I reported on this at our LocalU event in April Shades Of Grey: Controversial Local SEO Tactics That Drive Results. I’ve covered local SEO tactics ranging from keyword stuffing to review snippets in organic search results. One of the topics I discussed, which always causes very different opinions, was the concept of creating service area pages with duplicate or very similar content.

Duplicate or similar content has always been a controversial topic. Google has repeatedly confirmed that duplicate content is not a negative ranking factor. It’s understood that Google can filter out duplicate content from search results, but we’ve observed that when they create service area pages, they can rank and drive traffic and leads, even if the content is duplicated or very similar.

In my presentation, I used the example of a service area company that has created 35 service area pages over the course of a few years. According to Siteliner, the content of these pages matched on average 84%.

Here’s what Google says about duplicate content in Google Search Central:

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to deceive and manipulate search engine results.

Did I mention that duplicate content is a hot topic?

If you search for duplicate content on the Local Search Forum, you’ll quickly realize that this has been a hot topic for years. I would encourage you to go and check it out.

• “I don’t think it’s a big deal to use similar content in different locations if you’re not targeting the same geographic areas. After all, there’s only so much you can do to get “unique” content about dental implants for all of the thousands of dentists across the country.” (Joy Hawkins)
• “We’ve seen competitors who have provided much more in-depth content to their clients (3 to 4 times as many words) but are using the same content for dozens of dental practices.” (Creativeedge)
• “We’ve slowly gotten into some of our major cities and the only thing that I think could hurt us is that each of those 500 cities has its own landing page where the content is exactly the same apart from the city name change and phone number in the text. Could that harm my website?” (Jäger23)

How did the service area pages fare?

Damn good! Overall, the service area pages drive a lot of traffic and, more importantly, conversions.

What are the pros and cons we found with this tactic?

Advantages:

1. Increased visibility
2. More traffic
3. more leads

Disadvantages:

1. Not always effective in competitive markets

So what?

As far as I’m concerned, there are two possible ways forward with controversial tactics like this.

1. Do it yourself
2. Don’t do it and you will lose to your competitors

But please, don’t whine or be on the fence about them, and always remember to look at what Google is doing and not just what they say.