- 25
- Sep
An important facet to any webmaster’s list of considerations is that of managing potential duplicate content issues. Since growing up, the fear of being called a “copycat” has now been outweighed by search engine penalties, page filtering, and entrance into supplemental results.
Duplicate content consists of identical (mirrored page) or nearly identical page content across two or more URLs (or even within the same URL). It is not known to what percentage of duplication search engines will allow so to be smart the percentage should be kept small. For those who are new to this concept there are two quick fixes to alleviate penalties or subsequent page filtering by search engines. A simple solution is to code a 301 server side redirect to the page which has the highest page rank, highest link popularity, and is the closer of the two pages to the root level of the URL. This will help the page with respect to search engines. Make sure that the redirect is 301 and permanent instead of a temporary 302 redirect.
Another way to combat duplicate content is to place the robots meta tag in the head of the page source code on all duplicated pages that you wish search engines not to index or follow its links. This is a proactive way to show the search engines you do not want this page indexed or crawled for links.
A third suggestion is to create unique copy. If content looks identical, then change it. Write something new. The search engines and your visitors will appreciate the new content.
A great way to check your site for duplicate content is through duplicate content tools, this will give you a feel for how similar multiple pages may be. For example, many e-commerce sites use product descriptions straight from the manufacturer. This leaves many sites duplicating content. By creating unique captivating content for products and services you have simply withdrawn yourself from a possible SERP casualty.
Now that you have corrected the duplicate content on your site you are half way done. Now you must look into the search space to see if anyone is stealing and duplicating your content. This process is known as “scraping” and with the help of scraping tools you can easily detect if someone has stolen your content. It is highly advised that you include a copyright notice in the bottom of all your pages so that you may fight this problem if it persists. One piece of advice; create a copyright link which directs to a copyright notice page if you have a significant amount of legal verbage to be included. This will centralize that information and make it available as needed. If you do find a scraper taking advantage of your content you can then file a DMCA request to report the content violation.
Evaluating duplicate content internally as well as externally allows you to better optimize your site for the search engines and it helps you keep an eye out for other websites that may be stealing your copy.