How Does Duplicate Content Effect SEO?
Duplicates, in any iteration of modern marketing, is not something that is considered ideal in any form. They often diminish the authenticity of the original product/service, and it is no different in the case of search engine optimisation as well. After designing one of the best website designs in Liverpool, the last thing you want is to tarnish your search visibility with duplicate content!
One of the key areas of concern for the search engine algorithm is duplicate content. So, if you’re wondering why your website is consistently being ranked lower in Google search results, duplicate content is a probable cause.
So, what exactly are duplicate contents?
Duplicate contents refer to those contents that are accessible through multiple URLs. These contents can be created either intentionally or otherwise. There are two main variations of such contents –internal and external duplicate contents.
Internal duplicates refer to those contents that are accessible through different URLs within the same domain or website.
External duplicates, also called cross-domain duplicates occur when different websites have identical content pages.
How do Duplicate Contents affect SEO?
In a nutshell, if you want to boost your website SEO, you may want to stay as far as possible from duplicate content on your website. Duplicate contents affect your website search engine ranking in the most adverse fashion possible.
This is primarily because when people search for specific content, the search engine algorithm has to deal with multiple URLs that offer the exact same content. The search engine, obviously cannot decide which one is the authentic source.
This,in turn, increases the response time and puts a bad reputation on your website as well. If the incident is persistent, it can ultimately diminish your website SEO by a considerable amount, resulting in a low priority search engine result.
So, how can you avoid Duplicate Contents on your Website?
Some of the simple ways to avoid duplicate contents on your website include:
301 Redirecting the Duplicate content pages
301 redirecting is probably the best option to deal with duplicate content on your website. What this 301 redirecting code does is that it redirects any duplicate page back to the original content page. So, even if you have multiple URLs for the same product, the search engine will trace them back to the original source.
So, technically, the search engine will treat all the multiple URLs as one (your original URL) and prioritise it for ranking on the search result.
Using canonical URLs
If you do not want to get rid of the duplicate pages, but still want to advert the common problems that come associated with it, canonicalizing is the ideal approach. In such cases, you inform the search engine that the content page has multiple variations (or URLs). But only the one that has the canonical tag should be treated as the original source.
Hence, the search engine only indexes the canonical URL and treats all other variations as a mere link to the original URL.
Final Thoughts
Duplicate contents can harm your website reputation and diminish your search engine ranking as well. Luckily, duplicate contents can always be repaired to ensure it does not cause significant damage to your website’s reputation.
But, as a best-case scenario, you are better off hiring an SEO agency to help you avoid duplicate contents or even maintain multiple URLs without causing harm to your SEO ranking. Speak to the local web designers in Nantwich to understand more.
