Multiplicity: Stop Cloning Your Hard Work with Duplicate Content

There have been a magnitude of SEO / SEM strategies come and go in the last 15 years. Some were so easy to implement that everyone implemented them to the extreme. Then the search engines devalued those strategies and marketing sleuths discovered more.  Having a strong presence in a variety of places on the web was and is one technique. When done well, this can bring you rewards, but we are still seeing abuse.

You may be sabotaging your business without even realizing it by leaving duplicate content across the web.

Why is that important?
If you have ever seen the movie Multiplicity ©  (1996 by Columbia/Tri-Star)  with Michael Keaton as Doug Kinney who cloned himself.

Andie MacDowell played his confused wife. You may recall it became more difficult to know which was the original Doug. Which clone gets the credit for the good deeds or the bad ones?  His trust factor went down and his integrity was seriously compromised.

Which page of content will the search engines choose to give credit to?  Your page on your primary domain? (You can only hope!) A page on another of your less effective sites?  Possibly a Directory site? Or worse, a competitor?

Think about the implications.

What about the fix?

• Use microsites with their own topics, unique text, images, navigation, links, etc. for each specific service or product of your business. Maintain them regularly.
• Create a landing page with unique content that clearly informs the visitor they should click over to your primary domain for more information.
• Forward other domains properly to your primary domain using a 301 Redirect.
• Search engines are frowning upon the old technique of buying multiple domains, so unless you have a specific need for and properly use multiple domains, search engines want you to stop buying them at this point.
• Directories should be given unique content to publish.
• Review all of your web partners and provide them with fresh, unique content to publish.
• Publish Press Release text on your own site first. Then after it has been indexed, submit it for web distribution.
• Always update your own primary website with the most current products, pricing and latest information.  This site should be your ‘original brand’ and never a clone.