could be "Antique Jewelry - The
Perfect Gift"
and the same page for the bride could be "Jewelry for the Bride" or
something similar.

Descriptions of the jewelry on the gift page could be changed slightly
to reflect the bride's theme, and the pages are not duplicate any
longer.

If you'd like, you can post the pages and sites you have questions
about and I can suggest a few more changes that will make them within
keeping with each sites' theme.

Hope this helps,
Serenata