Content that’s an exact copy of SEO content that’s found elsewhere is considered “duplicate content.” In other words, you can’t just swap out a few words and hope that your page isn’t deemed duplicate content and thus have your site be negatively impacted. Instead, you must implement various methods and technical changes to prevent or minimize the impact.
Why’s it so important to avoid duplicate content?
An SEO company will tell you that when your SEO content is found in the exact same format on other pages online (whether on your site or another website) you’ll have problems with Google. Most of these issues are unexpected and caused by confusing prioritization issues. They may include:
- Google shows the wrong version of the page in its SERPs (search engine results pages).
- Important pages performing quite poorly.
- Problems getting a page indexed at all.
- Decreases or fluctuations in your core website metrics (e.g., rank position, E-A-T criteria, overall traffic).
What methods can be used by an SEO company to prevent duplicate content?
Many different methods and strategies exist to help you prevent the duplication of your SEO content. These are things that your SEO company should be doing on your behalf to ensure your protection. They include:
- Taxonomy is where you should start. You’ll want to create a topic cluster to help you create a thoughtful strategy that can’t be easily duplicated.
- Canonical tags are something that an SEO company inserts into your website’s HTML to tell Google who the real owner of the SEO content is. Two types of canonical tags exist. The first point to a page tells the search engine who the original owner is. The second version is known as self-referencing canonical tags because they tell the search engines that you’re the original owner of that content.
- Parameter handling tells search engines how to effectively crawl your website. Unfortunately, when handled incorrectly, their usage will frequently result in duplicate content. Therefore, you’ll want to be very careful here.
- There are several parts of structural URLs that can cause duplication because of how they’re perceived by search engines. This may result in fluctuations in core website metrics (e.g., ranking, traffic, E-A-T criteria). Ask any SEO company, and they’ll tell you that these commonly occur with www. and non-www. Versions of pages, HTTP and HTTPS, and pages that have a slash at the end and those that don’t.
- Redirects are a very useful tool for eliminating duplication of content. When a page is duplicated from somewhere else, it can be redirected so that it feeds back to the page’s main version. This is a great option for pages that get a lot of traffic or link value and have been duplicated from another page. However, it’s important to remember that you should always redirect to the higher-performing page with a 301 redirect.
What if someone duplicates your SEO content without your permission?
You should always be using self-referencing canonical tags to indicate that you’re the information’s “true source.” If you haven’t used a canonical tag to signify that your content is original, you’ll want to look at how often your site is being indexed. Once you can “prove” that the content belongs to you, it’s time to contact the webmaster and ask them to either give you accreditation or take the content down.
How do you accomplish all these things?
There’s a lot of work to be done here, which is why you should hire an SEO company to do these things for you. The Local SEO Tampa Company in Tampa, FL, is highly qualified to help your SEO content get better rankings in the SERPs. This means more traffic and more money for your business, so reach out to them today.