What is Duplicate Content and how does it affect SEO?
Posted: Thu Dec 12, 2024 6:18 am
Duplicate content (DC) is a situation where exactly the same texts (duplicates) appear on one or more websites.
A very common example of this phenomenon is product descriptions. A manufacturer places a product description on its website, and then other stores add exactly the same content (1:1) to their websites.
The copy-and-paste strategy may be quick and easy, but it will seriously harm your site's rankings!
Duplicate content is therefore any content that appears in exactly the same (unchanged) form in different places on the Internet. This phenomenon most often occurs through "copy-paste" actions .
Importantly, Google algorithms efficiently identify which site placed the content first. The content on the primary site will be considered authentic and original, and any subsequent content that is a copy will be considered low-value copies.
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External and internal duplicate content
Duplicate content can be divided into external and internal.
Internal duplication of content occurs when:
there is some duplicate content on the same site. This can happen when, for example, two identical subpages are published by mistake or the same blog post is inadvertently published twice,
the home page is available at multiple addresses,
incorrect redirects occurred when implementing the SSL certificate,
the page has incorrect language versions.
All errors of this type reduce the effectiveness of the content.
External content duplication occurs when we talk about the exact same text content on different websites. This happens when, for example, content is stolen (illegally duplicating texts without the author's consent) or product descriptions are copied from the manufacturer's website by many stores.
Both of these cases contribute to a decrease in the effectiveness of Google positioning of sites that have copied content.
Google's algorithms know who authored the original text and promote the "mother" site.
NOTE: This rule may not work for a newly created website. Let's say you've set up a new blog and posted your own text there. Google's algorithms haven't had time to scan and index your site yet, but in the meantime a popular portal has stolen your text and placed it as a quote on its site. Google's algorithms scan older sites first, so even though you are the author of the original text, the older site that published it later may be considered its creator!
When does duplicate content really hurt?
Let's not get paranoid though. In the age of the internet it is really very hard to run a website, especially an extensive e-commerce one, in which no duplicate content would appear .
Sometimes it's not possible to write a thousand new product descriptions. It's worth knowing in which situations duplicate content on a page is really harmful.
Here are the main situations where duplicate content is harmful :
Your website contains duplicate content of product gambling data philippine package descriptions that can be found in other online stores and price comparison sites.
There is an incorrect implementation of canonical tags (rel=”canonical” tag) on your website and there are also incorrectly implemented parameters for sorting and filtering products on the website
The page has duplicate tabs for the same products or services at different URLs
No preferred website version
You use thoughtless product and blog post tags that create new subpages (and you don't even know it!)
Your site has unoptimized filter pages
What are the issues with DC (duplicate content)?
Duplicate content is undoubtedly a problem that needs to be solved.
If you don’t make sure that your site displays unique, high-quality content in the form of authored texts that don’t appear anywhere else, you run the risk of several things. Duplicate content causes the following problems:
makes positioning difficult,
limits the visibility of the page in the search engine,
contributes to the loss of credibility of your website not only in the eyes of algorithms, but also in the eyes of the audience who may come across the same content on different websites.
Make sure that no one steals your content, but don't duplicate it yourself either!
How to check duplicate content?
There are many tools available to help you check your website for duplicate content .
Not all tools have comprehensive functionalities, so it is worth using several to thoroughly test your site from different angles related to duplicate content .
The most popular tool to check duplicate content is:
Screaming Frog – used to verify duplicate META tags
Sitebulb – useful for detecting duplicate subpages
Google Search Console – this will allow us to check if there are duplicate titles and meta descriptions on the page
Ahrefs and Siteliner – useful for checking internal duplication
Copyscape – another very well-known tool for finding external duplication
A very common example of this phenomenon is product descriptions. A manufacturer places a product description on its website, and then other stores add exactly the same content (1:1) to their websites.
The copy-and-paste strategy may be quick and easy, but it will seriously harm your site's rankings!
Duplicate content is therefore any content that appears in exactly the same (unchanged) form in different places on the Internet. This phenomenon most often occurs through "copy-paste" actions .
Importantly, Google algorithms efficiently identify which site placed the content first. The content on the primary site will be considered authentic and original, and any subsequent content that is a copy will be considered low-value copies.
Let's talk about advertising your business on the Internet
Contact us!
External and internal duplicate content
Duplicate content can be divided into external and internal.
Internal duplication of content occurs when:
there is some duplicate content on the same site. This can happen when, for example, two identical subpages are published by mistake or the same blog post is inadvertently published twice,
the home page is available at multiple addresses,
incorrect redirects occurred when implementing the SSL certificate,
the page has incorrect language versions.
All errors of this type reduce the effectiveness of the content.
External content duplication occurs when we talk about the exact same text content on different websites. This happens when, for example, content is stolen (illegally duplicating texts without the author's consent) or product descriptions are copied from the manufacturer's website by many stores.
Both of these cases contribute to a decrease in the effectiveness of Google positioning of sites that have copied content.
Google's algorithms know who authored the original text and promote the "mother" site.
NOTE: This rule may not work for a newly created website. Let's say you've set up a new blog and posted your own text there. Google's algorithms haven't had time to scan and index your site yet, but in the meantime a popular portal has stolen your text and placed it as a quote on its site. Google's algorithms scan older sites first, so even though you are the author of the original text, the older site that published it later may be considered its creator!
When does duplicate content really hurt?
Let's not get paranoid though. In the age of the internet it is really very hard to run a website, especially an extensive e-commerce one, in which no duplicate content would appear .
Sometimes it's not possible to write a thousand new product descriptions. It's worth knowing in which situations duplicate content on a page is really harmful.
Here are the main situations where duplicate content is harmful :
Your website contains duplicate content of product gambling data philippine package descriptions that can be found in other online stores and price comparison sites.
There is an incorrect implementation of canonical tags (rel=”canonical” tag) on your website and there are also incorrectly implemented parameters for sorting and filtering products on the website
The page has duplicate tabs for the same products or services at different URLs
No preferred website version
You use thoughtless product and blog post tags that create new subpages (and you don't even know it!)
Your site has unoptimized filter pages
What are the issues with DC (duplicate content)?
Duplicate content is undoubtedly a problem that needs to be solved.
If you don’t make sure that your site displays unique, high-quality content in the form of authored texts that don’t appear anywhere else, you run the risk of several things. Duplicate content causes the following problems:
makes positioning difficult,
limits the visibility of the page in the search engine,
contributes to the loss of credibility of your website not only in the eyes of algorithms, but also in the eyes of the audience who may come across the same content on different websites.
Make sure that no one steals your content, but don't duplicate it yourself either!
How to check duplicate content?
There are many tools available to help you check your website for duplicate content .
Not all tools have comprehensive functionalities, so it is worth using several to thoroughly test your site from different angles related to duplicate content .
The most popular tool to check duplicate content is:
Screaming Frog – used to verify duplicate META tags
Sitebulb – useful for detecting duplicate subpages
Google Search Console – this will allow us to check if there are duplicate titles and meta descriptions on the page
Ahrefs and Siteliner – useful for checking internal duplication
Copyscape – another very well-known tool for finding external duplication