Nothing is more off putting than duplicated content. You spend hours and hours of your day searching for something particular, but always end up with the same descriptions and content. It distracts prospective users, and negatively impacts the SEO ranking of the website.
Duplication is unavoidable, considering the amount of competition present on the internet. However, it can be fixed with a few simple yet comprehensive steps.
Duplicate content refers to three types of content:
- Exact replica of data, or idea found on another website.
- Identical content with a few tweaks here and there.
- Content which is present in more than one websites of separate brands.
It is an easy tactic to develop content, but is it really worth it? Simply word swapping is not going to help your page in attracting organic traffic to your website. In fact, it can yield a negative outcome. Duplicate content can be off putting for SEO.
Don’t worry. There are several ways you can use to prevent the effect of duplicate data. You just need some technical fixes.
How Does Duplicate Hamper Your SEO Growth?
While writing content it is essential to understand that you are not designing data for humans only. Google’s crawler bots and other SEO tools also go through your websites searching for the relevant content. In some cases it can result in a penalty from Google.
Furthermore, duplicate content can result in wrong version of pages in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).
Ultimately key pages might stop working and can face indexing problems in SERPs.
You traffic and SEO ranking can also drastically drop due to duplicate content.
Considering the sheer seriousness of the situation, it is the duty of the content creator to come up with unique content. I know, I know, it is not easy, and for some it might seem like Mission Impossible.
But all you need is a prudent combination of smart architecture, continual updates and site maintenance and the techniques to rid yourself of duplicate content, and stop other websites from copying your content.
Taxonomy
It is the way you arrange, and name the content. You can assign a unique keyword to your document. It needs to be relevant so that the crawler robots can easily find them. It needs to be unique enough to set you apart from your competition, and become your identity.
Using Dedicated Tags
If you want to combat the evils of duplication of content then go for dedicated tags. You can also refer to them as canonical tags. It lets Google know that you own that particular content if it is found elsewhere. Consequently, Google always know the main version of the content.
Canonical tags are of two types. One points towards the page, and the other points you away from the page. The former tells the search engines that there is another version, known as the “master” version available on the internet. The latter version knows it is the master version itself and refers to themselves as canonical tags. These referencing canonicals help to recognize duplicate data and then getting rid of it as well.
Go for Meta Tagging
You can prevent the risk of duplicating content is determining the signals meta robots are sending to search engines while crawling through your content.
Meta robots tags are useful if you want to exclude a certain page, or pages, from being indexed by Google and would prefer them not to show in search results.
By using the ‘no index’ meta robots tag in the page’s HTML code, you’re basically telling Google that you don’t want it to appear in SERPs. This approach is favoured over Robots.txt blocking because it allows for more granular blocking of a specific page or file, whereas Robots.txt is often a bigger scale project. Although this instruction can be given for many reasons, Google will understand this directive and should exclude the duplicate pages from SERPs.
Duplicate URLs
It is not the content, but URLs can also cause duplication issues for a website. Sometimes certain elements related to the URL’s structure can cause duplication. Mostly you do not need to provide instructions for each URL to be treated as an address for a different page. However, sometimes truancy of clarity can decrease the site metrics, if the situation prolongs. For instance, HTTP and HTTPS can both result in duplication as well as expose you to security threats.
Try Including User Reviews
You can include Ops, personal and user reviews on the website. Such content becomes automatically unique and adds value to your website and business. Search engines have a knack for this kind of content is as well.
Customizing Product Descriptions
Tailor made product descriptions seem like a tedious task. It is time consuming as well. But it comes with a huge advantage. Unique and custom descriptions for your products or services gives you leverage over your competition. It also helps evade the problem of duplicate content. Ultimately, it adds value to your website and your content because you are not copy-pasting the descriptions provided by the manufactures, or even your own erstwhile written content.
Conclusion
Duplicate content is unattractive, but fixable. So, it should be fixed. Do not be embarrassed, or feel down if your content seems duplicated. It happens everywhere. Therefore, you should keep a keen eye on your content, and keep updating it from time to time.
Understand the reasons for the duplicate content. Whether it’s the duplicate URLs, taxonomy, or outdated content. Each of the problems is fixable. Focus on the following:
- Come up with prudent taxonomy,
- Used dedicated tags,
- Opt for meta tagging,
- Include user reviews,
- And go for customize product description to avoid duplication errors on your website.
