SEO efforts might be seriously hampered by duplicate content. As you may already be aware, creating original content is necessary to succeed and rank well.
But what does it actually mean? Is producing content on your own enough? What exactly is duplicate content? How can you tell if your articles or descriptions have been duplicated? What should you do?
Let’s find out,
What is Duplicate Content?
Duplicate content is content that appears on the internet in more than one place. That “one place” is defined as a location with a unique website address (URL)- if the same content appears at more than one web address, you have duplicate content.
Duplicate content doesn’t technically result in a penalty, although it might occasionally affect search engine rankings. It might be challenging for search engines to decide which version of numerous pieces of content that are, in Google’s words, “appreciably similar” in more than one location on the internet is more relevant to a given search query.
Why Duplicate Content is bad for SEO?
Duplicate content is bad for SEO for two reasons
When many versions of information are available, search engines struggle to decide which version to index and so show in their search results. Because they are competing with each other, this reduces performance for all versions of the content.
If other websites link to multiple versions of the content, search engines may have a difficult time combining link metrics (authority, relevance, and trust) for the content.
How to avoid creating Duplicate Content?
Duplicate content typically refers to substantial sections of text within or across domains that either exactly duplicate other text in the same language or are very likely comparable. The fact that it is not descriptive in origin is what matters.
The following are some instances of non-malicious duplicate content
- Forums can provide both standard and mobile-device-specific pages that are stripped down.
- Products at an online store that are displayed or referred to by several different URLs
Printer-only version of webpages
There are several ways to tell Google your preferred URL if your website has numerous pages with basically identical content. (Canonicalization is what it is known as.)
However, there are instances where information is purposefully copied across other domains in an effort to trick search engine results or increase traffic. When a visitor sees essentially the same content repeated within a set of search results, deceptive methods like these lead to a poor user experience.
Google makes efforts to index and display pages with diverse information. This filtering signifies for example, that if your site has a “regular” and “printer” version of each article, and neither of these is blocked with a noindex tag, Google will pick one of them to list.
In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be showcased with the intent to manipulate rankings and deceive users, “Google will also make appropriate modifications in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved.
As a result, the site’s ranking could be affected or it could be completely deleted from the Google index, in which case it would no longer show up in search results.
Here are some proactive measures you may take to deal with duplicate content issues and guarantee that visitors view the content you intend them to
Utilization of 301s
Use 301 redirects (“Redirect permanent”) in your.htaccess file to cleverly reroute users, Googlebot, and other spiders if you have restructured your website. (In Apache, this is accomplished using an.htaccess file; in llS, this is accomplished using the administrative console.)
Always remain consistent
Try to maintain consistency in your interlinking. Don’t, for instance.
Use top-level domains
Use top-level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content to help Google offer the most relevant version of a publication. For example, Google wants to be more likely to be aware that http://www.xyz.de has stuff about Germany than http://www.xyz.com/de or http://de.xyz.com
Syndicate carefully
In case you syndicate your content on other websites, Google will always show, in each search, the version it believes is best for users, which may or may not be the version you had preferred.
A link back to your original article should be present on every site where your information is syndicated, though this is not essential. In order to stop search engines from indexing those that use your syndicated content, you may also request that they include the “noindex” tag.
Decrease boilerplate repetition
For instance, offer a very brief description and then link to a page with further facts rather than including extensive copyright text at the bottom of every page.
Avoid publishing stubs
In order to minimise “empty pages,” try to use placeholders as little as possible.
For instance, avoid publishing pages for which you lack revealing content. If you do decide to create placeholder pages, use the noindex tag to prevent search engines from indexing them.
Understand your CMS(content management system)
If you are certain that you are aware of the manner in which content is displayed on your website. The content is frequently shown in various formats on blogs, forums, and related systems.
A blog entry might, for instance, show up on the homepage, an archive page, and a page containing other entries with the same label.
Reduce similar content
If you have numerous pages that are identical, consider expanding each page, combining the pages about the two cities into one, or expanding each page to provide distinct content about each city.
Conclusion
You can resolve or prevent the majority of content duplication problems by following these ways. Your search engine rankings will be impacted by understanding duplicate content.
If you need assistance with producing high-quality content and eliminating duplicate content, turn to Stellar Digital, one of the top digital marketing companies in Gurgaon, and NCR. You can get assistance from our team of talented content writers and digital marketers with your project. You can learn more about our content writing and digital marketing services by visiting stellardigital.in
