Similar URLs for two different pages hurt SEO, if pages offer different information?

Question

I have written a guide to a particular subject, and it's over 6000 words. I decided to split up the information into two separate pages, as the information really falls under two categories for end users, but they have the same parent category.

For example

• /beginners-guide-kayaks-enthusiasts - Beginners Guide to Kayaks for Enthusiasts
• /beginners-guide-kayaks-fishermen - Beginners Guide to Kayaks for Fishermen

The content is so long, fitting them onto a single page with images would be overwhelming to anyone clicking on the page. So I decided to go with two separate pages.

Each page has completely different information, but as you can see, the page titles and resulting URLs would be really close to each other. Will this hurt my SEO by having two very close URLs?

Is there a better way to handle this?

Answer 1

I think you need to change the title a little bit. URL doesn't hurt your SEO but your Title will. The reason is that the title will be marked as "Duplication" and if you're using Wordpress with Yoast then only one of these URL will get indexed. Try to change the title like "Imporant Guide For Beginners for Kayaks Fishermen" it will be better for you to rank, It won't matter if the URL is same (Same as in not exacatly same but some keywords changed) the title is the problem here.

Answer 2

With over 1,000 different SEO ranking factors, I doubt that similar titles is enough to trigger a penalty. Especially since the content is different.

If it did, every webpage describing a car would be penalized for talking about a car given the multiple car models. The same would apply to articles for beginning and intermediate kayaking.

I think you have to look at SEO from a broader perspective and the purpose of Google’s SEO ranking. I.e., does the content answer the user’s query? Similar urls and titles are a minor part of answering the user’s question.

Answer 3

Due to the natural behavior of any search engines, initially they try to understand contents with their titles, if there were two similar (not the same) titles or URL, they try to read the content and compare both.

Actually It was my challenge too. Due to my experience, google do not penalty your content because of similarity on titles. Your keywords and pages compete with each other to rank and index more on google. It is better to write comprehensive content with unique value proposition to users. Conclusion: Do not worry too much about your url, watch your whole content elements: URL, title, description, keywords, content, alt keywords, etc... After reviewing all these items google decide the content is duplicated or not. I hope I explain enough. good luck.