How Duplicate Content Is Damaging Your SEO Strategy

Search engines are designed to provide users with the most accurate and up-to-date answers to their queries. When duplicate content appears on multiple web pages, it can be difficult for search engines to determine which page should be given priority. As a result, the search engine may ignore the pages all together rather than risk giving an incorrect answer.

Why It’s a Problem

Copying content from one page to another can affect your website’s rankings. The search engine’s algorithm penalizes web pages with identical content, while websites with unique and original material will be rewarded with higher rankings. This can lead to a lack of visibility on the search engine results pages and a decrease in link metrics to the page.

Duplicate content can negatively affect a website’s rankings and traffic. Search engines typically only show one version of the same content, making all other copies less visible. Any inbound links pointing to different versions of the same content will be spread out rather than concentrated in one place, reducing the search engine visibility of that particular piece of content. Additionally, link equity is impacted as other sites have to choose between multiple versions of the same content.

How Does Duplicate Content Happen?

Losing search engine positioning due to duplicate versions of your website being live at once is a common problem. If you’ve recently had a website redesign, it’s important to ensure that the correct version is set in Google Search Console and the updated sitemap is submitted to Google. Failing to do this may adversely affect your website’s search engine rankings.

Here are scenarios that result in duplicate content:

• Multiple Site Versions

Having the same content appear on multiple website versions can be an issue. If you have separate versions of a page, the same content can be indexed twice, thus creating duplicate content. This can result in a drop in search engine rankings and can even lead to being penalized. It’s important to ensure that your pages only appear on one website version, so you don’t have any issues with duplicate content.

• URL Variations

Duplicate content can be a problem when URL parameters, such as click tracking and analytics codes, are used. This is because the same page may be indexed multiple times with different orders of parameters in the URL. Additionally, printer-friendly pages can be indexed, making the same content appear multiple times. It is important to avoid adding URL parameters or creating alternate versions of URLs to prevent this from happening.

• Comment Pagination

Paginating comments means splitting up many comments into smaller, more manageable chunks. This allows for easier navigation and faster loading times on websites. However, it can also l