Hiya, I'm creating a new site, all about events happening in my industry across the country. I want to optimize the site for several cities, and offer database searches based on location, date, etc. But I'm getting concerned about duplicate content issues, or otherwise appearing to Google as merely a directory. I've got just enough experience with this to know I _could_ have a problem, but not enough to know how real it is! My industry isn't gardening, but let's say it is for this example. I want to have a top-level page with links to gardening classes and events around the country. But I also want to offer pages for major cities. I've noticed that people are searching for "Gardening Classes Phoenix" and "Gardening Classes Miami", and I want to capitalize on those KWs. (Again, not really gardening classes) But I'd also love to have a page something like: MyGardeningSite/phoenix-events MyGardeningSite/miami-events MyGardeningSite/chicago-events etc. A few concerns: 1) Each of these class lines will link to someone else's website for the full description and registration. Will Google decide I'm merely a directory? (I am doing a blog and articles to go with this, but I'd love to start with the calendar, and I don't want to get nailed before I even get started!) 2) Each class will probably re-use someone else's class description content. Probably just a paragraph. But will that get me in trouble for duplication? Do I have to re-write (or have them re-write) all their descriptions? 3) If I duplicate some of the content on the front-page, which has the nationwide listing, and on the cities pages, which repeats the listings for those cities only, will that cause problems? I'd love any advice you've got. Thanks in advance. Mae
Can you not automate more of the page? Eg. Auto generated H1 tags for "City Gardening Events" then do the same in various places throughout the page to make each page unique? What you're suggesting really is a scraper site ......
Scraping is a little beyond me ... I looked it up, and it's a more automated process than what i'm doing. I'm aiming for a site that's supported by its community (teachers in various cities, and students who need to find them), but I want to populate the pages myself at first to get it going and test out the concept.
How do you intend to rank for these keywords if you are just going to redirect the url's to someone else's site? Google is not very fond of re-directs. Unless I am misunderstanding you?