How To Avoid Duplicate Content
The question of duplicate or repeated content is constantly been asked.
Content duplication is no joke to SEO.
An illegal duplication of content in such a way as to deceive search engines or believing that your site won’t be spotted, you are sure heading for a ban by search engines.
When can content be seen as duplicate?
Just as the name sounds, a duplicate content is total or part copying of a website page found in more than a place on the internet. Seeing this, search engine only picks one of the duplicated content and ignores others.
How bad this could be?
Simply imagine the instance where your competitors simply copies the contents of your website and places it on theirs and the search engine simply picks their site contents and ignores yours. Or another instance where your content management system makes multiples of your content and because search engine finds several of such duplications, it decides not to index your site, this is how bad duplication can get a site.
How can content duplication occur?
Most content duplication issues occur as a result of technological errors or when your content is unknowingly exposed to danger. Examples of such instances are;
- Duplicated websites – A covered or tricky tactics of duplicating website pages and presenting them on various domains. The sites will be in use with similarity in website contents. This is done as a tricky way to getting search engines into indexing all sites.
- Doorway pages – This is another sneaky tactics of an unreal content of a domain which is shown to users and search engines, but when a visitor or user reaches or clicks on the page, they are redirected to another domain.
It is never advised to use any of the above listed, as your website is sure to be banned when fished-out by search engine.
Aside the above listed, other ways you might be caught for content duplication are;
Associated Arrangements – If you have cases of your website content been distributed to other sites or your profiles on social media, simply know that this is also seen as content duplication. And search engine may decide to index your social media copy instead of your website.- Multiplication of Content On Your Own Site – You might decide to multiply your copied content to different places on your own website, this is also seen as content duplication.
- Errors From Site Construction – Duplication in this case occurs when there are multiple paths generated leading to same page
The problems of content duplication occur as a result of parameters added to associate links and subdomain and the above reasons are few of the many reasons.
How to detect duplicate content:
A simple tool used for detecting duplicate content is CopyScape. Copyscape brushes through the internet and outlines the lists of url’s having same or similar content as yours.
If you are the author of website content duplicated to another site, it is advised your write to the owner of the duplicating site, requesting for the removal or deleting off the copied contents.
On the other hand, if you discover duplicates on your social profiles or an associate websites, first ensure that your site ranks higher in the Search Engine Results Pages. If it is you might just ignore but if not, it is highly advised to rewrite a unique content
Best practices going forward:
If you are looking at allotting the content beyond your website (with certain reasons) then here are some clues to save your from problems of content duplication;
First Impute On Your Site– This is not a guarantee that your content will be most preferred, but it clearly shows you are the originator of the content. The content originator is sure to be given preference unless the content duplicated is placed in a site more powerful than that of the originator or author.- Make Copied or Associated Content Unique – Try editing the copied piece of content so as to look a little different from the original.
- Connect Back To Your Own Site – By linking the copied content back to the original content, this clearly sows your website as the originator.
- Implementation of Tags– This simply shows search engines that the pages where your copied content is placed should be clearly seen and considered a copied content. This tags can be added just at the top or in front of the copied associates website.
Most cases, content duplicating is not a big issue but however there may be times where negligently it causes problems.
