Beginners may tend to wonder about duplicate content in SEO when starting their blogs. Can you repost articles on your blog? Well, those are known commonly as duplicated materials. Duplicated materials on a website, whether by accident or because of someone copying text blocks from your web pages, must be acknowledged and managed properly. It makes no difference if you administer a website for a small business or a giant corporation; duplicate content is a danger to SEO rankings for both. Blocks of content that are either identical to one another (exact copies) or highly close (common or near-duplicates) are referred to as duplicate content. The term “near-duplicate material” refers to two pieces of content that are almost identical but for minor differences. Having some content that is similar is, of course, natural and sometimes unavoidable (i.e., quoting another article on the internet).
There are two types of duplicate content:
- Internal duplicate content occurs when a domain creates duplicate content by employing multiple internal URLs (on the same website).
- External duplicate content, also known as cross-domain duplicates, arises when search engines index the identical page copy from two or more separate domains.
Exact duplicates and near-duplicates can arise in both external and internal content.
Duplicate material does not formally have a penalty from Google. It does, however, filter identical content, which has the same effect as a penalty: your websites’ ranks are lowered. Duplicate content perplexes Google, forcing it to choose which of the similar pages to rank first in the search results. Regardless of who created the content, there’s a good chance that the original page won’t be chosen as the top search result.
How to check for duplicate content in SEO
Check to determine if your content has been copied and pasted onto another website if you have content-rich websites that are losing search engine rankings. Here are some ideas for how to go about it:
1. Exact-Match Search
Copy a few sentences from one of your websites, place them in quotation marks, then search Google for them. You’re telling Google that you want results that return that exact text by using quotation marks. If many results appear, someone has plagiarised your material.
2. Copyscape
Copyscape is a free application that scans the text of your web pages for duplicate content on other domains. If your page’s text has been scraped, the offending URL will appear in the search results.
Internal Duplicate Content Issues
1. On-Page Elements
To prevent duplicate content issues, make sure that each page on your website contains the following information:
- in the HTML code of the page, a unique page title and meta description
- different headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) from other pages on your website
- On a page, the page title, meta description, and headings make up a small portion of the content. However, it’s best to stay as far away from the grey area of duplicating material as possible. It’s also a great method to make your meta descriptions more valuable to search engines.
Leave it out if you don’t have enough pages to give each one a unique meta description. Google takes excerpts from your material and utilises them as the meta description for the most part. However, if you have the time, it is still preferable to develop a custom meta description, as it is an important factor in generating click-throughs.
2. Product descriptions
Creating distinct product descriptions is understandably difficult for many eCommerce businesses, as writing creative descriptions for each product on a website can take a long time. If you sell your products through third-party store websites or other resellers, make sure each source has a distinct description. Check out our article on how to write a fantastic product description page if you want your product description page to stand out from the crowd. Size and color variations, for example, should not be on distinct pages. Make use of web design components to keep all of a product’s versions on one page.
3. URL Parameters
URL parameters are another prominent cause of duplicating content on eCommerce sites (but not specific to eCommerce). Some websites utilize URL parameters to create page URL variations (for example,?sku=5136840, &primary-color=blue, &sort=popular), which could result in different versions of the URLs being indexed by search engines, including the parameters. If your website employs URL parameters, read Portent CEO Ian Lurie’s article The Duplication Toilet Bowl of Death on URL parameter duplication.
4. WWW, HTTP, and The Trailing Slash
Internal duplicate content is often overlooked in URLs that begin with:
- www (http://www.example.com) and without www (http://example.com)
- http (http://www.example.com) and https (https://www.example.com)
- a trailing slash at the end of a URL (http://www.example.com/) and without a trailing slash (http://www.example.com)
Taking a portion of unique content from one of your most significant landing pages, putting it in quotes, and searching for it on Google is a quick approach to check for these issues. Google will then look for that exact text string. If more than one page appears in the search results, you’ll need to investigate further to figure out why. Start by looking into the three possibilities indicated above. If you have conflicting www vs. non-www or trailing slashes vs. non-trailing slashes on your website, you’ll need to set up a 301 redirect from the non-preferred to the preferred version.
External Duplicate Content Issues
There’s a considerable probability that some of your great content will be reposted on another website if you have a lot of it. You’ll have to do without that, as flattering as it is. Here are some examples of externally generated duplicate content:
1. Scraped Content
Scraped material occurs when a website owner takes content from another website to boost their site’s organic visibility. Scraping material allows webmasters to have machines “rewrite” the scraped content they collected. Scraped content is sometimes simple to spot because scrapers don’t always bother to substitute branded terms throughout the text. The manual action penalty works as follows: a Google human reviewer will examine the website to see if a page complies with Google’s Webmaster Quality Guidelines. If your website is reported for attempting to manipulate Google’s search index, it will either be ranked much lower or deleted entirely from the search results. If you have been the victim of scraped content, you should report the webspam to Google using the “Copyright and other legal issues” option.
2. Syndicated Content
When another website republishes your content that was most likely first published on your blog, this is known as content syndication. It’s not the same as having your content scraped because you agreed to it being shared on another website. There is an advantage to syndicating your work, as strange as it may sound. It increases the visibility of your content, which might lead to an increase in website traffic. In other words, you’re exchanging links back to your site for content and possibly search engine rankings.
How To Use Content From Other Blogs Without Violating Copyright
1. Your Point Of View
The thing I like about you is that you’re not like me. I’d want to hear your unique take on the subject. I’ll keep coming back because of your distinct voice.
2. The Conversation, Don’t Repeat It.
It only makes sense to link back to the source post if you think someone did an excellent job discussing your issue. The same may be said about tweets, comments, and other online exchanges.
3. Aggregate The Best Of The Best.
Rather than creating an entire blog post on a fantastic tutorial you discovered, why not compile a list of your favorites? If you need to re-share that one fantastic guide, at the very least, goes back to tip #2.
Is It Legal To Repost News Articles
It’s a very grey area of the law to determine whether a particular usage is protected by fair use. There’s no way to know if a certain usage is “fair” or not in advance; the only way to know for sure is to get sued! If you are summoned to court, the judge will consider the following four factors:
1. The purpose and type of the use, including whether it is commercial or for non-commercial educational purposes — Courts are more likely to establish fair use where the usage is for noncommercial educational reasons.
2. The nature of the copyrighted work — When the copied material is factual rather than artistic, particular use is more likely to be fair.
3. The size and significance of the piece exploited concerning the entire copyrighted work — When the amount taken is little or minor in comparison to the whole work, a court will weigh this aspect in favor of a judgment of fair use.
4. The impact of the usage on the copyrighted work’s potential market or value — If the court determines that the newly formed work is not a substitute product for the copyrighted work, it will be more likely to favor fair use.
If we apply these tests to a case where a nonprofit organization has republished news articles on its public website:
1. Commercial vs nonprofit educational: It is possible to effectively establish that the use is “nonprofit educational.” This does not, however, imply that organizations or “educators” have blanket authority to duplicate anything.
2. The nature of the copyrighted work: News items fall between highly creative work and hard facts.
3. The amount of the work that is reproduced: This is a slam dunk in favor of fair use.
4. Market use: Some newspapers charge a fee to view older archives, and most offer advertising space on their websites. This means that copying the content on your website would almost certainly be considered a violation of the article’s market.
Three Ways to Repost Blog Content
1. Add Updated Information
If you’ve authored any posts that contain material that has since changed, consider updating them with new information. Use the Revisionize plugin to prevent content from being published prematurely. This tool duplicates the content you’re working on into a new post, allows you to change it as needed, and only replaces the original once you’ve given permission. Your audience will benefit from new information, and your old content will become more relevant. (You’ll need to upgrade to a WordPress.com Business website to use plugins.)
2. Re-evaluate And Revise Your Writing Style Or Format.
Rewriting an old post in a new format is another fantastic method to bring it up to date. For example, you could turn a previous how-to guide into a new frequently asked questions (FAQ) piece. Alternatively, some already produced text may require updating to make it more readable. What other forms could a personal story or experience take? Find archived content that you’d like to bring back to life and reconstruct it in a new manner worthy of republishing.
3. Change The Visual Layout
The WP Scroll Depth plugin can help you figure out where your readers are leaving your page. Then, to better attract and maintain their interest, try modifying the visual arrangement of postings. Do you have any old articles with a lot of text or a lot of statistics? Try using photos to split them up. According to HubSpot, when words are combined with visuals, audiences retain 55 percent more information than when words are used alone. You could also turn the content into an infographic or a movie to make it easier for people to consume.
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