Duplicate Content and SEO: What’s the Big Deal

by Deependra Singh on May 5, 2021

With the search engine algorithm of Google getting stringent to enhance page experience, duplicate content can be a massive disaster for a website.

Most of us aren’t aware of the consequences of publishing duplicate content, which is perhaps why we ignore this critical aspect.

But how it affects our SEO ranking? Well, Google finds it difficult to analyze which content is more relevant to a query if similar content is available on more than one website on the internet.

Moreover, the overall ranking of the website in Google search is also affected if the content isn’t relevant to the audience and is available on more than one source.

Let’s have a quick look at some of the aspects associated with duplicate content and how to fix such issues.

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How Duplicate Content Impacts Site Owners

Every business seeks substantial growth by leveraging best-in-class content marketing and website optimization tactics that also build a brand reputation.

But if the content on a website is duplicated, the owner may face traffic issues and dwindling website rankings.

Since search engines precisely crawl content on every website and won’t show multiple versions of content that is already published on different websites, there’s a huge chance that the duplicate one wouldn’t be listed in the search results.

Apart from this, many businesses aren’t intentionally adding duplicate content to their website. In fact, they’re not even aware of the fact that their website contains duplicate content.

This is because many websites, for instance, e-Commerce websites that are selling similar products, may contain common content. Search engines aren’t able to recognize which one is the most relevant link.

The same goes for businesses offering similar services and they may or may not be aware of duplicate content published on their website.

Now, this thing would surely affect the overall search visibility.

Technical Issues Leading to Duplicate Content

Several technical issues may lead to duplicate content, or we can say that multiple URLs pointing to a single content source.

Many websites aren’t aware that their website’s different URLs are referring to a single page, which can further affect search engine crawling, and search engines like Google would consider it two separate links with similar content.

Furthermore, another technical glitch is the www vs. non-www duplicate content. This thing usually gets unnoticed as both the versions of a website’s page are accessible with or without www in the URL.

Businesses need to quickly analyze their website and figure out the actual cause that is restricting the website to rank in the top search result pages of Google.

Best Practices to Avoid Duplicate Content on Your Website

Here are few effective ways to ensure your website contains any duplicate content pages, especially due to some technical glitches.

1. Check your website’s indexed pages.

One of the best ways to hunt for duplicate content is to check the total number of indexed pages of your website.

You can check the same by searching it in the Google search bar. Add your website name in this way: site: XYZ(dot)com in the Google search bar.

Now in the Google Search Console, you can find your indexed pages. You must carefully check the number of pages in the console and ensure you created the same number of pages manually.

If the number of indexed pages is greater than what you created, there are multiple pages with duplicate content.

2. Correct redirection.

Another issue that can cause issues like duplicate ranking is incorrect redirection. In this scenario, the www version of your webpage isn’t redirecting to the non-www version or vice-versa.

This can be a result of switching your website from SSL and haven’t redirected your website to the new secure (HTTPS) URL.

Make sure all versions of your URL should redirect to a single place.

3. Using third-party SEO tools

Finding duplicate content across your website can be challenging and exhausting at the same time. It’s a great idea to leverage third-party tools that can quickly help you find duplicate content across your website.

Once you’re able to trace them, it’s time to either delete them or just redirect them to the source page.

This way, you can ensure that Google crawls only a single page with specific content, which further improves SEO rankings.

Final Thoughts

Duplicate content is an issue that every business is facing in direct or indirect ways. It’s something that businesses must consistently keep an eye on.

Besides the fact that duplicate content leads to traffic and ranking issues, some severe scenarios may even lead to legal consequences.

It’s advised to consider auditing your website frequently to shun any chance of availability of duplicate content or pages.