x

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt

Stop Duplicate Content from Hurting Your SEO: What You Need to Know!

new, SEO, Top
,

Stop Duplicate Content from Hurting Your SEO: What You Need to Know!

Improving website quality to attract more visitors is a daily task for digital marketers. In the age of “content is king,” creating high-quality content and distributing it across multiple channels is a common strategy to boost traffic. However, duplicate content can negatively impact SEO.

SEO digital marketing agency | Webzilla

What is Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content refers to content that is the same or very similar across different URLs. The causes of duplicate content can be categorized into internal and external factors.

Internal Factors:

  • Deleted Product Pages: When products are removed, the old pages might still exist and lead to blank pages.
  • Copied Content: Directly copying product information from suppliers or using product descriptions that are duplicated from third-party platforms like eBay or Amazon.
  • Unmerged Content: New content might not be combined with outdated content on blog pages, leading to high content similarity.
  • Repeated Descriptions: Using the same content across different product categories under various URLs.

External Factors:

  • Malicious Plagiarism: Content being copied maliciously by other websites.

SEO digital marketing agency | Webzilla

How Duplicate Content Harms SEO

  1. Ranking Issues: Your content might be similar to or identical to another website’s, which may rank higher, even if you are the original creator.
  2. Weight Distribution: Search engines assign relevance, quality, and weight scores to web pages. Duplicate content can cause weight to be distributed across different pages, diluting the SEO value.
  3. Reduced SERP Visibility: Google avoids showing duplicate content on the same search results page. It filters out duplicates, only displaying one result.
  4. Crawl Resource Waste: Duplicate content uses up search engine crawl resources, potentially leaving important content uncrawled.

How to Use Canonical Tags to Address Duplicate Content

A canonical tag is a snippet of HTML code used to indicate the original version of a page when duplicate or similar content exists. Proper use of canonical tags helps search engines recognize and index the preferred version of the page (Google, n.d.).

Canonical Tag Syntax:

SEO digital marketing agency | Webzilla

Important Considerations for Setting Up Canonical URLs:

  • Placement: Canonical tags should be placed within the <head> section of the webpage.
  • Absolute URL: Ensure the URL is absolute and in lowercase.
  • E-commerce Pages: For e-commerce sites, include specific product page URLs in the canonical tag.
  • Avoid Overuse: Too many canonical tags may be ignored by Google.
  • 301 Redirects: Consider setting up 301 redirects to guide traffic from duplicate URLs to the original page.

SEO digital marketing agency | Webzilla

Summary

Duplicate content is not always intentional, and it can be overlooked during busy content updates. Proper use of canonical tags can significantly reduce the negative impact of duplicate content on SEO. Alongside using canonical tags, focus on creating high-quality, original content to enhance your site’s SEO performance. If you need assistance with content creation, optimization, or implementing canonical tags, contact Webzilla for professional help and customised strategies.

Reference

By
0