How Does Duplicate Content Happen and How to Fix It

Duplicate content is a common issue that affects many websites and can be a major problem for search engine optimisation (SEO). Duplicate content appears on multiple web pages or across different websites. It can be a major problem for SEO because it can lead to lower rankings, reduced visibility, and decreased organic traffic.

Fortunately, there are ways to identify and address duplicate content issues. To learn more about this, keep on reading below.

How Does Duplicate Content Happen?

Duplicate content can hurt your SEO efforts, making it more difficult for search engines to index and rank your pages. There are a few ways that duplicate content can happen:

Copied Content

This is the most common form of duplicate content. It can happen when you copy content from another source, such as another website or a document. It can also happen if someone else copies your content.

Republished Content

This happens when you republish content that you’ve already published elsewhere. For example, if you have a blog on your website and you also publish the same content on a social media platform, that would be considered republished content.

Duplicate Meta Tags

Meta tags are the tags that you use to describe your content. If you have the same meta tags on multiple pages, that would be considered duplicate content.

Duplicate Titles

This happens when you have the same title for multiple pages. It’s important to have unique titles for each page, as this helps search engines understand what each page is about.

Duplicate URLs

This can happen if you have the same content on multiple URLs. For example, if you have a page that can be accessed via both www.example.com/page and www.example.com/page1, that would be considered duplicate content.

What Are the Best Ways to Fix Duplicate Content?

There are several ways to fix duplicate content, but which one is best for you will depend on your particular situation. Keep reading below to see what are the possible fixes:

1. Use the Canonical Tag

The canonical tag is a way to tell search engines which version of a piece of content is the original. It goes in the head section of your HTML code and looks like this:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”https://example.com/original-article.html” />

This tells search engines that the original article is at the specified URL. Any other versions of the same content should be ignored.

2. Redirect Non-canonical URLs to the Canonical URL

You can redirect the non-canonical versions to the canonical URL if you have multiple versions of the same content. This is done with a 301 redirect, a server-side redirect that tells search engines the new location of the content.

3. Use the Noindex Tag

The noindex tag is a way to tell search engines not to index a certain piece of content. It goes in the head section of your HTML code and looks like this:

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex” />

This tells search engines not to index the page. This is useful if you have duplicate content that you don’t want to appear in search results.

4. Block Crawlers With Robots.txt

The robots.txt file is a way to tell search engine crawlers which pages they should and shouldn’t crawl. You can use it to block pages with duplicate content.

5. Fix Broken Links

Broken links are a common cause of duplicate content. If you have multiple versions of the same content, fix any broken links so search engines can find the correct version.

Conclusion

Duplicate content is a problem that can affect your SEO efforts. It can be caused by several factors, including poor content management, inadvertently creating duplicate content or even malicious intent. While it’s not necessarily a black-and-white issue, it’s important to be aware of the potential problems that duplicate content can cause and to take steps to avoid or fix the issue.

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