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the client wants both domains ranking top
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sofomor,
With duplicate content? If you can pull this off, you'll be worthy of induction into the
SEO hall of fame!
Duplicate content is a mistake regardless of the reasoning behind it. To put it simply, there are no "work-arounds" that will allow both sites to display the same content under different URL's without one or both sites suffering penalties. As an
SEO consultant, you should know this.
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What should my intelligent, responsible and honest response.
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If you are unable to persuade the client that one or both sites will end up penalized in terms of where they place in the SERPs, then perhaps slapping your client in the back of the head might be an appropriate, intelligent, responsible and honest course of action. It may not be helpful in relation to your
SEO efforts, however it would quite likely prove to be somewhat therapeutic in addressing your frustration and would definitely prevent you from wasting any more of your time.
Google Webmaster Guidelines -
Duplicate content
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In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we'll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. As a result, the ranking of the site may suffer, or the site might be removed entirely from the Google index, in which case it will no longer appear in search results
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As a solution, I'd recommend that you host the content on the domain that'll generate the most traffic (.com?) and set up a 301 redirect on the other domain. This way, it won't matter which URL the client types in or links to, they'll both resolve to the .com site. Your client's server Administrator should be able to provide some assistance in setting this up.
For more assistance, search this forum for threads related to "301 redirect" and "canonicalization prevention".
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