Duplicate content is identical or very similar content that appears in more than one place on the Internet What is duplicate content.
Therefore, even if a piece of content is not an exact copy of another page, it can still be considered a duplicate if it is sufficiently similar to that other page.
This is what identical and similar content looks like:
There may be duplicate content telegram data on different web pages on your site. Or across different websites.
To be considered duplicate, a content must have the following:
- Significant overlap in wording, structure and format with another piece
- Little or no original information
- No added value for the reader compared to a similar page
In this article, we’ll explain how duplicate content affects SEO and five common causes of duplicate content. And show you how to avoid and resolve duplicate content issues.
Let’s start with the SEO impact.
How does duplicate content affect SEO?
Google does not penalize duplicate content unless it is intended to ” be misleading and manipulate search engine results .”
So why is having duplicate content a problem for SEO? Let’s take a look:
It can hurt your ranking
Google’s goal is to present search engines seo editors and content teams in general with pages that contain original and useful information, not pages that simply repeat content already found on other sites (including content on your own website).
That’s why they have search ranking systems designed to prioritize original content when ranking results.
So if you have multiple pages that look similar, Google will do everything it can to identify which page is the original.
But if you can’t identify the original, your rankings could suffer. And the page may not rank.
And if your content does rank, the version Google chooses may not be the one you want to appear in search engine results pages (SERPs).
You Can Distribute Backlinks Unnecessarily
Backlinks are links on other websites that point to your website.
Each backlink is like a vote of confidence from that other website, telling Google that your content is likely accurate and useful.
Having two or more versions of the same content can dilute link value, which is the reputation and authority that is passed from one page to another through a link.
Here’s why.
Suppose you have two identical pages with the following URLs:
So, if you have 50 backlinks between those two pages, 30 of them could go to the first URL, while the remaining 20 would link to the second.
Instead of having one boosted page with 50 backlinks, you get two pages with fewer backlinks each.
This distribution can potentially lead to worse search engine rankings, as neither page gains as much authority as one would.
It can harm the crawlability of your website
Search engines like Google need to crawl and index (i.e. find and store) your content so that it appears in search results.
Duplicate pages waste your crawl budget (the amount of time and resources search engine crawlers spend crawling your site before moving on). Because crawlers may end up reviewing multiple versions of the same content.
This reduces the number of pages that can be crawled, which can affect your site’s visibility in search results.
Learn more: Traceability & Indexability: What They Are & How They Affect SEO
5 common causes of accidental duplicate content
There are many reasons why content can be accidentally duplicated, mainly due to website structural issues such as URL variations and copied content.
Here are five common causes:
1. Incorrect management of WWW and non-WWW variations
Users can often access websites either through a URL that includes “www” at the beginning or through a URL without it.
If your site is accessible in both directions and you don’t properly manage these variations, duplicate content issues can arise.
Imagine your website is a house with several entrances. Some people might enter your house through the front door using “www.example.com”. And others might enter through the back door using “example.com”.
Even if they are the same website, URL variations can make them appear to be two different websites to search engines.
2. Grant access with and
Having your website accessible via HTTP and HTTPS protocols can also result in duplicate content.
This is like having a normal gateway with the URL for some visitors. And a super secure, locked gateway with the URL ” for everyone else.
Search robots see them as different house doors if you don’t tell them which door is the main entrance.
3. Use trailing slashes and non-trailing slashes
Google considers variants of a URL with and without a trailing slash (“/”) to be duplicate content.
For example, the following two URLs would be considered unique to search engines:
- www.example.com/page/
- www.example.com/page
To avoid this duplication, choose an approach to trailing slashes in your page URLs and stick to it. (We’ll talk more about how to use 301 redirects to fix this problem soon.)
We have done it on our own blog.
So, if you enter into your browser, you will be immediately redirected to “.
4. Including scraped or copied content
Content scraping occurs when someone sault data copies content from one website and publishes it on another site without permission or proper attribution.
But Google tends to distinguish pretty well between the original source and copied content. They’ve written previously about how they deal with scraped content .
