When you are blogging, duplicate content is something you need to care about to avoid any trouble. As its name suggests, Duplicate content means the same content on two different web pages. It could be the scenario where some other website copied content from another website or when the one website posts similar content on two different pages. We term both duplicate contents.
Duplicate Content and Blogging Relation
Duplicate content can be a significant problem bloggers face or may face in the future—especially those bloggers who write content to generate traffic on their business websites. The reason behind it is simple: Bloggers have to generate content regularly. A blog is a website we update regularly. Bloggers write and publish posts daily. And all of their posts are related to their business. For example, if they run a digital marketing agency, they would write on SEO-related topics. They brainstorm ideas about content and write about them.
Note: If you look for someone to help you write blog posts daily, you can reach out to an affordable SEO company. They have teams of content writers that would help you with your blog.
But sometimes, it becomes hard to continue writing. How much can they discuss their field? There must be a point where they need to stop. But that doesn’t happen. Technology is getting advanced day by day. There is always room for another blog post you can create. That’s something hard for newbies, but experts bloggers understand it. That’s why they never run out of topics to publish.
Moreover, according to experts, people write duplicate content in two ways. One way is simple. They copy the exact content. The second one is they change some words and use synonyms instead. However, none of these methods works. Google is now smart enough to detect content like this. Duplicate content also affects the search engine optimization of your website. Similar content on one website battles each other to determine which one should rank. And that’s why Google doesn’t support it.
When does Google Penalize a website with duplicate content?
Backlinko states that Google penalizing a website for duplicate content is extremely rare. However, it doesn’t mean Google allows it. But Google penalizes a website when you duplicate content to manipulate the search results. It happens when you copy the content from other websites and post it on your website.
Duplicate Content URLs
If you closely look at the URLs of websites, you’d see different URL types. For example,
- www.example.com
- example.com
- https://www.example.com
- https://www.example.com
Now it can be a reason for duplicate content. Properly ensure your website redirects. All these versions should direct you to the same content. If you type facebook.com or write fb.com, both of them redirect you to Facebook. Facebook has purchased the fb.com domain.
How Not to Create Duplicate Content?
Tip 1: 301 Directs
The method is easy to use to avoid duplicate content. It’s the process of linking all the same content pages to one link. It is like the example we gave above on the Facebook website. It redirects all the links to the original content page that you want Google to index and rank.
Tip 2: Take Care of Website Structure
In the beginning, it won’t be trouble, but as soon as your website grows and you publish new content daily and create new pages, things will get cluttered. There would be a time when your website would become a mess, not in terms of its apparent look but from the seo perspective. It might have many broken links, pages that don’t exist, and similar things. That’s why experts recommend keeping checking your website’s pages to see if they are correctly structured. It can lead to duplicate content as well. You need to keep in mind the concept of pillar posts and cluster content when blogging, as it helps not mix things up in your website. These methods were about the duplicate content that happens internally on a website. Moreover, have categories and sub-categories on your website that help structure the site.
Tip 3: Focus on the Snippets
Experts recommend that every website should have a unique slug, meta description, and heading tags for every page. These are the things that represent content first. Therefore, it is crucial to make them unique.
Tip 4: Start working on your website’s issues in the early stage
When your website grows, it would be difficult for you to go through hundreds of pages and fix them separately by checking their meta tags and other relatable things. If you do it from the start, you’d have very little trouble with these things. However, if you didn’t focus on these things on your website, and now your website has a lot of pages, don’ worry. You can hire a professional developer and SEO to fix these issues.
Tip 5: How to write the same type of content more than once?
You might experience instances where you have to discuss the same thing again on your website that you already discussed in another blog post. It could be for the word count to increase most of the time. Don’t copy the exact content. Instead, paraphrase it. If you find it hard to do yourself, you can also hire an expert content writer to write content for you. There are many ways you can repeat the same thing over and over if required. Moreover, duplicate content on your website does not always make Google penalize your website; it will just not index your content.
Final Words
We briefly discussed duplicate content and its types. So, now you have the basic knowledge to avoid ending up with duplicate content on your website. There are many factors in it. Here’s an overview for you to follow to avoid having duplicate content on your website.
- Use 301 directs
- Use pillar content and cluster content when blogging
- Make sure snippets are unique for every web page
