Creating unique content is what every company strives for, but the internet is a pool filled with so much information that duplication of content is very common. According to Matt Cutts, the former head of Google’s search spam, about 25 to 30 percent of the content on the internet is duplicate.
This creates many Myths About Duplicate Content that are not actually true. Before diving into the most common ones, see the difference between original and duplicate content.
Original vs duplicate content: Duplication in content is not confined to only one definition of word-to-word copying from another source. In fact, For Google duplicate content means substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, not deceptive in origin. Therefore, if your content fulfills Google’s definition, then it is duplicate, otherwise, it’s not.
Here Are Some Most Common Myths about Duplicate Content
- Duplicate content gets penalized by Google
One of the most common Duplicate Content Misconceptions is that it gets penalized by Google or it affects the ranking of a website, but is it actually true? No, Google doesn’t penalize a website for having duplicate content nor does it lower its ranking. Moreover, Google has designed many algorithms to prevent duplicate content from affecting webmasters. These algorithms filter out the best URL to be displayed. As a result, Google usually recognizes the original source and ranks it, but sometimes it may rank the page you didn’t want to. In some rare cases in which duplicate content is used to manipulate search rankings only then Google takes action against those web pages, which may result in lowering their ranking or not indexing them at all. Duplicate content must be avoided at all costs.
- The 3 major ranking factors of Google
In March 2016, Andrei Lipattsev announced that the top Google/SEO ranking factors are content, links, and RankBrain. However, Mueller has dismissed this statement by saying that it isn’t possible to determine the most important ranking factor as it changes from query-to-query and from day-to-day.
- Having the same text on many pages causes duplication
Replicating a piece of content is not what causes the duplication problem, having multiple links redirecting to one URL does. Usually, this happens due to tracking parameters that get recorded in the URL’s path. In addition to tracking parameters, the rearrangement of items on a website by users also gives rise to URL duplication on your webpage. This, in turn, causes internal duplicate content problems as search engines, while filtering out duplicate URLs normally pick one version and filter out the others.
- Regional sites with translated material do not bring duplication
Copying material from one of your sites and utilizing its translated version on your regional domain causes duplication problems. Especially when automatic translation tools have been used to translate the source material. Word-to-word translations are more prone to get recognized by Google. Hence, it is best to tailor your translated material according to the audience you are trying to reach.
For further clarification you can read about Google John Mueller on duplicate content below:
Firstly, he clarified the Ranking factor duplicate content myth by stating that duplicate content does not create a negative impact on the search rankings. Even sites with partial or fully duplicated content will not get penalized, instead one of them would rank while the others won’t. He further illustrated the commonness of duplication by giving an example of online retail websites, which sell the same products and most likely have the same content. Google is still not going to interpret negative cues from crawling a product that is shown on another retailer’s site. In addition, he also stated that footers of the websites are technically qualified as duplicate content, but they also do not impact search rankings.
How to check for content duplication on your website? There are many tools available on the internet that help find duplicate content. Every good
Digital marketing companies in USA use them to make sure they are delivering quality. If you want to look for duplicate material on your own site or if you want to see which sites have copied your content, you can use the following duplicate content checking tools to detect them.
Siteliner: this amazing tool searches for internal duplicate content. Hence, if you want to check how much content on your website is duplicate, you can use Siteliner.
CopyScape: CopyScape is one of the best content duplication tools, which is not only accurate but also easy to use. In order to check which websites have the same content as yours just insert your website’s link in the box on the homepage, and you will be shown all the results. Not only this, for further details, you can click the results to see which parts of your text are duplicates.
Manual check using Google: though all the checkers mentioned above are easy to use and show accurate results, doing a manual check using Google can let you see what duplicate content according to Google itself is. To check the content of a certain page, you can visit the page and extract an attractive text snippet (the textual part that is more prone to being copied and searched by the users.) After copying the text snippet, the next thing you need to do is to place it in between quotation marks in the Google search bar and press search. As a result, you will be shown all the web pages contain the exact same piece of text.
What to do if you have duplicate content? To get rid of duplicate content from your website, you should first know what causes duplication in content.
Causes of Duplication in Content
- URL parameters: parameters and the order in which they appear in the URL play a huge role in duplication.
- Session IDs: every internal link on the website gets a unique Session ID added to its URL. As a result, a new URL is created and hence, duplicate content.
- WWW vs. non-WWW or HTTP vs. HTTPS: if your website has different versions with different prefixes, but with the same content, then you can have content duplication problems.
- Scrapers: identical content used in reposting and product description can also cause duplication problems.
- Pagination: incorrect pagination, such as having a “View All” page and paginated pages without a correct rel=canonical can increase content duplication on your website.
Content Duplication Solutions: If you find duplicate content on your website, you can do the following to remove it:
- Use Canonical Tags: These tags are used to indicate the source of the original version of the content. For example: <link rel= canonical href=www.abcd.com/page1.html/ >
- Keep calm and let Google do its work: Google isn’t unaware of the higher percentage of duplicate content as Googlebot, Google’s web crawler crawls through a lot of websites daily, it knows the original source of the content and doesn’t penalize copied versions.
- Avoid boilerplate repetition: using too much boilerplate can bring in more noise in website semantics. This eventually confuses search engines and makes them ignore your web page completely. According to Google guidelines, you can minimize repeating boilerplate content by reducing the length of the content.
- Use URL parameter handling tools: this tells Google how to handle URL parameters
- 301 redirects: if you want to redirect a bunch of duplicate content to its original source, it is best to use 301 redirects. This will help the original source to rank better as Googlebot will process the redirect and index the original content only.
- Avoid placeholders in empty pages: if you don’t have real content for a page it is advised Google avoid publishing it instead of creating a placeholder. If you do so, use the no-index tag to block these pages from being indexed.
All in all, duplication of content is very common, just like the myths related to it. Now that you know what the truth is and how you can check and fix duplicate content, you can improve your search rankings more efficiently.
Author Bio:
Amanda Hayward is the digital marketing manager at the web factory. Even formerly Amanda has worked with the best digital marketing services in the USA. She has worked in branding channels, companies, and corporates as well. Her clients and companies have always been pleased by her dedication to serving them. She is an analytical, efficient, and smart professional. She also provides her services on freelancing platforms.
