How different does content have to be to avoid duplicate content penatly?

I am building another version of a existing site, but targeted to a different market. The content will be similar. The site structure is completely different. I made quite a few changes to the content on each page, but it is still based on the same content. I changed as many words as possible to relevant similes, changed all titles, headers. Reordered lists, etc.

Is this enough?

 

the only way to know for sure is by waiting and seeing how google, and other SE's, react.

there is no real concrete answer to the question you're asking unfortunately. it's like asking what the optimal keyword/keyphrase density on a page is-- a lot of people have opinions, but we really have no concrete evidence on what's too high and what's too low.

the answer to both, though, is about the same: do things naturally. do things for your users. if you take open content and add something significant and useful to the pages, chances are google will like it quite a bit.

 

There's no magic amount of changes that will make it not count as duplicate content, but one decent way of checking would be going to the original article and picking a sentence or sequence of several words and searching for them in the new article. If you can frequently find the exact same phrase, you probably need to do more rewording / rewriting.

 

Will it penalize both, or will just the page on the new site not get indexed?

 

if it's triggered as duplicate content, chances are it won't get indexed.

even if it's modified but still similar, chances are it won't rank well in the serps. this isn't likely a penalty per-se, but more likely just a result of the fact that the page you're taking things from is more of an authority than your site. and if the original site allows people to take their content, chances are lots of other sites are doing it as well-- you have to face trying to outrank all of them.

 

OK thanks....

They are actually both my sites. One is focused on bankruptcy repair and the new one will be focused on general credit repair tips.

 

Check out copyscape.com to see how it fares.