Loading ...Search engine optimisation is or should be part of any web owner’s life today. If a website is not optimised, the search engines cannot find it and that means searchers will never see it. Since the launch of the internet search engines have changed radically to keep up with changes and demands. There are untold billions of web pages today, so it means ways have had to be devised to keep things ethical.
Filters
One of the filters that Google has implemented is the duplicate content filter. This applies to identical content or content that is excessively similar. The filter is not perfect, but it works well. When it finds content that has been replicated in several different places on the internet it will only give credit and display that content from the source where it originated. When you have been found guilty of using duplicate content your website is dropped from the main SE index. This is disastrous for any website and your web traffic drops to nearly zero.
Content duplicated on other domains
People steal content from the legitimate sites and use it as their own, especially content that has great value. What makes this worse is that sometimes they might get credited as the source and your own website pays the price. This greatly harms any SEO efforts you have put into your own website. Whenever you find what is called ‘scrapper sites’ stealing your content when you didn’t give permission, content them and request immediate removal. If this does not work, go the legal route. Contact Google and report this infringement under the DMCA regulations.
Duplicated content within own website
E-commerce websites are hugely at risk of accidentally generating duplicate content because they often sell hundreds of products that are the same. Another problem is session specific URLs that end up creating duplicate content. Your blog is another culprit that falls prey easily to the duplicated content problem. When you do postings on the home page as well as on the direct post URL this becomes a problem. Duplicated content brings the wheels of your search engine optimization efforts to a screeching halt.
The solution is to use optimization to correct the problem. Leaving it to Google to decide which pages to index and which not, is a bad idea. Checking the internal linking structure should be an ongoing maintenance task. This is the best way to ensure that you always link to the same URL. Google webmaster tool is an effective way specify to the spiders in which way you want the website to be indexed.
Duplicated content has become a huge issue on the internet and measures to stop this are becoming ever stricter. It is not worth losing your web presence and potential customers through accidental duplicated content. Being vigilant and ethical is the only way to keep your website from gaining an untrustworthy reputation. No business today can afford to incur penalties for duplicated content when simple and effective SEO can prevent it.
Related posts:
- Don’t let the duplicate filter wipe you out
- Duplicate Content is Black Hat SEO
- The issue of duplicate content
- Duplicate content is a costly short cut
- The 7 deadly sins of usability
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