Why Having Duplicate Content On Your Website is Bad and How to Fix It?

If you have duplicate content on your website, it’s not only a plagiarism issue, but it also negatively affects the SEO of your website. But do you know why it hurts your website’s SEO? You may not know how adversely it can affect your site. The good news is you can fix it by taking the help of an expert SEO company.

Why is duplicate content a problem for your site?

Duplicate content not just makes it unclear to direct the metrics of the link to a single page or its multiple versions but also causes confusion for the search engines. They are unable to identify which page they should index and which shouldn’t be indexed. Therefore, it results in hurting your website rankings and loss of traffic.

As search engines’ algorithm focuses on choosing the page version that has the best results, the other pages with duplicate content are less likely to be visible in SERPs. Inbound links also point to multiple duplicate content pieces impacting the search engine visibility of your specific piece.

How duplicate content occurs?

You don’t put in duplicate content intentionally, but it mainly occurs unintentionally. Here are some common situations that can lead to duplicate content on your website.

1. Your website has undergone a redesign
2. You have different versions of the same website, and you have placed the same content on both sites
3. Variations of URL
4. Pagination of comment
5. Website localization

These common instances can lead to content duplication, lowering your website’s ranking, and search engines may detect plagiarism. A professional SEO company can help you avoid this issue efficiently and professionally.

How can you fix issues of duplicate content?

It’s important for your website’s ranking that you should fix the issues of duplicate content. The first thing you need to do is to identify which content version is original and which one is a duplicate. After you have sorted this, several options are available to fix duplication issues.

Ensure it doesn’t happen

The most convenient and simple way to prevent duplication is to ensure it doesn’t happen in the first place. You may want to have different versions of content or website, but you can avoid duplicate content issues with the assistance of a professional SEO company. The experts know what to fix and avoid to ensure your versions remain unique yet similar without impacting your website’s rankings. They may check your website’s pagination, duplicate and printer-friendly pages, session IDs, and other elements. Checking these things will help you avoid duplication.

Rel=Canonical

With the use of rel=canonical, you can deal with the duplicate content problem. This particular command explains to search engines that the duplicate pages are just a copy of the specific URL. As this command is a technical aspect you may need to become more familiar with, an SEO company can help you set it up.

301- Redirect

Another effective way is setting up 301 redirects from your website’s duplicate page to its original page. By using this redirect, you can combine the ranking of multiple pages into a single page so that they don’t compete with each other creating stronger relevancy. If you have no idea how to achieve this, it’s better to consult a professional SEO company.