A consistent stream of fresh, high-quality content helps you prove to search engines that you are producing worthwhile information. The value of content originality is standing out in a crowded marketplace and reaching new audiences.
Conversely, duplicate contents damage your search ranking. SEO content with excessive plagiarism can make you suffer from Google duplicate content penalty. We will go into great detail about duplicate content in this guide, along with its causes and solutions.
What is Duplicate Content?
Duplicate content refers to a partial or exact copy of the content already published on other websites or several pages of the same website.
In other words, anything that appears on the Web in many locations is considered duplicate content. If the same material occurs at more than one online address, it is considered duplicate content since “one place” is located based on a distinct internet address (URL).
When the same information appears on a site or several sites, Google’s algorithm determines which one to rank first. Google appears to rank the incorrect stuff the majority of the time. And if that takes place, the useful, sparkling material you spent so much effort on can become completely invisible to search engines as well as your audiences.
The most blatant example of duplicate material is content that has been purposefully scraped or copied from other websites. There are additional ways, though, in which you may unintentionally duplicate your own content throughout your website. The setup of a website’s content management system or e-commerce platform issues is frequently to blame for this duplicate content.
How much Duplicate Content is Acceptable?
According to Matt Cutts, duplicate content accounts for 25% to 30% of the web. He claims
that unless it is done with the intention of manipulating search results, Google does not view
duplicate material as spam and does not punish your website as a result.
The only issue with duplicate material is that, even if your website may have published it
first, other websites that have merely copied it may appear in the search results for related
Terms.
Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, you can submit a request for removal to stop
someone from utilizing a copy of your content. Preventing access to duplicate content on the web may make it more difficult for Google to crawl all the copies and select the best results as it searches for the original source of the information to appear in the search results.
How to Avoid Duplicate Content SEO?
Your SEO may be impacted by social media activities. Posting similar content on multiple social media platforms is a widespread habit. The following steps can help you avoid duplicate content SEO issues and optimize your website for search engines:
- Create Original Content: The best way to avoid duplicate content is to create
original, high-quality content that provides value to your users. Make sure that your
content is unique, informative, and well-written. - Check for Duplicate Content: You may quickly determine if a page is a duplication by copying the first ten or so words of a sentence and entering them into Google’s search box in quotation marks. In fact, Google suggests performing a check for duplicate content. Additionally, you might unintentionally make your material too similar to previously published information when composing it. To ensure that your content is perceived as original, it is always a smart option to double-check anything you write utilizing plagiarism checkers. Several of these resources are free to use.
- Use Canonical Tags: If you have similar content on multiple pages, you can use
canonical tags to indicate which page should be considered the primary source of the
content. This helps search engines understand which version of the content is the
original and avoid google duplicate content penalty. - Avoid Scraping Content: Scraping content from other websites is unethical and can lead to duplicate content SEO issues. Ensure that all the content on your website is original or properly attributed.
- Minimize Boilerplate Content: Boilerplate content, such as website footers or
copyright information, is common across all pages of a website. To avoid duplicate
content, you can use dynamic footers or implement them through server-side
Includes. - Use 301 Redirects: If you have similar pages with different URLs, you can use 301
redirects to redirect one URL to the other. This consolidates the content and signals
to search engines which version of the page should be indexed. - Implement Structured Data: Structured data provides additional context to search
engines about the content on your website. This strategy can help search engines better
understand the source of the content and avoid a Google duplicate content penalty.
