Content on websites is the core of search engine optimization (SEO).
Your ideal customers will find your blog through search engines based on articles you’ve published and your ranking is determined based on the blog posts you’ve made on your website.
licate content has been a huge problem for marketers and brands for many years and continues to be the subject of debate.
This article will focus on duplicate content and its connection with SEO as well as the best practices for reducing it!
Is duplicate content a thing?
Duplicate content refers the identical content that is on the same site or different websites. It’s comprised of exact copy and written content that’s rewritten to be identical to another piece.
One simple example of duplicate content could be a blog article that you publish on Medium through your account (at at the very least, without a canonical tag, pointing at the source).
In the same way, if a single webpage is accessible via two unique URLs on your site these pages are considered to be duplicates.
Header footer, header, and other components and areas of your website that are part of every page aren’t considered duplicate content so long as they’re part of the site’s design and structure.
How does duplicate content affect SEO?
Duplicate content can affect SEO in many ways that cause concern for companies as well as marketers and SEO consultants.
Before we dive into the SEO issues that duplicate content can have an impact on your website’s rank it is important to know the various types and types of duplicate content.
The presence of similar or identical pages on your website is much more problematic than having a duplicate of your article that has been published elsewhere on the internet (known as content syndication).
Poor UX, and miss-ranked rankings
Google prefers to index and rank distinct websites with original content. If you’ve got duplicate information on your site, Google will rank the most relevant webpage (which could not be the one you’d like to rank on).
This results in poor UX because organic traffic could end up on a website that you’ve not optimized for visitors or linked to internally.
Here’s the way Google describes this:
Self-competition
This is a much more serious SEO issue when you are competing with your content, which is why you will see a decrease in organic traffic. This is especially problematic when duplicate content is shared across domains as Google could rank syndicated content more highly than that of the source.
For instance, this article was originally published by the author on Inc.com by the writer and later, it was republished on Medium:
Strangely, the duplicate content has a higher rank than the original piece of content. This isn’t a thing that many authors would want since it can divert traffic from their original website. Let me tell you a little about it.
Duplicate content can cause self-competition an instance where each (or the entire) variations of the material (same web page and a cross-site) begin ranking, which causes a significant reduction in organic traffic. It also causes another problem…
Indexing issues
Google gives a crawling budget to each web page. Googlebot will visit your site to scan new and existing pages to track changes, and there is a certain amount of bandwidth allotted to each website (which is visible within the Search Console).
Pages with multiple duplicates need Googlebot to scan all duplicate pages, which means little time and resources for newly released pages. If your budget for crawling is already exhausted, you may be unable to index new pages. This problem is more frequent for larger sites that have thousands and hundreds of URLs.
Inefficiency in crawling is very serious for certain websites like news websites and seasonal websites in which the lifespan of the content is short. if it is not indexed at the right time, it is ineffective.
Penalty
If you’re deliberately duplicated material, you may be liable for consequences in the form of a penal penalty. In this case, your website could be removed from search results completely and Google could stop indexing any new pages you create.
The Best practices for duplicate content
Duplicate content can affect SEO brand credibility and UX.
You don’t just have to ensure that you don’t publish duplicate content on your site However, you must also ensure that your content isn’t being repurposed and published (without your consent) by other websites.
Here’s a list of the most effective ways to fix the problem, control, and prevent duplicate content that is on the same or different domains:
Make use of an official tag
Canonical tags are HTML code that can help you inform search engines about the original or primary version of your content. It directs crawlers that they should crawl the index and rank the correct version of the content in SERPs.
Utilize redirects
Redirecting websites to their original versions is another method to get out of content that is duplicated.
The 301 redirect informs search engines that your page has been permanently relocated to the new site. Users and crawlers will be directed to the right version of your website:
Redirects are appropriate for the following situations:
- You are aware of exactly the URL for the duplicate site
- Duplicate pages can be found on your website
- Duplicate content is ranked in SERPs, and users are using it.
- Hiding duplicate pages doesn’t hurt your site’s structure
Consider this example:
A site audit shows there are two articles with the same keyword and both posts share the same content. Both are ranked and driving traffic.
Moving one article to another (which is more up-to-date and also has better routings) can resolve duplicate content issues, but it won’t hurt the traffic or ranking.
Consolidate content
If you have several posts that cover similar subjects It is best to combine them so that you don’t have duplicate content.
This can happen when you have an extremely large blog that has many thousands of articles. It is possible to make duplicate content accidentally over time.
Content audit
The prevention of redundant content appearing on your website can be made simpler by conducting regular content and site audits.
This can help you avoid the need to create and publish new content that is already available on your blog and could cause duplicate content.
The use of a solid SEO Content strategy can be a sure method to avoid duplicate content as you follow a consistent method of creating content, which includes regular content audits.
The content strategy reveals the type of content you’ve posted as well as how it’s performing. It also shows the things that need to be changed and what you can develop the next time around.
A glance at the editorial calendar will provide an idea of whether you’ve written about the subject or not.
This proactive strategy is the best way to prevent duplicate content from the beginning!
Syndicate content in a smart way
Content syndication is the process of repeating identical content on several websites to increase exposure and credibility, thought leadership as well as other benefits.
The syndication of content across domains isn’t a problem and is an accepted practice in the publishing and news industry. One news story from one source can be repeated by a multitude of other news websites.
Conclusion
However duplicate content is not a good thing. As your website grows and depends on your CMS the content that is duplicated starts growing and is usually without being noticed (because it’s not always deliberate).
It’s difficult to locate duplicate content that’s been created due to conditions on e-commerce sites or because of tags, categories, and archives for blogs.
Adhering to the best techniques to manage and avoid duplicates on the same domains as well as different ones can help you avoid damaging rankings and also your online traffic!
With Growth Minded Marketing, we have the tools, resources, and knowledge that let us provide the highest quality SEO solutions to our clients such as duplicate content management and removal.
