Understanding Duplicate Content

There are lots of actions you can take to improve your website’s SEO. One of the main actions you can take if you want to ruin your website’s SEO is publishing duplicate content. Duplicate content almost guarantees that Google will not see your website as valuable.

What is duplicate content?

When you use the same content in multiple places on your website, or you use the same content that is on other websites, you have duplicate content.

The screenshot below shows a common example. All the dental offices listed below are using the same content… exactly. So are another two million offices that showed up when we Google this phrase.

If there were an office locally using this content, Google would probably have showed that office to us first, but with no such office in the neighborhood, Google is happy to show offices in Vancouver or Shreveport or Sonora, because these websites are all alike.

If I look for a dentist in any of these towns, though, I will not see these websites. They are all alike, so they are low value. Google wants happy customers, just as you do, so they’d rather show me original quality content, not a list of identical clones.

duplicate-content-serps

The more duplicate content you have on your website, the less valuable your website is.

How can this happen?

One of the most common reasons for duplicate content problems is the one we see in the screenshot above. All these dental offices are paying for a cookie cutter website pre-filled with generic content. They probably have changed the address, the names, and the specialties, but they haven’t bothered to rewrite the content because they don’t know that it matters.

Another common source of duplicate content is copying and pasting information from a manufacturer. If you use a particular kind of machine or technology or system, it may seem sensible to copy and paste. That’s how we end up with Google results like those shown below. There is actually a local doctor using this content, but Google is not even showing that doctor to me.

duplicate-content-serps2

Another frequent reason for duplicate content may surprise you. Often web designers don’t include content in their services. If you send them your brochure to use as the website content, you may end up with the same three paragraphs from that brochure on most of the pages at your website. We find that site owners don’t always notice this until we point it out.

What’s the solution?

You need fresh, original content on every page of your website. Google expects it and your clients or patients deserve it.

For optimum performance, you also need a steady supply of fresh, original content in the form of a blog or added pages. Contact us to find out how easy it can be to have the effective optimized content you need.

Save

Save


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply