Can anyone help please?

I currently have a client who wants me to create multiple html pages for each city listing that he services and link it to his current website. This needs to be done just for the sole purpose of submitting to a search engine. Therefore, if somebody were to search for service in that area, his business will be the first to pop up in Google.

Given, that his current website shows up on the first page of Google when searching for TORONTO COMPUTER REPAIR. I thought by duplicating that page and swapping all the words containing TORONTO with another city like VAUGHAN and saving it for example as vaughan-computer-repair.htm I may be able to see it on Google when I search for VAUGHAN COMPUTER REPAIR. However, it does not seem to be found anywhere on the first 20 pages that I have searched on Google.

Any suggestions?

Ash
Webmaster
SNIP

Wouldn't that be duplicate content? I am not really sure this is the way to go. That sounds like the easy way out..and it rarely works that easy.

Maybe you should make the pages different. Try a few towns first. Get backlinks to them and see how they go.

Yes that looks like to be the case about duplicate content on several domain names which might cause troubles in Google in the future. It might be a better idea using a single domain for all pages or creating additional subdomains or folders with extra text materials.

First off, thanks for the replies. I'm just having a little trouble trying to fully understand the problem with content duplication. So if I duplicate the data and use it on a seperate DOMAIN NAME (ie. www.pcmechanix.ca[) name then I will be penalized by google. So having the website www.macmechanix.ca with duplicate data will be a bad idea right?

Now, what I am doing is using the same domain with a city page like CITYNAME.htm with the same layout and ALMOST the same page content as the index page with exception to the city references. So would that also be considered duplicating?

Ash
Webmaster
SNIP

Indeed name your web pages as "vaughan-computer-repair.htm" etc. (use the hyphen as a separator) but the webpage intended to attract searchers for Vaughan cannot be offred a slightly varied replication of what you intented for Toronto searchers to find. The content between the two needs to be uniquely developed in order to maximize on satisfying some imporatnt ranking criteria.

The search engine wants to see something new and different for each web page you create (and an experienced, qualified Internet visitor that you attract will appreciate it too.

Went to elaborate but was to late (my 30 minute editing period expired). Perhaps the moderator can remove my first reply.

Here we go again :

Before I forget, as it may come about that you'll eventually need to learn a bit about SEO, take a couple of days and read the search engine quality content guidelines for Yahoo, Google and MSN. I haven't their URLs handy but you should be able to easily find these. Read all this so that you get a fairly clear picture of what it is the search engines want to find in order to offer your web pages within their search engine results pages.

Now, just because you attained a high ranking for one keyphrase, one with a fairly low search frequency I might add but a good ROI keyphrase nevertheless, doesn't mean that you can do a little bit of a "lickity-split, abracadabra and presto" rank highly for just about any relatively similar keyphrase. No, it isn't as simple as that.

Indeed name your new web pages as you suggested "vaughan-computer-repair.htm" [Vaughan-computer-repair.htm may be somewhat better] etc. as logical naming conventions can help as a ranking factor (when using the hyphen as a separator) but the webpage intended to attract searchers for the Vaughan keyphrase cannot be a slight variation of the webpage you offer for the Toronto search. No, no, no, no, no, the content between the two needs to be uniquely developed, a one-of-a-kind, in order to maximize on satisfying some of the most important ranking criteria. The search engine wants to see something new and different for each web page you create (and an experienced, qualified Internet visitor that you attract will appreciate it too).

I wouldn't think it would take much more effort or innovativeness to rank highly for Vaughan or Brampton or Mississauga or Etobicoke than it did for Toronto; just create uniquely developed content for each and basically do with each new webpage what you did with the first one (probably Titles and Descriptions, some headings and decently written paragraphs.

It's a duplicate content. If you copy the original page then put the new keywords in metas it would still a duplicate content. If you also change the content and the design remains the same , then it becomes more safer than the copying the page as is.

Hi everyone