Google is a search engine that does not impose a penalty for duplicate content. However, it filters identical content, and it has the same impact as a penalty. It could also result in a tremendous loss of rankings for the web pages; duplicate content confuses the SEO and forces the search engine to choose which identical pages it should rank in the top results. There is a possibility that the original pages will not be the ones selected for the top search results.
Below are some of the main reasons duplicate content sucks-
1. On-page elements
It would be best if you tried to make your content as unique as possible. You should make sure that your site has a unique page title and a meta description in the HTML code of the page. You should also see that the headings differ from other pages that are prevalent on your website.
The page title, headings and the Meta description of the page make up a minimal amount of the content on a page. Keeping your website out of the gray areas of duplicate content is safer. You should have the search engines see the value in the Meta descriptions.
If you are not able to jot down a unique Meta description for each page if you have too many pages, then you should exclude it. Google is the search engine that takes snippets from your written content. After this, it presents it as the Meta description. You should write a custom Meta description as it is a critical element in driving the click-through.
2. Product descriptions
Creating a unique product description could be a challenge for many eCommerce descriptions. It can take a whole lot of time to write an original illustration for each product on a website. If you sell your products through a third-party retailer and have other resellers offering your product, then you should provide each source with a unique description.
Every website owner’s natural tendency to want their product description page to outperform others; you should make a proper strategy for the same.
The product variations such as size or colour should not be on separate pages. You should utilize web design elements so that all product variations are kept on that page.
3. URL parameters
One more common issue with the duplicate content found on eCommerce websites comes from URL parameters. There are some websites out there which might lead to search engines indexing different versions of the URLs, which also includes the parameters.
4. WWW, HTTP and the training slash
There are some types of issues that can arise at any time. One quick way to check for these issues is by taking a section of unique text from your most valuable landing pages. You should put the text in quotes and search for it on Google. The search engine will then search for that exact string of text. Suppose more than one page shows up in that particular string of results. In that case, it is mandatory to determine what is happening by first looking into the possibility of the errors that could be related to WWW, HTTP and trailing slash.
If you stumble upon the possibility of your website having a conflicting www vs non-www or training slashes vs non-trailing slashes, then you should set up a 301 redirect from the non-preferred version to the preferred one.
5. External duplicate content issues
If you have valuable content, there is a perfect chance that it will end up being republished on another website. Following are some of the ways duplicate content occurs externally-
- Scraped content
This happens when a website owner steals the content from another website to increase the organic visibility of their site. The webmasters who try to scrape the content can also attempt to have machines’ rewrite’ the scraped content they stole in the first place. This content can be easily identified as the scrapers do not bother to replace the branded terms throughout the content.
However, the penalty works in the best way possible as a human reviewer at Google will be appointed to review the website to determine if a page is compatible with Google’s Webmaster quality guidelines. Suppose you are being flagged for trying to manipulate the search index of Google. In that case, two possibilities will take place, and you will end up seeing the site ranked significantly lower or eradicated from the search engine algorithm entirely. Many people take the services of the Digital marketing agency Melbourne as it is one of the industry’s most prominent digital marketing agencies right now, and the SEO services are available at the most lucrative cost.
If you are a victim of scraped content, you should inform this Google as soon as possible under the ‘Copyright and legal issues’ option.
6. Syndicated content
Syndicated content is the type of content that arises when another website republishes the content that initially appeared in your blog. However, syndicated content is not the same as getting your content scrapped and sharing it with another site, as it is something you did out of your own will.
However, there is one advantage to syndicating your own content. This process makes your content more visible. This can lead to more traffic to your website. In simple words, you are trading content and the search engine rankings for links back to your site.
Following are the benefits of content syndication-
- Receive quality links back to your site
Hitting mass link totals across syndicated content is very profitable.
- Increased website authority
Google can contextualize the brand mentions in the high-quality content. If you publish the high-quality content that is cited on the internet, you will be doing just about fine.
- Increased traffic
The links acquired offer referral traffic directly from the coverage. The links are a vote of confidence in your website and they will contribute to increasing traffic.
- Increased online presence
If you are cited and published regularly, it makes your brand more visible. You can reach a wider audience as this could help you gain exposure with a more extensive set of audiences than you might usually have access to.
Good content gives you good engagement and opens a sea of opportunities.
How to keep an eye out for duplicate content?
If you are having web pages rich with content that are declining in their search engine rankings, you should check if your content has been copied and used on a different website. Following are some ways to do this-
- Exact match search
Here, you have to copy a few sentences of text from one of your web pages. Then, you have to put it in the quotation marks and search for it on the search engine. If many results show up at a time, it implies that someone has copied your content.
You vs the duplicate content
Your biggest nightmare would be someone stealing your content, and you should do everything possible to prevent this. There is a growing threat of duplicate content that seems overwhelming and it will require much time to combat. However, the work involved in managing it will be worth it. You should take some measures to avoid getting your content duplicated.
How does duplicate content hamper SEO performance?
Duplicate content can negatively impact the search visibility for a variety of reasons as the search engines have a very difficult time deciding which version of the content you should show the users. The duplicate content can create the following-
- Internal competition
The search engines won’t know what page to rank if they are similar. This may create a confusing user experience as they wouldn’t know which version of the page they should click on.
- Wasted crawl budget
If there are numerous pages that contain duplicate content and you only want one content indexed, the crawlers will still crawl all the duplicate variants that can take the time away from them and crawl non-duplicate pages.
- Diluted link equity
The external and internal links may point to different variants of the page since there may be confusion on which one you should link to. This will also split the link equity across multiple pages.
How to resolve duplicate content?
For the HTTP vs HTTPS content issues, you should implement the 301 redirects from the HTTP URL variation to the HTTP URL. It is very important that the HTTP pages are redirected very carefully over to their HTTP reciprocal for avoiding equity loss and creating a poor user experience.
For all the www and non-www mixed casing and trailing vs the non-trailing slash URLs, you can also implement a server-side 301 redirect to force the URLs to one URL variation.
You should consider the following metrics when looking for the higher performance page to consolidate the content to-
- A total number of backlinks.
- Traffic.
- Conversions.
Wrapping up
The problem of duplicate content can be perplexing, but in a nutshell, it is as follows:
Internal duplication of content should be avoided; provided it’s purposeful, external duplication of content is good. Utilizing legal content duplication outside of your website is a useful technique to reach more people with your message.
The user experience will be enhanced by minimising internal duplicate material, which will also assist search engines in properly indexing your site.
No ordinary type of content duplication violates search engine standards, even if Google penalises obvious content duplication that is intended to game the system.
For the sake of your users, you should prevent needless content duplication and capitalise on appropriate external duplication. The end goal is to get original content in front of more people, and avoiding duplicate content can help you do that.
