Duplicate Content Issue: What it is & How to Fix it

what is duplicate content issue

Imagine putting in so much effort and research to create a valuable content piece for your audience. Now, suppose another similar page on your site, or even a different site, has the exact same content. 

This will cause search engine to be confused about which page to rank. And, ultimately lead to a third page with distinct content on the same topic getting ranked. 

That is what we call the duplicate content issue. 

As content creators, we’ve faced this issue many times and we know you might have too. That is why we’ve created this comprehensive article to help you fix and prevent duplicate content issue.

But first let’s understand what duplicate content is in detail. 

What is Duplicate Content?

what is duplicate content issue

The internet is filled to the brink with information. No matter what you search about, you can find countless pages of information on it. 

While it is pretty useful for readers, it can be a huge issue for creators. 

As there might already be lots of website having the same content as you. 

But duplicate content is not an issue that you face with just competitors. 

In fact you might end having duplicate content on your website.  

Duplicate content refers to similar or identical content that appears on multiple pages, either within a website or across different websites. 

Duplicate content can be categorized into two main types: on-site and off-site. 

On-site duplicate content refers to identical or very similar content found on different pages within a single website. 

Off-site duplicate content, on the other hand, occurs when the same content is present on multiple websites. Both types can negatively affect search engine rankings and user experience.

Why is having duplicate content an issue for seo?

From a search engine perspective, this duplicate content creates confusion. 

Google’s algorithms have to decide which version is the most relevant to a user’s query, which can split the traffic, reduce the ranking of both pages, and impact your site’s credibility. 

Moreover, it can lead to a poor user experience, as users may find the same content in different locations, creating confusion and reducing trust in your brand.

It’s not always malicious, though. 

Duplicate content can often arise unintentionally due to technical issues, like URL variations, or HTTP vs HTTPS versions of the same page. This is when you end up having duplicate content on site. 

For example, let’s say you have a website called “EcoGoods” showcasing your wide range of eco-friendly products. Now, let’s assume you have two separate pages with the same content about your best-selling product – organic cotton tote bags.

For instance, you might have this content on two different URLs:

  • www.ecogoods.com/organic-tote-bags
  • www.ecogoods.com/products/handbags/organic-tote-bags

This is a typical example of on-site duplicate content. Now, when search engines like Google crawl these pages, they will encounter the same content on different URLs, which can lead to several issues:

1. Splitting of Traffic: Search engines, unable to decide which page to rank higher, might rank both pages lower. This can split your website traffic, reducing the overall visibility of your product.

2. Dilution of Backlinks: If other websites link to both of these pages, the value of these backlinks gets diluted between the two pages instead of strengthening a single one.

3. Wasted Crawl Budget: Search engines have a crawl budget – the number of pages they will crawl on your site within a particular time frame. Duplicate content can lead to wastage of this budget, reducing the frequency with which search engines crawl and index your new or updated content.

The key to fixing this content issue lies in identifying the duplicate content first. There are several tools that can help you identify duplicate content issues on your website. 

Identifying Duplicate Content Issue

1. Identifying On-site Duplicate Content

Google Search Console (GSC) is a tool that allows website owners to check indexing status and optimize the visibility of their websites. 

But, you can also use it to identify instances of duplicate content.

To address potential duplicate content issues, use the Search Results tab under Performance. Pay attention to these common problems:

  • Check for both HTTP and HTTPS variations of the same URL. 
  • Identify URLs with and without the “www” prefix. 
  • Examine URLs with and without trailing slashes. 
  • Be mindful of URLs with and without query parameters.
  • Check for URLs with varying capitalizations.
Image Source: Ahrefs

2. Identifying Off-site Duplicate content

Tools like Google Search Console and Screaming Frog help you identify duplicate content on your website. But its equally as important to find off-site duplicate content.

Duplicate content finder is one such tool that you can use to identify if your content has been scraped by competitors. 

By utilizing tools like Google Search Console and SEO Spider, identifying and managing duplicate content becomes a more manageable task. Once the duplicates have been identified, they can be addressed properly to avoid negatively impacting your site’s SEO performance and user experience.

Best Practices to Fix Duplicate Content Issue

1. Using 301 Redirects

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. 

This protocol helps website owners address duplicate content issues by directing all traffic and link equity to one URL, thereby reducing the instances of duplicate content. 

For example, GreenGardens might have the following two URLs leading to the same product:

  • www.greengardens.com/products/organic-seed-mix
  • www.greengardens.com/products/organic-seed-mix?ref=facebook_ad
how to fix duplicate content issue - 301 redirect

By implementing a 301 redirect, any visitor (human or search engine bot) attempting to access the second URL would be automatically redirected to the first, ensuring that everyone is led to the same content.

Let’s break down how a 301 redirect can help:

  1. Consolidating Link Equity: 

When different URLs have the same content, they split the link equity, and no single page garners full authority. This situation can affect the page’s ability to rank in search engine results. 

A 301 redirect transfers about 90%-99% of the link equity to the directed page, thus consolidating the authority and improving the chances of ranking higher in SERPs.

  1. Improving User Experience: 

Duplicate content can confuse users, as they may encounter the same content through different URLs. By redirecting to a single URL, you ensure that users only find the content at one location, providing a coherent and straightforward user experience.

  1. Guiding Search Engine Crawlers: 

Multiple URLs housing the same content can waste a search engine’s crawl budget. By employing 301 redirects, you let search engine crawlers know which is the preferred URL, helping them index your website more efficiently.

Remember, when implementing 301 redirects, ensure that you’re redirecting to a page with similar content — a user (or search engine) expecting to find a particular page won’t appreciate being directed to an irrelevant one. 

Also, be mindful not to create redirect chains, as they can slow down the website and lead to crawling issues.

2. Utilizing Canonical URLs

A canonical URL is a way of telling search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. 

Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or “duplicate” content appearing on multiple URLs. 

Essentially, the canonical tag tells search engines which version of a URL you want to appear in search results.

For example, GreenGardens might use canonical URLs to handle product variation pages. If they have separate pages for different sizes of the same shovel, they could choose one as the canonical version:

In this case, the search engine would consider the small garden shovel page as the original content, and the large garden shovel page as a duplicate, even though both are live on the website.

Let’s look at how setting up canonical URLs can help address duplicate content issues:

  1. Consolidating ranking signals: 

Just like with 301 redirects, canonical URLs help to consolidate all the ranking signals towards a single, preferred URL. This means all the traffic, link equity, and any other beneficial attributes are pushed towards the canonical URL, which can help improve its position in SERPs.

  1. Preventing dilution of content value: 

Duplicate pages divide the value of the content, as search engines may not be sure which version is the original or which version to index. By specifying a canonical URL, you indicate the version of the page that provides the most value, helping search engines understand and rank your content more effectively.

  1. Providing flexibility: 

Canonical URLs allow you to keep duplicate content on your website. This is useful when you have multiple URLs serving the same content for valid reasons, such as tracking different marketing campaigns.

  1. Simplifying site management: 

Canonical URLs can also make site management simpler. For example, if you have a printer-friendly version of a page and a standard version, simply make the standard version the canonical one.

3. Using Robots.txt

The `robots.txt` file is a basic text file that gives instructions to web robots, commonly known as “web crawlers” or “bots” about how to interact with a website. 

In terms of addressing duplicate content issues, `robots.txt` can prove to be quite effective. 

It essentially acts as a barrier that prevents search engine bots from crawling and indexing specific pages or directories on your website. 

For instance, if GreenGardens wants to prevent Google’s bot (Googlebot) from indexing a duplicate page, their `robots.txt` file could look like this:

“`

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /products/large-garden-shovel

“`

This way, the ‘large garden shovel’ page, which is a duplicate of the ‘small garden shovel’ page, will not be crawled or indexed by Googlebot. Hence, search engine results will only display the ‘small garden shovel’ page, eliminating any confusion caused by duplicate content.

By doing this, you can prevent duplicate versions of the same content from appearing in search engine results. 

This has a dual advantage: it not only helps improve your search visibility but also ensures that your site’s page rank is not negatively affected by duplicate content.

However, it’s important to bear in mind that `robots.txt` directives are not always followed by all search engines, and the file can also be accidentally exposed, thereby revealing the sections of your site you intended to keep hidden. 

Therefore, while it is a handy tool, it should be used judiciously and in conjunction with other SEO practices like 301 redirects and canonical URLs.

4. Using URL parameters effectively:

URL parameters are employed to dynamically fetch fresh content from the server, typically based on one or more filters or selections. T

To illustrate, consider the following examples featuring alternate URLs for a single URL, say greengardens.com/products/organic-seed-mix.

The first example showcases organic seeds filtered by type, and weight, while the second URL displays seeds sorted by type, along with a specified number of products per page:

  • greengardens.com/plants/?type=perennials&color=red&size=small
  • greengardens.com/products/plants/?sort=price&display=12

These filters alone result in three viable URLs that search engines may encounter. However, the order of these parameters can vary, leading to several more accessible URLs:

  • greengardens.com/plants/?size=small&type=perennials&color=red
  • greengardens.com/plants/?size=small&color=red&type=perennials
  • greengardens.com/plants/?display=12&sort=price

While the end result of each url leads to the content, the “style” parameter potentially warrants specific sales-oriented content. This in turn, leads google to index each url, leading to content being flagged as duplicate. 

To fix this issue, you can implement parameter handling techniques that involve specifying which parameters are relevant for search engine indexing and which ones should be ignored. 

Use techniques like rel=”canonical” tags or URL parameter settings in Google Search Console, website owners can inform search engines about the preferred version of the page to index and avoid indexing duplicate variations.

Once done, the landing page (and canonical) URLs should adopt a structure like:

  • greengardens.com/plants/perennials/
  • greengardens.com/plants/roses/
  • greengardens.com/plants/trees/

Then, the filtered results URLs would look like:

  • greengardens.com/plants/perennials/?size=small&color=red&display=12&sort=price
  • greengardens.com/plants/roses/?color=red
  • greengardens.com/plants/trees/?size=small&display=12&sort=price&color=red

By consistently utilizing parameters solely for filtering and sorting content, concerns about unintentionally preventing Google from crawling valuable parameters can be alleviated.

Tip: Search engines typically ignore everything to the right of a pound “#” symbol in the URL. Incorporating this into each URL before any parameter ensures that search engines index only the canonical part, making the canonical tag more effective.

Common Causes of Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can occur for many reasons and can affect your website’s SEO performance. Here are some common causes and how they might manifest in a website. 

To understand that, let’s take the example of a hypothetical website, “GreenGardens,” which sells garden supplies and organic seeds.

1. URL Variations

Sometimes, a single webpage may have different URLs. For example, GreenGardens may have different URLs for the same product, like an organic seed mix, due to tracking parameters or session IDs:

  • www.greengardens.com/products/organic-seed-mix 
  • www.greengardens.com/products/organic-seed-mix?ref=facebook_ad

These URL variations can confuse search engines, leading to a dilution of page authority because search engines may treat these as separate pages with duplicate content.

2. Http vs. Https or Www vs. Non-www Pages

If your website has separate versions for http and https or www and non-www, it can create duplicate content. For instance, all four versions of GreenGardens’ homepage may exist:

  • http://greengardens.com
  • https://greengardens.com
  • http://www.greengardens.com
  • https://www.greengardens.com

Each version may be indexed separately by search engines, leading to duplicate content issues. To solve this, make sure each URL variation is redirected to your existing URL.

how to fix duplicate content issue

3. Printer-Friendly Versions of Pages

If your website has printer-friendly versions of pages that are live on your site, these can create duplicate content. For example, GreenGardens may have a printer-friendly version of a blog post:

  • www.greengardens.com/blog/organic-gardening-tips
  • www.greengardens.com/print/blog/organic-gardening-tips

The printer-friendly version, if not handled correctly, may be seen as duplicate content by search engines.

4. Product Variations

E-commerce websites often have different pages for slight product variations (like size or color), creating duplicate content. GreenGardens might have separate pages for different sizes of the same garden shovel:

  • www.greengardens.com/products/small-garden-shovel
  • www.greengardens.com/products/large-garden-shovel

These pages may have similar content, leading to duplicate content issues.

5. Content Syndication

Content syndication involves the redistribution of a particular piece of content, such as an article, video, or infographic, across various websites. 

Both large and small publications engage in content syndication to provide their readers with updated and relevant information. 

This mutually beneficial practice allows original authors to expand their brand exposure to a new audience, creating a positive outcome for both parties involved.

But, syndicated content can also create duplicate content issues. 

Image Source – Fast Company

How much duplicate content is acceptable?

So, the burning question is, how much duplicate content is actually okay in the vast realm of the web? Well, according to Matt Cutts, about 25% to 30% of the internet is rocking some form of duplicate content. Surprising, right?

Google doesn’t slap the “spam” label on duplicate content unless you’re playing the system and trying to game the search results. So, a bit of relief there. 

The real headache comes when other sites blindly swipe your content, and suddenly, their versions start hogging the limelight for related searches.

Now, if you’re not too keen on someone else using your content to rank, you’ve got a nifty option. 

Ever heard of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act? 

Yeah, that’s how you can protect your content from being stolen. File a removal request, and voilà, you’re fighting back against content copycats!

Conclusion

Duplicate content can have a big impact on your website’s visibility and user experience. 

It’s important to understand the different types of duplicate content, find out what’s causing it, and take effective steps to fix and prevent it. By doing so, you’ll not only improve your website’s SEO performance but also provide a better experience for your users. 

So, stay vigilant! Regularly monitor your website for duplicate content and take proactive measures to ensure that your content remains unique and valuable to both search engines and users.

More Resources

A Complete Guide to SEO to Improve Search Ranking

SEO Mistakes to Avoid for Better ranking

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