Duplicate content is the content that is copy and pastes on the internet. So it is important to be aware of duplicate content SEO.
To start off, when the same content gets found, the situation becomes complex for search engines. As a result, the search engines become unable to decide which version is more relevant to the given search query.
Due to the presence of duplicate content, site owners suffer from ranking problems and loose page traffic as search engines provide less relevant results.
There are still three biggest issues with duplicate content are as follows:
- First, search engines do not know which version to include/exclude from their indices
- Second, search engines do not know whether to direct the link metrics to one page or keep it separate between multiple versions
- Third, search engines do not know which version to rank for query results
Duplicate content may cause some pages or sites not to index by the search engines. This further leads to instructing the crawling program to stop the indexing of pages. Because the search engine finds multiple copies of the same page under different URLs.
Repetitive or duplicate content also degrades the performance of search engines so search engines come up with newer updates every time.
Where Search Engines Find Duplicate Content
Under the following circumstances, the search engines find duplicate content SEO
- When product descriptions from manufacturers and publishers produce a number of different distributors in large eCommerce sites
- Alternative print pages
- When pages start reproducing syndicate RSS feeds through a server-side script
- Canonicalization issues, where an inquiry engine may even see an equivalent page as different pages with different URLs
- When pages share too many common elements including title, Meta descriptions, headings, navigation, and text or closely resemble each other.
- Copyright infringement
- Use of an equivalent or very similar pages on different subdomains or different country top-level domains (TLDs)
- Article syndication
- Mirror Sites
Causes:
Content duplication – due to the following reasons:
- URL Parameters:
URL parameters such as click tracking and some analytics code may result in duplicating the content. - Printer-Friendly:
When multiple versions of pages of printer-friendly content get to indexation, it causes duplication in the content. - Session IDs:
Session IDs are the common causes of duplicate content. Duplication in the content occurs when each user who visits a website is having a different session ID.
Some duplicate content may cause page filtration when the search engine serves them as search results to the user. Hence there remains no guarantee of which page will be shown at the result list and which version won’t.
If search engines do not want to show similar content at the search result list, they have to filter the content consuming a big amount of time
Go back to main content How To Optimize Content For SEO.