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Duplicate content can sabotage even the best search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. It can happen with the best of intentions. You may be trying to rank for a specific term and publish two blogs Google sees as nearly identical. Or you might have similar products whose pages contain multiple similar words.
However it happens, it’s important to find your duplicate content and fix it.
What Is Duplicate Content?
Duplicate content refers to similar or identical content that appears across multiple URLs. It can happen intentionally if someone plagiarizes your website. It can also happen when you create a separate URL for every version of a product. For example, if you’re running an e-commerce site that sells running shoes, you might have multiple URLs for different brands. If the product descriptions are too similar, Google flags each URL as duplicate content.
It can also happen when you guest author a blog for another company and your bio matches the “about me” section on your website, or if you offer a printer-friendly version of a specific web page.
How Does Duplicate Content Impact SEO?
Google and other search engines won’t punish you for duplicate content unless it’s clearly deceptive. If you’re duplicating content to rank higher for a specific term, Google will likely flag you as spam and hide you in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Although you’re not being punished for duplicate content, it still affects your SEO by:
- Diluting your authority: Internal and external backlinks point to different URLs, which makes it look like you have fewer backlinks.
- Wasting your crawl budget: Search engines are only able to crawl a certain number of web pages on your site in a certain time. Duplicate content forces the algorithm to crawl less valuable content.
- Confusing search engines: When a search engine sees duplicate content, it doesn’t know which one is “original” and most relevant to a search.
Common Causes of Duplicate Content
Most of the time, duplicate content is accidental. It’s not deceptive. It often stems from how your content management system behaves rather than your content decisions. Common technical causes include:
- URL variations: You might have these for technical reasons (HTTPS versus HTTP or www versus non-www) or because you use different URLs for product variations, such as color.
- URL parameters: These are extra commands in a URL, separated by question marks and ampersands. They guide sorting and filtering, but they can also confuse search engines.
- Session IDs: When your site tracks visitors’ actions through session IDs, Google might think there is more than one URL for a page.
- Pagination: If you’ve split a high-volume page into multiple pages, Google might flag each page as duplicate content.
There are other non-technical causes of duplicate content, such as:
- Syndication and republishing: When another website syndicates your content or you republish an old post, you end up with duplicate content.
- Reusing similar product category descriptions: There are only so many ways to describe a running shoe. But reusing the same or similar descriptions causes duplicate content. You might also use the manufacturer’s description, which is duplicated when other sites also use it.
- Updating old posts without redirects: Reoptimizing content is a great way to boost your SEO, but you need to redirect the old post so users arrive at the new one.
- Scraping or unauthorized copying: If someone is employing black hat SEO tactics, such as republishing your content by using a bot to scrape your site, you end up with duplicate content.
How Google Handles Duplicate Content
Google doesn’t have a duplicate content penalty. Purposely scraping content from another website and republishing it on your site is deceptive and may result in a penalty. Some people attempt to manipulate a search engine by building a low-quality doorway page to rank for a specific term. When someone clicks on the link, they are redirected to a different page. This practice violates Google’s guidelines.
But for the most part, duplicate content isn’t going to get you relegated to the pits of page 300 in the SERPs. For SEO, duplicate content makes Google attempt to choose a canonical page. This is one of the main reasons duplicate content is an issue for SEO. If you’re letting Google choose the "correct" version of a duplicate website, potential customers may not be seeing the right page.
For example, if you run an e-commerce site, you want people to see your main T-shirt menu when they search "T-shirt." If Google sees all your product pages as duplicated, it might show a specific T-shirt instead of the main menu.
How To Check for Duplicate Content on Your Site
Checking for duplicate content is the first step toward fixing it to increase your organic traffic. Audit your content and website as a whole.
Manually Check With a Google Search
Follow these steps to find duplicate content manually:
- Copy a snippet of language from your website.
- Paste it into a search bar and put quotation marks around it.
- Note any results that come back with the exact copy.
Use SEO and Crawling Tools
Manual checks can take forever and don’t always capture all the duplicates. Consider an SEO or duplicate content checker instead, such as:
- Screaming Frog: This web crawling tool will search for exact duplicates and near matches.
- Semrush and Ahrefs site audit: These SEO tools will flag duplicate content and other issues that might confuse a search engine. Semrush offers fixes.
- Google Search Console: This tool gives you a page indexing report. Look at the “why pages aren’t indexed” section to see which pages are being flagged as duplicates.
5 Ways To Fix Duplicate Content Issues
Now that you know where your duplicate content exists, you can take these steps to fix it.
1. Use Canonical Tags To Consolidate Ranking Signals
A canonical tag is an HTML code snippet that tells Google and other search engines which version of duplicate content is the original. You can add it manually (<link rel="canonical">), or you can use an SEO plugin in WordPress to add them to pages flagged as duplicate content. Some content management systems also have features for adding canonical tags.
Use them when you have duplicate content you need to keep on your site, such as similar product pages or content you’ve syndicated. For product pages, choose the one that best matches your intended user intent, such as a pillar page or main menu. Use an on-page SEO checklist to avoid duplicate content in the first place.
2. Implement 301 Redirects for Permanent Changes
A 301 redirect is a piece of code that sends users from an old URL to an updated one. It signals a permanent change. This code will bypass ranking equity, even when you have an old URL that is still highly ranked for search terms.
Use it on merged pages or retired URLs. You might merge two pages of weak content into one strong page for SEO. Redirect the old URLs to point to the updated page. You may also retire URLs containing outdated content, such as discontinued products.
3. Use Robots.txt or NOINDEX
Robots.txt and NOINDEX are meta tags that tell websites not to crawl your site or not to display it in search results.
NOINDEX keeps your content from appearing in search results. It’s a good tool for hiding private content or keeping low-value content out of search results. Use it for “Thank You” pages, pages in development, or content you’ve syndicated from another site.
Robots.txt tells web crawlers which parts of your page they’re not allowed to crawl. It will still let search engines index your site and include it in searches. You use the tag and commands, such as “Allow” or “Disallow,” to guide a web crawler. Use this tag to protect private pages or to block URLs that help users navigate your site.
If you are using it for duplicate content, try your other options first. This is generally one of the SEO techniques to avoid, so use it sparingly.
4. Differentiate Similar Pages With Unique Content
If you have multiple similar pages that need to exist, optimize your content to make sure they aren’t competing with each other for a search term. For example, if you need separate landing pages for ad campaigns targeting different audiences, use headlines and product descriptions to help search engines match each for user intent.
Your awareness campaign would feature benefits-oriented copy intended to educate people about the product or service. Your bottom-of-the-funnel conversion ad campaign for the same product would feature strong calls to action, client testimonials, and other content aimed at encouraging people to buy the product.
5. Request Removal or Attribution From Other Sites
If you’re searching for duplicate content manually or through an SEO tool, you might find your content copied on other websites. In this case, you can request that they remove your content or give you proper credit and a backlink to your website.
Start by asking the company directly. Use their “contact us” page or search for the person managing the website. Include the specific URL and explain why you want them to remove the content. If you don’t get an answer, send a follow-up in a few days. If they still don’t follow up, consider sending a cease-and-desist letter or talk to a copyright lawyer to see what you can do.
If you want them to give you credit, send attribution instructions with a URL they can link. This will create more backlinks and improve your authority. You can also add a canonical tag to your content to help search engines see it as the original.
Resolve Duplicate Content Issues and Strengthen Your SEO Strategy
Duplicate content does hurt your SEO. Finding and resolving content duplication issues helps improve your search engine ranking. Search engines can easily determine which page to display in search results. You’re not splitting search engine rankings across multiple pages on your website.
It also makes search engine bots more efficient since they’re not wasting crawl budget on low-quality or irrelevant pages. Choosing the best version of any duplicate content on your page also makes your content clearer to search engines and to people on your site.
You can choose to consolidate two duplicate pages into one strong page or designate one page as canonical so it appears in searches.
If you’re not sure where to start, use Compose.ly’s SEO services. We can help you identify duplicate content and develop a content strategy that improves your ranking. Contact us today to learn more.
