What is classed as duplicant content and does it matter?

[john-e-cash]

I'm trying to rank inner pages of a website for geographical locations. So for instance 'plumber Manhattan' or 'plumber Brooklyn'

What i've noticed is that the competition that are ranking well in my niche are using duplicate content for their geographical pages. For instance the content for 'plumber Manhattan' is the same contact used for 'plumber Brooklyn' with just the titles changed.

So my question is, isn't this classed as duplicate content in Google's eyes and wouldn't the site be penalised for this? Why are the pages ranking on page 1 if the content is duplicate?

The pages have been ranking on page 1 for many months.

 

[Goodcat]

Have you read Eli's post on mininets?

If not, that's where I would start in order to pretty much master this technique and probably go above and beyond what your competition is doing.

Instead of making a network, use the ideas to populate each page you want, e.g. plumber NY and plumber Brooklyn -- perhaps fetch data from sources relating to each, to set them apart and make them "unique" without doing so manually and without running into dupe content penalties.

EDIT: god damn that dude was ahead of his time.

 

[trust256]

First off, how much competition is there for the keywords the other site is ranking for? If there's no better site in that keyword niche, then there's no wonder they are ranking. Also, it's possible the site owner is using something shady to get the site ranked with his backlinks.

As for duplicate content, you can avoid the possible penalty that might be associated by having same content from one directory style page to the next by simply taking time to enrich the descriptions on each page. What unique things can you say about the plumbers in Manhattan that you haven't said about St Louis plumbers?

You might be able to enhance the content on each page by posting news from that specific area, such as industry information about water quality/safety/weather/local news.

Possibly add a 'profile' of local plumbers for that area. I'm sure that's something your competitor hasn't bothered to do. It will be a good thing for your site user and might make your site look more authoritative to Google.