Last modification on July 18, 2021 by Loïc Frissard
Duplicate content according to Google corresponds to blocks of text within the same domain or distinct sites, presenting a worrying similarity, or even being purely identical. To avoid this type of situation, solutions exist. If you understand the basics of recognizing and combatting spoofed content, you won’t suffer any SEO disadvantages.
2 types of duplicate content, the bane of SEO
When you write, like many writing teams, there floats above your keyboard this nagging little music warning you against duplicate content…
What exactly is this ghost always in the background of SEO discussions?
A text copied and pasted several times within a site is duplicate content or duplicate content in plain French. Repetition of the same phrases becomes a problem for both search engines and Internet users. But, if your competitor grants himself the right to steal your article to insert it into his own site, again this is plagiarism. Vigilance must be increased to combat both forms of copied content:
- internal or intrasite duplicate content: any text present in duplicate (or more) on the same site.
- external duplicate content or extrasite: content stolen and found on a page of another website.
The consequences of duplicate content for a site
Duplicate content will influence the indexing of a site’s pages by search engines.
The algorithms have filters detecting similar content.
The first consequence is to see the incriminated page drop in the query results.
You will therefore understand that duplicate content is totally counterproductive in natural referencing.
Be aware that duplicating content also causes a decline in online brand image, or e-reputation.
The credibility of a site where articles are repeated, or worse, where the texts are completely the same as the competitor’s, will drop, and Internet users will no longer visit your pages.
Proven plagiarism is finally sanctioned by Google. With proof of content anteriority, clean links and fresh editorial content, a copied site can assert its legitimacy. Conversely, the copying site will either see a downgrade or deindexation.
Tips to avoid duplicate content problems
Apart from delegating the writing of your content to a team of professional editors committed to 100% original content, the work of optimizing a site is a constant work, a sort of bottomless pit!
You must respect SEO rules while remaining authentic for the pleasure of readers. There are simple ways to do this:
For internal content:
- Use specific Titles and Meta descriptions on every page
- Do not index all content to avoid any risk of duplicate pages
- Avoid copying/pasting within your site ; even a small piece of text will be quickly spotted by the engines which expect unique content whatever happens
- Set up a canonical tag: this way you identify the reference page; a page resembling it will then be seen as “not to be indexed”. Very useful in e-commerce for color variations of the same product for example
For external content:
- be careful if you have several sites, do not include the same content
- Take care when redesigning a site or domain name migration: rather than anarchic redirects undoubtedly leading to duplicates, consider a 301 redirect
- Assert your rights if you are the victim of content theft: ask the site owner to delete or nofollow the page(s) in question
- Use your last resortif no response ever comes to you with the Google deindexing complaint tool
The top 3 free anti-plagiarized content solutions
It is of great interest to check that your texts are not copies of content already online, but it is also important to scan the Internet to ensure that no articles have been stolen from you (any or part).
To do this, test this software without delay, essential tools to be certain of the primacy of your texts. This is an SEO practice to adopt for any editor tracking duplicate content:
Quetext: anti-plagiarism tool in English allowing you to copy and paste the text of a page into the search engine. It also plays the role of finding web pages similar to yours. To do this, check the “calculate similarity score” option.
Duplicate Content Checker: ideal for detecting plagiarism; ergonomic, the use is intuitive and the search for copied content is carried out from a URL or text. Although in English, the software takes into account the results in French.
Positeo: the most popular solution. Quick and easy to use, it produces reliable and precise results. Copy the URL or article snippet and get a list of potentially duplicate web pages. Additional information is a percentage of copied content and a color display to highlight the strongest plagiarisms.
An article by Anabelle Martinez-Maingraud for SEOmantique
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