Good Duplicate Content & Bad Duplicate Content & SEO
The idea is to have one single version of a page on your site with unique text content that is written specifically for that page. This makes it easy for Google to work out your page and rank it. This is one of the pillars of good seo. Screw it up and it will look like a Google penalty.
Bad Duplicate Content
If you have duplicate content on many pages of your site, Google will have trouble choosing the page you want to rank. If that exact same content is on other pages you are often screwed.
If you are trying to compete in competitive niches you need original content that’s not found on other pages in the exact same form on your site, and EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY ON OTHER PAGES ON OTHER WEBSITES.
Duplicate Content Will Give You Ranking Headaches
Google isn’t guaranteed to rank your duplicate content – in the end it depends whos got the most domain authority or most links coming to the page. If it kills your page, you may find that another page ranks for the the term you are targeting, and that page might not be focused on that term, so it drops down the rankings – sometimes out of site.
Don’t unnecessarily compete with these dupe pages by always rewriting your content if you think the content will appear on other sites (especially if you are not the first to ‘break it’).
Good Duplicate Content?
Is there such thing as good duplicate content? Not really, but there is decent if a bit dubious NEAR duplicate content strategies. But they are reserved for long tail, supplemental verticals where the top ten rankings is already crammed full of the stuff and the SERPS are shabby – certainly not competitive terms.
There’s not a lot of traffic there in those results per keyword per say, but sometimes it’s worth exploring if using near duplicate content with geographic modifiers for instance on a site with some domain authority. Near-duplicate content can be useful accross TLDs too. A bit spammy, but if the top ten results are already a bit spammy…
If essentially duplicate content is performing well in the top ten of an existing long tail result – then it’s worth exploring – I’ve considered it in the past, even though I’m full aware it’s against Google TOS to actually create a lot of pages with the same content. In the end though, if it meets the need of a search engine visitor and is better than whats there in those long tail searches at present, who’s complaining?
Stick To Original Content Specially Written For That Page
It’s a band-aid of course – and not exactly best practice seo is it.
Stick to original content, found on only one page on your site, for best results – especially if you have a new/young site and are building it page by page over time… and you’ll get better rankings and more traffic to your site (affiliates too!).
Written by Shaun Anderson
Hi Shaun,
I rewrite my articles before syndicating to article directories & other blogs. but I have to admit it’s a huge pain.
What’s your view on the value of a link from a page regarded as duplicate content.
So, for example, imagine I put the same article on a load of article directories and many of them end up in the “we have omitted some entries very similar…” bit of search. That’s OK (I prefer the original to rank, of course), but do the links back to my site from these pages still count?
Ian
Hi, I understand your line of thought but wonder how I can write unique content on technical details on products. For example I sell shower pumps and have added content explaining when and how to use.
These daitails can be found on many web sites including manufacturer’s sites. no scoope for original content!
Regards George
I think that if you have a new/young site, the worst thing you can do is providing duplicate content. This practice can “kill” your SERPS.
But if I create a page in which i copy another page and buy a bunch of links to that page, could I rank better than the original page?
Nice uncomplicated post. I have one page that is ranked by Google and is number one oganically for Emotional Intelligence coaching. I can see I need to put the same love and attention into the other pages to get them recognised.
I downloaded sometime ago your free book, I need to schedule an appointment wiht myself to read them.
Thanks for sharing,
Joseph
Just wondering on the topic of duplicate content whether Google treats copies of pages translated into different languages as duplicates?
For example, client designed site in english, we’ve sorted keywords, titles, descriptions etc He was just going to get it all translated as is, into Spanish, (it’s for an english painter living in Spain). including keywords,title etc. Will this account against him?
Hi, Shaun!
Wise words!
But I have a question: even in HOBO, you have partial duplicate contents between main page and article pages. This happens because the beginning of articles are also shown in main page. Same happens in my blog.
Is that a problem? I notice that Google first shows results of my main page, before showing article pages. If so, how can I avoid that?
Thanks!
Shaun,
On my website http://www.pimlico-flats.co.uk I have lots of pages where a flat is described – these pages are often identical because the flats are identical. Also I use 3 different pages ( see http://www.pimlico-flats.co.uk/rent_london_flats_75_11_b.html and http://www.pimlico-flats.co.uk/rent_london_flats_75_11_a.html ) to create the picking a view effect. Is any of this causing a problem for me?
@Nick – Possibly-I’d consider 301ing old pages or using the canonical tag if you have a lot of dupe contentpages.
@Adelson Google knowsthissiteisa blog. It can handle that kind of dupe content no problem.
@pippa I’n not 100% up to speedwith translated duplicate content but if you are going to the trouble to have it translated, why not rewrite a little.
@George that’s no excuse! lol If I had your site every product page wouldhave unique content-even padded out by an article writer.
@Ian – It’s a low quality link at best and at worst an invitation to a keyword ranking filter in my experience.
I am considering developing a site for a colleague who has been sending emails out based on links to articles featured elsewhere on the web. Articles will be appropriately referenced.
The site aims to be a good reference source for the email base , but would like to have a platform to evolve the site with respect to organic search listings.
Is there a way of isolating the duplicate content from being evaluated by Google ?
Thanks,
Shaun – these aren’t old or redundant pages, they are pages that describe different flats, because the flats are identical the pages are very similar. This can’t be an unusual situation, lots of companies carry similar and identical products.
Great blog BTW I follow, but can’t always find the “Leave a Reply” Box so don’t comment as much as I’d like to. I wanted to comment yesterday about WordPress Plugins but there was no reply box. Today I can’t even find the blog! I wanted to recommend LinkWithin & Zemanta as Plugins.
HI NIck – I close old posts just to keep my spam down and the focus on new discussions
Yeah I had a look at the pages you linked to
and saw that. I work on some sites with similar issues, but I try to ensure an internal navigation structure emphasises at least one of those type of pages (even a sort of category page that would lead to those detail pages) so at least to ENSURE one page has a chance to rank for the terms you are optimising for.
As I say in the article, NEAR duplicate content is not always a bad thing, but you need a sensible strategy.
If it’s not clear which page ideally you want to rank for a certain term, how can you possibly expect Google to pick it out?
But as I say, near dupe content can be of limited use in supplemental, or low quality, results.
How bad is framed pages? I have a section of my homepage that is framed and a news feed comes through.
How much text exactly should i have? I see a lot of top ranking sites in my category with very little wording on there home page , they just have links and search boxes, pictures, ect??
Thanks and these daily tips have been very helpful
@ Drew depends on your intent. I’ve heard of Google penalising such pages because of a LOT of content in hidden scroll bar DIVs (like Frames).
I have always avoided introducing hidden text and elements to pages as I think if you dont think it is important to display on your page prominently, why would Google think it’s a valuable addition to the page?
I wouldn’t ever build a site with HTML FRAMES of course.
@Asif – Duplicate content ranks – it depends on how you implement it and howitis linked to. It’s notreally a strategy I like to do though for real sites.
Hey, this is my first post and hope im doing it right! I worked at the Priory before starting up on my own and i did their website and as many pages were about the same thing; depression, addictions etc a SEO charged us a fortune just to point that out, so thanks for doing this for free!
I wonder how do duplicate content checking algorithm really works. And how do the search engines really figure out if the words has just been replaced with their synonyms. Moreover duplicate content on multiple sites. Is it really feasible/possible to figure out it among multiple sites if they have been altered slightly.
Thanks for the reply Shaun. Guess I have to keep slogging away to make everything unique then!
Ian
Hi Guys,
If I use a forwarding URL from someone like godaddy.. which I think uses a 302 redirect…. will the SE’s look at the forwarded URL as a duplicate site?
Ex: if I forward a aaa.net to fff.com
and the aaa.net is just a domain, no pages or content.
Thx
Dave
@George…. I had a client once with a clean site, he was offering products that came with manufactures descriptions. The site was ranking well for many keywords but for some reason we just couldn`t get one particular SP to rank. I ran the page through Copy Scape and found that the content was flagged as duplicate. I asked the client to modify the content. He explained tat because it was the manufactures content they required it to be exact. Long story short, he finally got permission to change the content and just like that, the ban was lifted, the page was indexed and within 2 weeks was ranking in the SERPS.
I think this is a common mistake people make with shopping site. Even if you are reselling a product, your own website content should be unique! If your manufacturer has a description, explain to them that for SEO value your content needs to be unique.
@Alok I’ve seen software that checks for dupe content on a line by line basis…. not just a page. Wether Google is using that much effort is another matter….
Hi, On the line for line note: if you have say one duplicate paragraph that changes only slightly on a lot of your pages will that be better? or will it still get penalised?
Thanks, Jen
Web Design Wales
Graphic Design Wales
Hi Jenny
thanks for a the tips. I have now changed content details on my pump page and will see if page rank improves.
your views are logical thanks for the reply.
Regards george
I love your post, always good to hear something that I myself have found. Young sites definitely are more effected by dup content.
I get incredibly frustrated with Google regarding duplicate content. I get clients homepages ranked well, then because they are top ten, scrapers copy their metas and words including the first instance of the search phrases.
Since the client websites are in general new, the duplicate is enough to knock them off the ranking perch.
It has even happened with a powerful page on my own SearchMasters.co.nz site – I was ranking top ten for “marketing” on Google.co.nz. Scrapers copied my content and my page dived to not in top 1000. I made the content unique again, and the rankings came back up to top 20, now 40th. Unfortunately Google seems to have a memory of such dup content that even after the content has been made unique, it holds a black mark against you.
While you say that “Don’t unnecessarily compete with these dupe pages by always rewriting your content”, I would rather be safe than sorry. And so I am often rewriting meta descriptions and first instances of search phrases on my own and client pages. Shopping cart type sites are that much easier when you have a formula generated opening paragraph. Just change the formula, and wholla you have unique opening para’s again.
I just found out that my site is being scraped constantly by someone who now has my entire site (albeit in a static version) available on a different url. Should I be worried? I am a little as Google doesn’t seem to be crawling my site that strongly lately, with some new pages I put up not being revisited for around 2 months now (I’ve got sitelinks so I presume that Google considers me a decent site at least)