By: Pankaj Sakariya

January 2, 2020

Get Rid Of Duplicate Content with These Powerful Tactics

When it comes to the SEO part of any website, eliminating duplicate content from the website can be a daunting task. We put too much effort in building an SEO-friendly website that displays duplicate or poor content. Rather than focusing only on the backlinks and other SEO criteria, it is equally important to ensure that the content is completely unique. But such things rarely happen most of the time which adversely impacts the website of the owners.

Moreover, there are two types of duplicate content, onsite and offsite. When the duplication is seen in more unique URLs of the site, it is regarded as onsite duplication which is controlled by the web development team or the website’s admin.

Offsite duplication happens when the content is almost similar in two or more websites. This is not easy to be controlled as it relies on third party owners and offending websites. If you want to know more about duplicate content, read more! We have presented a complete guide on duplicate content which ensures that you do not have to face the consequences of duplicate content on your website. 

How Duplicate Content Affects Your Website?

You have to understand that unique content is always good for your website. It is one of the most lucrative ways to be different than other websites. When you know the content is unique, it stands out in the crowd as not everyone can create content like you. 

When you are promoting your brand and services with the same kind of content or your content is similar to the competitors, you will lose the trust of your target audience and at the same time, you will waste the advantage of being unique. 

Onsite and offsite duplicate content competes with one another. The user will definitely see the content, but will not rely on it. When the valuable content is found in a single URL on the web, that website has the highest chance of being a single authority to drive signals for the content. As you know what is duplicate content, let’s know the solutions and problems pertaining to duplicate content.

Off Site Duplicate Content

(Source: industrialmarketer.com)

Let’s see some of the primary sources of offsite duplication;

• Third-party content which has been republished on your site. This may typically include product descriptions by the manufacturer or advertising team of a certain brand;
• When you have approved the third-party content to publish on your website. This happens during the article distribution for your website;
• There may be instances when you do not know someone has stolen the content from your website and posted on their website without your permission. Such thieves can be a real trouble to your site. 

The above-given sources are the main reason for any type of duplication to the website. Let’s understand each of them in detail to get a clear idea.

Duplication due to Distribution of the Article

Before few years, the SEO strategy was more focused on republishing copied content for link building. When Google started being strict in terms of link schemes and quality content, there remained no point of republishing. When you are publishing the content on the website, you receive unique rights of the content as they do not want multiple versions of the content to decrease the value of the website. Google is also giving rights to the content creator, therefore, the publishers are allowing the content to get reused in their personal site. This can also create a problem of duplicate content as there are two versions of the content which is generating links.

If the number of duplicate versions is limited, the impact is also relatively limited. Here, the primary responsibility is of the author rather than the secondary publisher. The first-ever published version of the content is generally regarded as the official version of the content. Therefore, the publishers will receive more value of the content than the other’s website which is publishing it.

Product Descriptions

There is no doubt that the most prominent form of duplication comes from the product description where the content is used again and again. As many retailers sell the same products as other sellers, therefore, there is the same kind of content in the description of the product. Even when the layout of the pages is altered, the product pages are comparatively the same for various brands. 

Imagine a scenario where thousands of brands are selling the same type of product, so they will create the same database including similar images and content. What would be the end result? More similar content and nothing unique. 

How would a search engine be able to differentiate between Site A and Site B? The search engine would not be able to judge on the basis of the content so they include other criteria to give rank to the website. Links can also be one of the options to differentiate the website. More links mean more benefits!

If you have a tough competitor standing against you, there is a need for considering various elements rather than only link building. How can you make a great difference?

Ensure to create the most unique description for each product of your brand. It is quite challenging but with the help of qualified content writers you can knock off your competitors in the ranking game. Once you create something unique, the top place will be yours without doubts. You can also take the SEO service from Melbourne to figure out the exact concerns of your website.

Even when the products of many brands are the same, Google will give a higher position to that website where content is entirely unique. Any page which has unusual and interesting content will have a tremendous advantage over duplicate content. Well, unique content is not a single criteria for Google’s rankings, but it is one of the most essential criteria one cannot ignore. Even when it comes to customers, they have an urge to receive products and services which are unique and thus they follow websites which have the X factor in comparison to other brands.

Plagiarism Rise Due to Content Thieves 

Content scrapers are the biggest threat forcing duplicate content creation. Spammers and other malicious perpetrators also create tools that copy content from various websites and publish on the site. These sites copy the content to drive generic traffic to their site to get the clicks and promote ads of various sites. 

What you can do to remove your content from the web? Submit a copyright infringement report to Google to get the website removed from its search index. Moreover, it is not easy as it appears to be as submitting the reports can be really overwhelming.

You can deal with this situation by completely ignoring the fact that your content is being copied by others. Google can easily tell the difference between a scrap site and a quality site. Unfortunately, there are also times when the scrap content ranks higher in the Google rankings which is a downfall for many quality websites where the owner is working hard for creating the content.

You can fight the effects of scraped content by utilizing the absolute links within websites which have links redirecting to your site. Furthermore, you can also add a canonical tag to the source page. If the infiltrator copies any of the code, the canonical tag will give a signal to Google that you have the authority of a particular website and you are the originator. This will resolve the issue for your website, enabling more secure activities.

Duplicate Content Onsite

(Source : stanventures.com)

• Google treats both online and offline content in the same way. Onsite is less trivial as it is a type of duplication that one can control. Onsite duplicate content mostly happens due to poor architecture of the website or more due to careless website development. A powerful site structure is a base for a strong website.
• When the developers don’t come up with SEO friendly practices, they can lose valuable opportunities to get the content rank high in the self-competition. Google treats the duplicate content as same, and its algorithm can be a vital factor to decide the reliability of the content.
• If you are completely relying on Google for the security of the website and content, you are making a huge mistake as Google algorithms keep on changing, which is of the downfall for your website. Let’s know more about common onsite duplicate content.

Undesirable URLs in Search Results

Imagine a condition, when the ditto page is there in three to four different URLs. People would not at all be interested in clicking in any type of unfriendly URL, therefore the traffic will be less on the particular website. To get away with the problem of undesirable URLs, contact the SEO company in Sydney.

Backlink Dilution

If the same content is present in more URLs, then each such URLs may draw various backlinks. This results in the distribution of the link equity for different URLs. 

Burns Crawl Budget

Google searches for new content with the help of crawling, which suggests that they follow the links from the existing pages to the new pages. They also have the facility to recrawl which examines anything which is changed from time to time. In the case of duplicate content,  the servers develop more work for them. That affects the page speed at which the crawling happens for the updated pages. Here comes huge trouble where there can be delays in reindexing the updated pages and indexing the new pages.

Copied Content Outranks the Original Content

You can also permit websites to republish your content. The whole function is known as syndication. There are also times when the site may scrape your content and republish content without any permission. Both conditions can end up having duplicate content for different domains, but they do not cause any problems. The problem starts when the republished content outranks the original content.

Conclusion

Not all types of duplication destroys the on-site SEO efforts; whereas some types of duplication impacts adversely on the ranking of the search results. There are also times when the search engines are unable to differentiate between the original and scrap content when both the site is of higher authority. When you are creating content that is useful for the end-user, you are increasing your website’s organic traffic. Also, when the content is original, you have to deal with less competitors. 

If you have not taken steps to remove the old files from the server, do it right now as it is vital for the smooth running of your website. Ensure the old pages are deleted and also take a back up of the site so that you can add the content which is removed by mistake. When the old pages are extracted permanently, check all the broken links. Once you are done with upgrading the site, you can have a more agile website. If you do not want to do the technical part all alone, take help from the best SEO company of Melbourne.

We hope with this guide, you might have received knowledge about the basics of duplication and how you can fight back with the issue of duplicate content. Thank you for reading!  We hope your website reaches the apex of Google’s journey.