Duplicate content is a common issue website owners face, and it can significantly impact your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts. It occurs when two or more web pages have similar or identical content. This can confuse search engine algorithms and hurt your website’s ranking in search engine results.
This article will discuss duplicate content, its causes, and how it affects your SEO. Discover some strategies you can use to prevent it from happening and improve your website’s visibility in search engine results.
What Kinds of Content Are Duplicated?
Text passages that are the same as one another (exact copies) or strikingly similar are called duplicate content (joint or near-duplicates). Two bits of content are considered virtually comparable if their differences are minimal.
Of course, sharing some things is customary and occasionally unavoidable (i.e., quoting another article online).
Duplicate Content Types
Duplicate content can fall into two categories:
- Internal content duplication produces duplicate material on one domain using numerous internal URLs (on the same website).
- Cross-domain duplication, commonly called external duplicate content, happens when search engines index the exact page copy on two or more different websites.
Both external and internal components can be duplicated exactly or very closely. If you want more information on these aspects, speaking with an SEO expert is best.
Does Duplicate Content Harm SEO?
Google does not formally penalise websites that use duplicate content. But the same happens when duplicate content is filtered: your websites lose rankings.
Due to duplicate content, Google must decide which linked pages to show in the top results. Regardless of who created the content, there is a good chance that the original page won’t appear in the top search results.
SEO is harmed by duplicate content for several reasons, including this. Here are a few more strong objections to content duplication.
Problems with Internal Duplicate Content
Site Elements
Make sure the following are on each page to prevent difficulties with duplicate content on your website:
- headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) that are distinct from those on other pages of your website
- unique page titles and meta descriptions in the page’s HTML code
Most of a page’s content comprises headings, the meta description, and the page title. It’s safer to steer clear of the muddy waters of copied material as much as possible. Also, it’s an excellent approach to include information that search engines will appreciate in your meta descriptions.
If you have numerous pages but cannot create a different meta description for each one, skip it. Google frequently replaces the meta description with excerpts from your article. Providing a unique meta description is still advised because it is crucial for increasing click-throughs.
Some of the several outside methods by that duplicate content can appear are as follows:
Syndicated Material
The process through which a piece of content, which most likely debuted on your blog, is published on another website is known as content syndication. That differs from scraping your content because you permitted it to be used on another website.
Scraped Content
Website owners may leverage content from other websites to boost their organic visibility; this practice is known as “scraped material.” Content scrapers occasionally try to “rewrite” previously collected content using computer programs.
It’s not always easy to tell when content has been scraped because the scrapers don’t always care to change all the branded phrases.
A human reviewer from Google will examine the website to determine if the page complies with the Google Search Essentials (formerly Webmaster Guidelines). You will either discover that your website’s rating has been significantly dropped or that it has been completely removed from the search results if it is reported for attempting to manipulate Google’s search index.
You should alert Google by filing a webspam report under the “Copyright and other legal issues” heading if you’ve come across content that has been scraped.
Conclusion
Duplicate content is a major issue when it comes to SEO and can have a drastic effect on your website’s rankings. It is important to ensure your content is unique, original, and high quality to rank well in search engine results. If you are found guilty of duplicate content, search engines may penalise your website to the point where it is no longer ranked in its results. To ensure your content is fresh and optimised, you can hire SEO services to do that for you!
You can maintain control of your content marketing by using The SEO Room. We are a digital marketing company in Perth that can assist you in increasing your internet visibility. To begin, contact us now to speak with an SEO expert in Perth!
