Duplicate content – what is the risk and how to deal with it? - Explore health, fitness, car SUV, Insurance Claim and policy, and more on Niketrainers.

Content duplication is a big problem as it makes it difficult for your website to rank high in the search engines. If Google decides that the texts placed on the website have been copied,positioningactivities will not bring the expected results. Do you know what the risk of duplicate content is? How to deal with duplicate content?

In this article, Niketrainers.com.co will tell you:

Where does duplicate content come from?

When the Google Panda algorithm appeared in 2011, more attention was paid to the quality of content on websites. Content has become one of the most important ranking factors and it was necessary to find a solution how to get rid of the copied texts. However, it is worth remembering that duplicate content does not have a single source, so removing it is not always as easy.

Publish content across pages

It happens that duplicate content appears as a result of publishing the same texts on different sites belonging to the same company. How it’s possible? This happens when apart from the main website, for example, back-end websites are also used. Even if the content is not copied from start to finish, but only very similar, Google may consider it duplicate content. The penalty is then imposed on one or more parties.

Theft of texts

In order to prepare high-quality texts, you need to have the appropriate knowledge and skills. It often requires a lot of research and a lot of time to write. However, some people forget this and prefer to take shortcuts. Content theft is a common problem that is committed not only by website owners, but also copywriters and content writers. Therefore, it is worth verifying who is entrusted with creating texts and remember that looking for savings in this matter is not the best solution.

Duplicate content - what is the risk and how to deal with it?

Duplicate content on several sales platforms

People selling online often offer their products on several platforms, not only in their own store but also, for example, Allegro. Not everyone remembers that the best solution is to prepare several versions of the product description. Posting the same content on several e-commerce platforms is likely to be detected very soon. The problem in this case is that you are also copying the descriptions directly from the manufacturer’s website.

Synonymized texts

The use of synonymized texts is an example of a technique in the field of Black Hat SEO. When creating this type of content, you use as many synonyms of words as possible and then paste the whole thing into a special tool. In this way, you can get at least a few versions of the text with selected keywords. It is very common for the content obtained to be of low quality, so it is mainly placed in the backend.

Publishing of partners’ texts

It is not bad practice to publish press releases or sponsorship articles provided by partners, but it must be done skillfully. Putting the same content in several places is duplicate content. To prevent this from happening, you should avoid disseminating the texts exactly as they appeared on the partner’s website. For this reason, it is becoming more and more popular to prepare messages in two versions: for the main website and for external websites.

What is the risk of duplicate content?

The consequences of duplicate content are a complex topic. Copied content in itself usually does not have very serious consequences for the site. Nevertheless, it does affect the position of the page in the search engine. As John Mueller from Google emphasizes, websites that receive substantive, unique and high-quality texts with valuable key phrases are awarded mainly. Duplicate content is not considered to be a basis for action against the site, unless it is to manipulate search results. So what is the risk of duplicate content?

Duplicate content – relevance to search engines

One of the main problems duplicate content creates for search engines is the difficulty of determining which sites to index and which to exclude. The matter is not very complicated if the entiresiteis duplicated. However, the situation is a bit different when the page contains original elements, such as a footer. In 2017, J. Mueller explained that then all sites are indexed. At the time of generating search results, only one page is usually selected, because it makes no sense to show the user all the content that has the same content. Duplicate content also means that search engines do not fully know how to analyze anchor texts and other such factors.

Duplicate content – relevance to website owners

The owner of the page with duplicate content first of all notices a drop in search engine position. As a result, the website is less frequently visited by users and it becomes difficult to increase sales of the offered products or interest in services. It is very rare that a page is completely removed from the Google index and stops appearing in the search engine at all, although it is not impossible. As already mentioned, this happens if Google determines that it intends to manipulate the search results. Various considerations are taken into account, including publishing a lot of copied content from more famous sites and the deliberate creation of domains with a lot of duplicate text.

How to deal with duplicate content?

It is not uncommon that website owners do not intentionally create duplicate content. Sometimes they don’t even realize there is duplicate content on their sites. It is worth analyzing with the use of special tools, especially when, despite the actions taken, the website does not rank highly in the search engine. You can use, for example, Copyscape, Siteliner, Duplichecker, Plagspotter, orScreaming Frogto check duplicates. Another method is to copy a piece of text from your website and paste it into a search engine. This allows you to check if Google finds content on other sites in its index. In some cases, you may unexpectedly discover content theft from your own site. There are many ways to get rid of duplicate content, and the selection of the most appropriate depends largely on the source of the problem.

301 redirects

One of the best ways to get rid of duplicate content is often to set up 301 redirects. They are supposed to lead from the duplicate (so-called side) page to the one with the original texts. The easiest way is to create the appropriate code in the .htaccess file, for example in the case of an Apache server. If it is an IIS server, redirects can be done using the administration console. Thanks to this, both users and Google robots or other robots will be redirected to the right page.

Avoiding schematics and publishing unfinished pages

As Google advises, placing the same content on all subpages, e.g. regarding copyright law, is not the best solution. You can read in the Developer Search Guide that a better method is to create a short summary and add a link to more detailed information. This allows you to avoid patterns and unnecessary repetitions.

Google also recommends that you avoid using temporary versions of your site (if possible). It is not worth publishing pages for which no content has been prepared yet, because then users will not see anything. If creating a temporary version is unavoidable, it is a good idea to use the ‘noindex‘ tag to prevent it from showing up in the search engine.

Use of canonical links

Canonical links (rel = canonical) are used for a similar purpose as 301 redirects. However, in this case, all subpages are available to users, but only those indicated are indexed by Google. You can use the rel = canonical attribute to determine the major version of a URL and suggest to search engines that similar ones are just a copy. The use of canonical links is a popular solution to the problem of internal duplicate content.

Source:https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/consolidate-duplicate-urls?hl=pl

Focusing on original, high-quality content

Writing skills also play an important role in the fight against duplicate content. Google focuses primarily on the quality of the content published on its pages and this cannot be forgotten. If your own preparation of texts is too much of a challenge for you, trust a professional agency that employs copywriters.

If you own several similar pages, consider combining them into one or expanding each to make the content unique. One should also pay attention to the problem of keyword cannibalism. In fact, sooner or later it will appear on all websites where posts on similar topics are published on an ongoing basis. When headlines, subheadings, and key phrases begin to repeat, your page rank will drop. In order to prevent cannibalization of keywords, you need to limit or even abandon the use of the same phrases on subpages. You should also consider optimizing each for a different set of keywords. It is also sometimes helpful to use 301 redirects or canonical links.

To avoid duplication of content and the risks associated with it, think carefully about the structure of your website. Also, remember to publish unique and polished texts. When you discover content theft, don’t hesitate and take the appropriate steps. You can contact the site owner and then ask them to remove the duplicate or add a canonical link to your page, which is original in terms of content. Another solution is to ask Google to remove the site with the copied content from the search results for copyright infringement.