Duplicate Content - The Proper Site Structure?

[jpratt]

I would like to talk about the proper site structure to prevent duplicate content. Specifically, if a URL does not have X number of words (e.g. 100 words), is it best practice to aggregate content? In the viewer's perspective, it seems a bit of a waste of time to click a new page just to find theres sparse content.

An example:

A car news website has chosen to aggregate it's article content onto one news 'overview' page because each new article published does not have very much content on it's own (fewer than 100 words). For the viewer, it's much easier to scroll down the overview page and read each whole article rather than click into one article to see a lot of white space.

What ends up happening is that the articles lose their targeted keyword potential in an attempt to make the viewer reading experience better.

Having aggregated content wouldn't gather more organic keyword searches than target-specific keyword content right?

Currently, the title of the 'overview' page is:
<H1>Latest Car News</H1>. Isn't the title wasted because there are no keywords?

The example article titles are:
<H2>MERCEDES BENZ UNVEILS NEW A-CLASS</H2>
<H2>FERRARI DEBUTS NEW F1 CHASSIS</H2>

Due to this current site structure, I'm afraid we're losing out on keywords such as 'Mercedes', 'A-Class', 'Ferrari F1'.

What is the proper site structure to best achieve keyword traffic but same good readability? If we categorize content by car brands (e.g. Mercedes Benz) we will just show the same content under the Mercedes Benz News title and in theory have duplicate content! Which content should be no-index or canonical? The article, overview page or category page? Or does the site need a complete restructuring?

Many thanks.

[jpratt]

I'm sorry guys, I wish I could post an image to demonstrate my question more clearly.

Please don't remove this post, there is no link spam in this image:
img21.imageshack.us/img21/4518/testphf.jpg