If you do anything with search engine optimization including email marketing, the term duplicate content you must have heard before and like me and any other SEO’s you are not sure exactly what duplicate content is all about and how it affects your SEO.
Duplicate content is when two (or more sites – thank you Google Adwords) has the same content on their site. Now, you might be wondering what does that mean? We are talking about content that is nearly identical word for word but I also l have experienced duplicate content issues with templates as well but we can talk about this later.
How does duplicate content happen? If you have written a blog post, article, press release that’s been picked up, scrapped, or syndicated your content will be duplicated on the web. Unfortunately this is the nature of the Internet beast and I really do not see an end in sight but Google has made it easier to manage this through your Google Webmaster Central. The Google Webmaster Central team has developed a new feature to assist with duplicate content issues and search engine marketing. It’s called parameter handling and it allows you to tell Google what to ignore or pay attention to when it comes to indexing your site.
This is great for the SEO that doesn’t have quick access to add code regarding duplicate content to a website. However, these parameters will be treated as “hints” by Google.
Why do search engines care about duplicate content? It really comes down to money but doesn’t it always? Seriously, The goal of the search engine is to deliver the best value for a given search term or phrase to make sure you will come back and hopefully click on an ad or signup for a “free” service where you can be marketed to.
The intent for the search engine is to avoid serving up many of the exact same Web pages in the search results. Thus, creating confusion for the searcher and delivering a poor searcher experience. So they attempt to filter all of the duplicate content and choose one based on certain criteria and then serve it up. Notice how I said “filter” and not “penalize” because this is that is exactly what the search engines do is filter the duplicate content not penalize. The difference is that a filter does not hurt the domain trust or authority of the domain overall whereas a penalty will. Of course there is always exception to this rule and search engines never tell all so your mileage may vary.
So how do search engines deal with duplicate content? Search engines send out a spider (bot) or program to surf the Internet and collect all of the content it finds. This content is indexed and placed into a database.
During this process, the content is compared against other duplicate content. Then an attempt is made to determine the original. Some clues that help it determine this are:
- How trusted is the domain? Terms like Page Rank and Trust Rank are used here.
- What is the domain age?
- How many inbound links are pointing to the site and content?
- Where is the first place the search engine found the content?
- Has any of the content appears to have been “scraped” or repurposed?
- With a template are files names, images, and HTML components such as table names and “div” names the same?
Once a decision is made by the search engines, the content that wins stays and the rest is filtered out.
What Can You do to Avoid Duplicate Content Issues? So how to do limit duplicate content on your site? Some people have stated that duplicate content has nothing to do with HTML or templates but my experience tells me differently. How many templates from the “templates are us” companies do you see listed multiple times in the top 10? Now I am not saying that a template will get you totally thrown into duplicate content hell but why risk it. If you do use a template change around some of the HTML naming conventions and you should be fine.
I am a big fan of the canonical tag that was agreed upon by the major search engines last year. If you have multiple areas on your site that use duplicate content, use the canonical tag to tell the search engines to designate only one page as the authority.
Google recently posted an article on ways to handle on their webmaster blog about legitimate cross-domain content duplication. They announced the support of a link element and other tips for handling the problem. Basically, Google recognizes there is some legitimate uses for duplicate content like company contact and about us information and are willing to give solutions and help.
If you like to do press releases as part of your search engine marketing make sure you have the press release in HTML form (not PDFs as PDF SEO is not really the best was to search engine optimize) on your site a few days before you start to syndicate it out with a newswire service.
If you like to syndicate articles you can do the same thing or better yet change up the article content to have it say the same thing theme-wise yet be unique in nature.
Please discuss other ways you handle you potential duplicate content issues.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I think many people are just lazy and use PLR content “from the box” without re-writing it and then slap it up on their sites.Why would Google or any other search engine index thousands of pages with identical content? Personally, I write my own content.It is the only way you can be unique on the internet.
Agreed. My only issues with the SE’s on this topic is to give us some sort of clue on what they consider dupe content. Only so many ways you can give to the top 8 PPC tips without being duplicate content and yes you can wrap it with unique content but is that good enough?
Thanks for commenting
I have concerns regarding duplicate content on the same DNS but different domains.
My client had me build his wordpress site for his business on a domain hosted by HostMonster. They allow unlimited domains on the same account.
This client wants me to duplicate his primary domain onto sub/add-on domains on the same account (different domains with the same IP address) and just change the physical location on the pages of the additional domain sites for his businesses in other cities.
So I’m wondering if even though the duplicate content is under different domain name but falling under the same IP address, will they incur a duplicate penalty or be filtered out for geo targeted searches?
IE – search term: body shop Nashville TN
OR – Search term: body shop Memphis TN
The only differences between the 2 is domain name ie.
NashvilleBodyShop.com . . . and
MemphisBodyshop.com
And the physical street addresses and phone numbers.
It seems to me the geo tagging aspect on local searches should eliminate duplicate filtering.
I would REALLY be interested on your opinion regarding this situation.
Great blog you have here – thanks for all your hard work,
Mike
Mike,
Thanks for the question. If this was my client I would advise the client to move the new domain to another server that would have the IP address on another Class C. Today, you can get a new domain on its own IP address for few hundred bucks for the year and to me that is a very good investment.
I do not think that having a few unique domains on the same IP address will hurt you from a SEO perspective if you do not cross link. Now if it you have this domain on another IP address outside the same Class C, then you could link back a few times and not get hurt and it will help the new site’s link profile.
Yes, the new domain that you have created could be filtered out of the SERPS if you are just doing a copy/paste of the content with changing out the local terms. What I would do is find a way to make the duplicate content on the new site unique in the search engines “eyes”. You can spin the copy or add new unique content to the existing copy so it will not be a direct one to one copy.
I have been successful in doing thousands of geo targeted pages with a template that consists of the first paragraph being generic copy that you replaced local term for local term. The next 1 or 2 paragraphs are unique content that talk about the specific geo area. In your example, I would get census data and incorporate this into your geo targeted pages. I would wrap up the page with another generic paragraph.
Have you thought about a sub domain approach? Sub domains still get a boost in authority and as long as your content is unique and specific to the sub domain you will be fine. It should give you the ability to only create a few pages on the geo area without risking any duplicate content issues. Hope this helps!
Frank
hey frank,
I have one question that I am still finding trouble getting a direct answer. I have an electrical contracting company and am happy with our seo progress. Now, I’d like to delve into general contracting (which we are also licensed for) but I don’t want to discount my previous and ongoing seo efforts for my electrical site, which is the main bread/butter. So for example my site is branovercontractors.com (its all electrical) Is it ok if I buy lets say branoverconstruction.com with obviously slightly different content (focus on general contractor stuff), but same have the same phone number and branover in it? I’ve been trying so hard to get a quality answer. Your opinion is greatly appreciated. Thanks.
i tried adding internet pages but either havent put forth enough effort or people just arent finding it. people come to us for electrical services. when they need an electrician.
so i guess, what im saying is, put yourself in a potential customers role. this new domain site will have more than just slightly different content i believe. aside from it having our brand name on it, branover, and it being in the general construction field it really is quite different. i mean my goal and focus of the new site will be focusing on things a customer would need out of a general contractor, i.e. keywords/content like “room additions”, “kitchen remodels”, “plumbing” etc…obviously electrical will be in there but it wont be the main and only focus as is with our electrical site. the focus will be on new construction, remodels, painting, additions, custom homes. i feel like im not sure creating content and pages like this on my existing electrical site will be good enough. with that said, what are you thought now on creating a whole new domain site, with the only content similar is our brand name, phone number, and electrical being only one of the many services i plan on offering? let me know your thought please
Hey BOC.com,
Thanks for the question. I would build out BOC.com to include your general contracting content over establishing a new site. Simple reason is you have built authority from a search engine perspective to BOC so why not take advantage of that? Your going to be 6-12 months out if you go the new domain route.
If I was providing SEO services for you and BOC, I WOULD NOT go the new domain route it just not make good SEO sense. Were you planning on concentrating on the local GEO areas as well for the general contracting services? I would as I see too many small to medium businesses try to go after the “head” terms and become disappointed with their SEO efforts because of this. Should they also be fortunate enough to receive some placement for those terms they are very disappointed with the business they receive from it.
A couple other things I would suggest:
1) Get your webmaster or hosting company to do a 301 redirect on your http://boc.com website to your http://www.boc.com site. Your site has a canonical issue which means simply that the search engines see the www. and non-www sites as two sites. This bleeds your authority and creates a duplicate content issue. If you need any additional information please let me know.
2) Did you plan on building out pages for the zip codes you display on the home page? I would build them out or get rid of that content as it is “spammy”. I like the idea if you build out quality pages.
3) I would change out your home link to go directly to the root and not /index.htm. Your bleeding out some of the authority there as well. 301 redirect will cure that as well.
4) I like to see you get more unique content on the site. I see your using Ara Content which is quality content, but it is not helping you from a SEO perspective. Go with a blog and get some unique quality content on your site. Let me know if you need any help.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate in asking. Also, should you feel I have answered your questions A link would be greatly appreciated.
Frank
Hey Frank, great post. I have a question for you. I’ve been trying to find this answer. I have a client who’s blog posts don’t always make reference to the key words he is trying to optimize for, however they are always in the vein of his expertise. I want to put a tag line paragraph at the end of his posts that say if you are work in xxx industry and are looking for more information on XYZ then please continue to follow me. then his name (which is well known) and his expertise…. if this same small paragraph is on the bottom of every post, will it be considered “duplicate” content, or will it help his posts be found by the spiders even when he doesn’t use the exact word phrase in the post that he is optimizing for?
I’m fairly certain that if you are trying to optimize for a phrase and you tag it but don’t have it in your content that’s a no-no. But that’s why I wanted to find out about this being considered duplicate content. Thanks in advance for your input.
Hey Leah.
Thanks for the question. Yeah, your client can will be totally safe with putting an “about” paragraph at the end of all posts. Very similar to how most articles and PR is done.
One of the biggest things that you can get your client to do is to set up a keyword strategy around their blog posts. I too have a client that is a very active blogger and what we do is sit down every month or two and go over some topics that they can write on and then I give them the keywords they would want to include in the post. This should help your client as well and give you the ability to add those tags to the post.
Hope that helps!
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