How many times have you heard that duplicate content is the worst thing that you can do to your website and Google will end up punishing you for this atrocity by lowering your ranking?
What if I tell you that this is not the case?
Duplicate content will not hurt your website’s ranking. Unfortunately, these rumours are spread by individuals who don’t exactly know what duplicate content is.
Hence, as one of the best digital marketing service providers in Edmonton, we believe it is our responsibility to spread awareness about topics that are laden with myths and improper practices.
Duplicate content being one of them. Thus, in this blog, we will walk you through what duplicate content is and how adding duplicate content to your website will not degrade its ranking.
Also Read: How Do I Get My Website To Rank Higher On Google?
What Is Duplicate Content?
If we look at the definition of duplicate content, it refers to content that appears at more than one location (URL) at a time. Duplicate content can include anything from a paragraph from the product description to the whole page.
Although duplicate content will not tank your website’s ranking, it is better to avoid it. According to Google,
“Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed in this document, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.”
Nevertheless, this does not mean that you should not limit the duplicate content on your website. This is because duplicate content and URLs can confuse the SEO algorithm which in return messes with the way relevant content appears. This means, your target audience will not see the content they want which will affect your engagement.
Common Duplicate Content Myths
As mentioned, there are many myths revolving around how duplicate content adversely affects your website. Some of the most common myths are:
- Duplicate content will tank your website’s ranking.
- If you add duplicate content, your website will be penalised.
- Scrapers hurt your website.
- Reposting guest posts on your website will not be beneficial in terms of boosting your authority.
- Google can identify who the original content creator is when dealing with duplicate content.
None of the concepts mentioned above is true. Duplicate content does not hurt your website’s ranking and it certainly does not lead to any penalty. In addition to this, scrapers don’t do your website any good, but they don’t hurt it either.
Lastly, reposting guest posts is a great way of getting more traffic. All you have to do is be careful about not adding a lot of outbound links.
Unknown Facts About Duplicate Content
Now that we have talked about and busted some duplicate content myths, let’s move on to some unknown facts that will help you understand and find a way around duplicate content.
- You can minimise duplicate content if you redirect all the old URLs to a new version. This can be done using 301 redirect.
- Search engines don’t like showing several pages that have the same content. Hence, avoid duplicate URLs as it hurts the link equity and reduces its ability to pass authority.
- URL variations, even if they are minor, can lead to creating duplicate content. So, tweak URL parameters such that minor variations are avoided.
- Don’t use repetitive content on your website. This includes copyright notices or legal disclaimers. These are called boilerplate statements and Google has a guideline for dealing with them.
- Your content management system might be creating duplicate URLs without your knowledge. Understand your CMS to avoid such mistakes.
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