In recent years, Google has been trying to crack down on duplicate content with a vengeance, and many sites have been penalized for having an identical copy both within their sites and with other sites.
Being penalized by Google is a huge problem because it immediately affects your ability to show up in search engine results when potential customers search for businesses like yours. Instead of ranking on the first page of a Google search, you could be relegated to tenth—or even not at all.
Mentioned below are Google thoughts on Duplicate Content.
- Google knows that users want variety in the search results and not the same content over and over again, so they choose to solidify and show only one version.
- Google actually designed algorithms to prevent duplicate content from affecting webmasters. These algorithms group the various versions into a cluster, the best URL in the cluster is displayed, and they actually consolidate various signals (such as links) from pages within that cluster to the one being shown.
- Duplicate content is not grounds for action unless its intent is to manipulate search results.
- About the worst thing that can happen from this filtering is that a less desirable version of the page will be shown in search results.
- Google tries to determine the original birthplace/source of the content and display the right one.
- If someone is duplicating your content without your permission, you can request to get it down by filing a request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
What can be done about Duplicate Content?
- Inspect all Contents and Tags :
It is completely fine to repeat a few words and phrases, but it is not okay to have an entire sentence or a block to be exactly similar. It is very crucial to take time and examine all the pages on your website and make a list of what you need to work on.
- Set Up 301 Redirects :
There are certain signals you can send to Google to help its bots effectively crawl your site. For example, you may want to indicate a 301 redirect at a page that has the same content as another page.
- Make sure any Syndicated Content is on Appropriate Sites :
Do you have syndicated content, such as an article that’s been picked up by many websites, or a press release that’s being run in several online news outlets? You shouldn’t experience a penalty for this content as long as the site at which it’s located is legitimate.
- Make sure all your Content is Fresh :
Now that you know duplicate content is an issue make sure you avoid it in the future.Create a blog for your website to be sure that the content you are creating is always fresh.