According to Matt Cutts, former head of Google’s Search Spam, 25% to 30% of web content is a duplicate. The reader gets the information they are looking for, but the search engines do not know which page to prioritize since they all show the same piece.
And because the content is similar, search engines often favor other results instead of duplicated ones. That is why it affects the SEO campaign. An experienced SEO agency canould help you rank better and avoid duplicate content.
In the meantime, keep reading to find out how an SEO campaign is affected by duplicate content.
Duplicate content can be internal or external, meaning it can happen within your website or on websites owned by third parties. The internal issues refer to meta elements, URLs, and easily repetitive content like product descriptions.
On the other hand, external duplicate content issues arise from scraping when other websites use your content without permission. Scraped content, as it’s called, occurs when another site owner copy-pastes your content. The saddest part is that your SEO will also be affected even though you aren’t to blame for your content being stolen and reposted. If you find content identical to yours, make sure to report it.
The first and most important of all is that duplicate content hurts your ranking, and even the site can be removed entirely from the Google index. There is no penalty for duplicate content issued by Google, but a bad ranking is a penalty enough.
Duplicate content confuses Google, and it often happens that the original content is not always ranked higher. Additionally, this leads to inaccurate SERPs that confuse and frustrate users further. This also affects the links’ authority, meaning external and internal links will point to different versions. The link equity will then be split among more pages rather than just one.
A unique page title and unique meta description are a must in avoiding duplicate content issues. Headings are also important, and they should be distinctive from the other headings on your website and other websites, for that matter.
All of the other content should also be as unique as possible. You can do duplicate checks with a plagiarism tool that will show if your content is unique. You can also run an exact match on Google by copying a few sentences from your content and checking them through the search engine.
Performing regular audit checks on your website is also a good practice to ensure that you don’t have duplicate or non-duplicate content affecting your SEO.
If you’ve been working hard to keep a high SEO ranking, you need to do everything you can to keep it, and contacting an SEO agency is a great start. SEODefend is here to help protect your ranking! Our services range from website development, content marketing, and SEO practices to brand design and paid advertisement. Contact us today, and let’s make a defense strategy together.
