Copying-n-pasting content is one of the quickest ways to get a new site up and running. However, duplicate content like this is also one the best ways to be delisted, ignored, or devalued by search engines. And I’m not even referring to issues of copyright infringement. Duplicate content is a common issue for many sites, and copy-n-pasting is not the only way to get it.
Duplicate Content Prevention
There are many sites that discuss the dangers of duplicate content. And personally, I think most of the “dangers” are common sense. So rather than discuss the dangers, the goal here is to educate you on a few methods to prevent duplicate content. Doing so may help you to improve your search engine rankings as well as reduce any confusion for your readers.
How content is duplicated
Duplicate content can occur “accidentally.” In other words, they can happen without being an intentional content spammer. Here are a few examples:
- Multiple domains that point to the same website
- Printer friendly pages
- Inconsistent linking (www or directory names)
- Syndicated or republished content (see Richard Keir’s article on this)
Solutions to duplicate content
These solutions do not necessarily correspond to the issues above. If you have additions or other ideas, please feel free to comment or email me.
- Write unique content
- Obvious, but thought it should still be here.
- Use a Robots.txt file
- Use a robots.txt to let spiders know what files are okay. If you have print-friendly pages, disable them from being indexed.
- Use 301 Redirects
- A permanent redirect will let search engine’s know where the “original” content is. This is particularly good to use when you have multiple domain names that point to the same site.
- Link consistently
- Be sure to always use the www in your domain or never use the www. Choose one or the other. The same goes for directories. Either always use trailing slashes or never use trailing slashes.
Resources
- SEO Junkie’s Duplicate content analyzer software to help you to find duplicate content within your site. It currently doesn’t do net-wide searches, but it looks like the future possibility is there.
- How to create 301 redirects
- Richard Keir’s Duplicate Content - Penalize me, please argues the positives of duplicate content.
- SE Round Table’s duplicate content issues coverage of SES NYC 2006
- Copyscape Website plagiarism search
Post inspired by Kristal’s Comment.
Leave a comment