Duplicate content and SEO have a long history together.

If you care in any way about the SEO side of your website(s), you've already heard that duplicate content can be a roadblock to your Google rankings.

Incidentally, the team at Google says: "We try hard to index and display pages with distinct information." That means if you have pages on your site without distinct information, it can significantly affect your search engine rankings.

Moreover, the Panda algorithm update, which penalizes the existence of duplicate content, was launched back in 2011. This filter helps reduce low-quality sites from search results, thus highlighting the most relevant ones for a given topic. Google Panda claims that just a few pages with poor-quality or duplicate content can affect the entire site. Google also urges that such pages be deleted or blocked to prevent them from being indexed by the search engine.

So, Google prefers genuine and high-quality content. If one page's information matches another page's information, Google will consider it duplicate content. This can negatively impact your search engine rankings. There is also a risk that pages with such content will not be indexed at all (i.e., stored in Google's database).

It's also important to note that "duplicate content" includes both pages that copy content from other sites and repetitive information within your site.

Duplicate Content on Your Site. How Exactly Are Duplicates Created?

As mentioned before, unique content is important. Duplicating it (plagiarism, reformulation, rewriting) or having many pages with similar content decreases your visibility in search engines.

You must ensure that your site does not have duplicate content, meaning the same content appears on different URLs. All unique content should be indexed. This is because the more pages with duplicate content a search engine indexes, the fewer resources Google has to process the unique and valuable pages of your site.

Depending on how new pages are formed, duplicates can arise from:

• Tags;
• Categories;
• URLs generated when searching on the website;
• URL parameters for campaign tracking and filtering;
• WWW vs. non-WWW URLs;
• Author archives;
• Pagination of comments.

For example, the structure of the WordPress CMS can introduce errors that negatively impact SEO. That is, it can generate a lot of duplicate content. To optimize WordPress for SEO, consider the following:

• Create unique titles for each page.
• Write unique meta descriptions for each page.
• Block the indexing of multiple instances of the same article.
• Specify in robots.txt where Google and other crawlers are allowed to index.

Another solution is to use canonical tags. The correct use of the rel="canonical" tag prevents duplicate content from affecting your site. Canonical tags inform search engines that a specified URL is the primary version of a page.

What Are the Top Three Problems of Sites with a Lot of Duplicate Content?

• Less organic traffic – Google does not want to rank pages with content copied from other sources (including other pages on your website). If Google is unsure which page is "original," all versions will struggle to rank.
• Google penalty (extremely rare) – Google has stated that duplicate content can lead to a penalty or even the complete de-indexing of a website.
• Fewer indexed pages – This is especially critical for websites with many pages (such as e-commerce sites). Sometimes, Google does not just lower the ranking of duplicate content; it refuses to index it altogether.

Fight Duplicate Links and Information

Use an SEO audit tool to find duplicate content: raventools.com

It scans your site for duplicate (or weak) content and highlights the pages that need updates.

To check if your website content is unique, you can use https://www.copyscape.com/

Using Siteliner can help you quickly identify duplicate content issues on your site.

How Do You Fight Those Who Steal Your Content?

You can remove stolen content by exercising your rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Submit a DMCA takedown notice where the site is hosted. You can use this link to check who is hosting the site that stole your content:

https://lookup.icann.org/en/lookup

However, be aware that some hosting providers ignore DMCA complaints.

Here's what search results look like after content has been removed:

Conclusions About Duplicate Content and SEO

Having content on your site that is identical to other material online can reduce your chances of ranking well in search engine results. It is crucial to ensure that the content on your site is unique and at least 95% original.

Caution is always advisable. Check content uniqueness with Copyscape or Siteliner.

If you want top rankings in Google, consistently create high-quality content that provides more depth than your competitors (at least for your most important products). Avoid duplicate content at all costs and stand out with engaging, well-optimized texts. This includes optimizing product descriptions and blog posts and using exceptional images, videos, infographics, etc.

But if you don't have time to create high-quality content, you can always rely on our SEO Copywriting service at +373 69 809 235, or leave us a message at info{@}seolitte.com. We have over 8 years of experience in digital marketing.