What is Duplicate Content in SEO? What Should You Know in 2021? What things can occur with your website if there is duplicate content. Any piece of content that appears in more than one place comes under duplicate content. And it is the most discussed topic among the SEO community. However, most people are confused with what exactly comes under duplicate content, how Google responds to duplicate content, and what things can occur with your website if there is duplicate content.
Lots of myths related to duplicate content and its penalties keep floating in the air, but you should not believe any of them blindly. This blog post is designed to offer you the right information about the duplicate content, what exactly it is, what are the ways to remove them, and how to deal with them in 2021. Let’s go right into it and discuss it in detail.
What Is Duplicate Content?
Example example content content.
Spotted?
Yes, all of you must have noticed that the words are written repeatedly. It is quite easy for human eyes to identify similar words in the sentence. And it is quite easier for the search engines too. They check content across all domains and spot the exact matching words.
As per the wording of Google, duplicate content is the block of content that has an exact match with the content on other domains. So, in simple terms, the content that appears in more than one place on the internet comes under the duplicate content category. This is because it usually occurs within the same domain.
What is Duplicate Content in SEO?
The main aim of Google is to deliver relevant, unique, meaningful, and informative content to the users as per their search query. Day by day, the quality of results is improving with the changes in the Google algorithm. Google knows very well what duplicate content is, where it is available, and after filtering, it presents search results.
The content that is repeated on several pages sometimes confuses Google, and it becomes difficult to rank the right one. Also, you should know that Google does not impose a penalty alone on duplicate content in terms of SEO. On the other hand, there will be the only effect on the ranking of the web pages because identical pages are present.
How Does Duplicate Content Impact SEO?
It is well known that Google never wants to rank pages that have duplicate content. Google says, “They aim to index and show pages only with the correct information to their users.” So if you have web pages on your website without distinct content, it will affect your search engine ranking.
People keep asking if duplicate content damages the SEO of the website. The simple answer is yes, but it should not always be related to the Google penalties and manual actions. Sometimes webmasters create different cases of duplicate content. And technically, it is not a penalty if your website ranking gets impacted by the search engine ranking. When there are similar types of content on the web pages, search engines do not get the idea about the best version.
Simply having duplicate content on the website acts as a nuisance for the search engines. This is because search engines do not know which pages should be shown in the search query results.
There are two main issues that are usually considered as the loss with duplicate content.
Search engines tend to improve the user’s search experience. For this reason, they most probably do not like to share multiple versions of the same content. Now search engines have to choose among the different versions, and as a result, the visibility of all similar web pages will dilute.
The second loss is related to the dilution of the link equity. For example, if there are two web pages with similar content, then sites will get confused about which is the right page to link. Rather than pointing to a single web link, they will point to many links, and as a result, it will affect the visibility of content. Get A Quote from A Web Design company you can trust.
Myths Related To The Duplicate Content
There are some myths related to duplicate content, and they are not valid.
- Duplicate content is the same text on different pages. But it is not exactly the same.
- The crawlers should be blocked to access duplicate pages. But it is not always useful or true.
- Duplicate content can lead to site penalties on manual action. It is not true unless and until the intention is to manipulate the SERP results.
- Google only shows one version by consolidating the matching content.
What Is The Process Of Identifying The Duplicate Content?
If duplicate content is existing over the net, then there must be some way to identify that. Most of the time, the website owners do not intensely create duplicate content, but there is almost 30% of duplicate content on the website at the current time.
If you have to check the duplicate content on the same domain: HTTP vs. HTTPS & www vs. non-www pages
There are two versions of the website if it has an SSL certificate installed, the first one is https://, and the second one is http://. Also ‘www’ prefix changes the domain name. You must have seen the website with such domains:
http://www.marketingsweet.com
https://www.marketingsweet.com
http://marketingsweet.com
https://marketingsweet.com
All these web pages are different from each other, and if they have similar content, then they will fall into the issue of duplicate content.
Also, if the case of trailing slash (/) is considered, then two different pages will be created with similar content. For example:
https://www.marketingsweet.com/blogs/
https://www.marketingsweet.com/blogs
Both web pages may appear similar and with identical content. And if there is no 301 redirection from the less deserving page to the more desired page, then search engines will treat these as two different web pages, and again, the problem of duplicate content will arise.
Have To Check The Duplicate Content With URL Variations
URL variation occurs with the difference in the URL parameters like analytics code and click-tracking that will lead to the duplicate content issue. These parameters often appear as a part of the URL in the form of the equal sign, question mark, and ampersand. They are mostly found on eCommerce websites. And these URL parameters are used to show the result as per the product groups or search query.
What Are The Reasons For The Duplicate Content?
- Variation In http And https
- Use Of www And Non-www
- Comment Pagination
- Use Of Trailing Slashes
- Printer-friendly Pages
- Parameters Of URL For Tracking And Sorting
- Session Ids
- Content Syndication
- Scrapers
What Is The Difference Between Copied Content And Duplicate Content?
The other face of duplicate content is copied content. It is different from duplicate content as, in this case, someone intensely takes the material/content from the original source and claims it as theirs. This type of act (copying someone else’s content and using it without authorization) is a violation of Google guidelines and copyright law.
Conclusion
Most search engine experts take duplicate content as a danger sign for their website. But it is not so. Duplicate content is quite confusing, and different pages can be created for the same keywords. However, you should also know that Google does not penalize your website on the basis of duplicate content only. It is only a myth; however, it has an effect on website ranking.
If you want to know more about duplicate content or the health of your website, you can contact professionals of Marketing Sweet. We know the right way to remove duplicate content from your website. In addition, our SEO Adelaide experts will improve your website ranking and visibility.
Feel free to call us at 08 8337 4340 to know more about our services.
