Similar Pages

[koha]

I am aware that search engines may penalize me for some so-called cookie cutter pages on my site. If this is true can anyone tell me if there is a good similar page percentage benchmark?

[ihelpyou]

No mark that I know of. Make them unique. It's not hard to do your own thing. Your pages should be your pages, and not another site's pages. :)

[koha]

Originally posted by ihelpyou
No mark that I know of. Make them unique. It's not hard to do your own thing. Your pages should be your pages, and not another site's pages. :)

Perhaps I didn’t make myself real clear. Let me try again.

These are my own pages on my own site made from a template. They are made to be uniform for good reason but the content is slightly different on each of them. I just don’t know if they are different enough. I don't know how much I would have to compromise to make them acceptable or if this is even an issue to be concerned about.

http://brassmein.com/supply/
:)

[Connie]

If your talking about a templet for the overall look of the site, that should not be a problem. In regard to the content. Why is the content similar? I can understand some situations where there is no choice If you want each page to make sense to your visitors. For instance if you sell light bulbs how many ways can you describe a light bulb? If that is what you mean then thats all you can do. Google in particular may ignore some pages because of the near duplicate content.

However, you do need to make sure that nobody else is describing light bulbs the same way you are. You can make distinctions from what is on another web-site and what is on yours.

Hope that made sense. It might help if you provided a link to the content you are talking about.

[Quadrille]

With a template site, you are starting out with a whole bunch of shared copy; not just navigation, but headers, footers and who knows what. So when Google compares your pages, having just a couple of paragraphs won't impress - there are several threads here from people whose pages have disappeared in recent moves by Google.

The solution is to add more copy per page; maybe scrap some and merge their content.

No-one knows how much 'unique' copy you need to make an impression - but seeing those who've suffered, I'd guess not a lot less than half the code.

If that sounds tough, imagine how a visitor feels, having to move from page to (almost) identical page, for just a couple more paragraphs.

In practice, most of those who've lost out seem to be folk with database driven pages, where the whole page is produced when a paragraph was probably all that was needed.

[Connie]

Quadrille,

Not trying to be argumentative but all templates are not bad. I use a template that I have created. When I add new products all I need to do is add the content and header information for the page. The pages are all the same in regard to footer, left navigation, etc.

I agree that a cookie cutter template is not a good thing.

koha, first said: I am aware that search engines may penalize me for some so-called cookie cutter pages on my site.

Then he/she responded to Doug with:Perhaps I didn’t make myself real clear. Let me try again. They are made to be uniform for good reason but the content is slightly different on each of them.

I'm not sure if koha is talking about a cookie cutter type template or the kind I use for my site.

Hopefully koha will give a little additional information about his/her meaning of template.

You are probably right, but I think we need more information to know for sure.

[Quadrille]

Connie:

I don't think templates are bad at all - I use them on most of my sites, and second only to CSS, they are the best thing since sliced bread. (Mind you, I'm also keen on server side includes ...).

No, my concern is that templates are so good, and so easy, that it is easy to be tempted to make a new page for the littlest thing, where a cooler view would say "that little bit of content does not justify a page; find a way to add it to an existing page".

And that's not a random critique - it's from my own experience, and confessions of others! :) I've recently uploaded a whole lot of product data from printed originals, all bar one product, because I simply could not find a way of adding it to a 'wrong' category, and it didn't justify one of its own.

Template sites, where (for example) a whole site is downloaded and only the owners name is different, is quite a different and leads to many unhappy MLM-ers.

[koha]

Originally posted by Connie

You are probably right, but I think we need more information to know for sure.
Example:

http://brassmein.com/supply/ (http://)


The best way to understand is to take a look.

[Quadrille]

http://brassmein.com/supply/serv/cleaning.htm has just one line of text. Not good.

Much better to merge some of those pages, and split them again once they've filled up.

A line or two about the companies would not hurt, either!

It's not just for search engines, but for people too - is it fair to send them to five separate pages to see four links? I don't think so! People don't come back if too many pages look empty or under construction.

[koha]

Thanks to all for the responses.

Actually this was an ambitious project that got stuck on the ramp and I moved on to other things. Now that I am back to deal with it I think your advice is good. I will take it in whole or part. I have also considered using a frame structure or even aborting.

Naturally I would like to rank higher in the search engines but my first priority is to my visitors. All of them don’t come from the search results.

koha

[ihelpyou]

You have major problems with design and content. No one change will make a difference.

The FireFox browser is getting popular. Google hired a few engineers from them and it will continue to get more popular each day.

Download that browser that take a look at your pages. :) I would not spend anytime there at all if I were looking for what you had to offer.

[Quadrille]

One thing you must do regardless is make your logo clickable, pointing at domain.com, and add ALT text. I just found I couldn't get home from your links pages.

Good, clear navigation is vital.

[Connie]

Template sites, where (for example) a whole site is downloaded and only the owners name is different, is quite a different and leads to many unhappy MLM-ers.
I see the distinction you are making and agree. :) I just wasn't sure which
koha was referring to.

I think Doug and Quadrille have already given you some good advice. The site really looks bad with FireFox. You also need better navigation.

You need to do something with the AboutBrassMeIn. Looks like nothing but a string of key words and really has no meaning. I'm not sure but I think that could raise some flags with the SEs. To make it worse you have that on at least one other page.