Duplicate content is a high-level SEO topic. Site owners dread the mention of it.

Inquire anyone concerning replicated material, such as a portion of the so-called marketing specialists, and the majority of them will make you interpret that your website or weblog is a likely countdown timepiece due to copied content. It won’t be long before Google penalizes you.

But how much of this statement is true?

Almost no negative consequences will arise from having duplicate content, with the only exception being in rare situations. However, it can still have an impact on the search engine optimization of your website.

What’s Duplicate Content?

The expression used for referring to similar content existing in multiple websites or URL addresses on the internet is ‘duplicate content’. It’s hard to follow because search engines would not be able to decide which URL to show.

This might hurt how a page is ranked. When other sites start connecting to the separate adaptations of the material, it makes it even more complicated for search engines to comprehend.

Let’s Illustrate this Using a Real-life Example

A duplicate content issue can be likened to a crossroads with many divergent paths that all lead to the same destination.

Which direction should you follow?

It’s even worse than the destinations vary a bit. This doesn’t pose a problem for readers, as the information remains the same. However, search engines must decide which one to present in the search engine results, while ensuring they do not reveal the same article twice.

Will Google Penalise You for Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content isn’t the same as copied content. Google will not punish you for having multiple versions of the same content on your website but will take action against any copied material.

While plagiarism is intentional, duplicated material typically happens as a result of technical errors.

Google is clear on this. They won’t penalize your site for duplicate content. In the most serious instances, when a large number of your web pages have been copied, you are in a precarious position.

Google always ranks websites with original, high-quality content. If you attempt to manipulate the content of others and post it on your webpage, changing some language and adding various essential words, then this could be an option. If that happens, Google will think you are trying to manipulate their system and thus decrease your position on the search engine results pages.

How Much Duplicate Content is Acceptable?

The most beneficial situation is to totally avoid any kind of replicated content.

Always strive to publish original content. If you have to post duplicate content, then you should use your best judgment when doing so.

Examine your composition line by line and restate each sentence. Overall, you’re safe with only 10% duplicate content.

Here’s what the former head of search quality at Google had to say about duplicate content, Matt Cutts:

Matt suggested that up to 30% of the web is composed of replicated material. He additionally asserted that Google does not look upon replicated content as going against their rules of usage. Search engines will not punish your website unless it’s determined that you are using it to manipulate their results for a better ranking.

Can a Duplicated Article Outrank the Original?

Yes, it can.

On extremely rare occasions, and only when the website that is copying your content has a higher degree of authority.

Must You Block Google from Indexing Duplicate Content?

There’s no need for this.

Google has an interesting article about dealing with identical posts on your website.

Google suggests that you should not prevent content that is identical or comparable from appearing on your website, regardless of whether you do so using robots.txt or a different method.

Does Google Penalise Sites for Syndicating Content?

Google has made it explicit that it will impose penalties on websites that duplicate material.

Here’s what Google has to say about syndicating your content to other sites (paraphrased statement):

“Be careful with how you syndicate your content. Google will evaluate all the different versions of the material and select the one they deem the most advantageous to the consumer. You are reminded that the version they decide to offer the customer might not be the one that you wanted.

Make sure the content you post on other sites has a link back to the original piece of content that’s on your website.

It would be preferable to request that those syndicating your materials utilize the no index metatags to ensure that no search engine catalogs syndicated variants of your content (Google 2020).

The Problem with Syndicating Your Content

Issues can arise with content syndication that may impact your natural website traffic.

Since the material is on different individuals’ sites, that implies they’re the ones obtaining the advantages from all the great SEO signs the content is making – not you.

Requesting the link back to your first post could be beneficial. Nevertheless, we must not ignore that these associations could be thought of as inauthentic.

So, What’s the Best Way Forward?

Request the platforms that have reproduced your writings to include a tag of “rel=canonical” which will redirect to the original content. In doing so, your website is able to take full advantage of the search engine optimization that is created by the reprinting of those pieces.

5 Myths About Duplicate Content

Although you should restrict copypasting, that doesn’t mean it has no positive aspects. Let me dispel the five most popular illusions concerning the effect of this style of material on SEO so that you have a better comprehension.

1. Having Duplicate Content Hurts Your Search Ranking

Despite what some might think, duplicate content usually has only a minor impact on your search engine rankings and is not as influential as people may assume.

Google takes into account numerous elements when it goes through, puts in the index, and ranks pages. Be sure you establish yourself as a producer of exceptional and beneficial content so Google will be more likely to explore your site and put it higher than pages with similar content.

2. All Duplicate Content Gets You Penalized

Google doesn’t make a habit of penalizing duplicate content. Seriously.

The one exception? Deceptive behavior. Google encourages that you must not duplicate content in an effort to manipulate search engines or else they will either delete the pages with issues or decrease your search results ranking.

But for the majority of marketers, duplication of content shouldn’t be a cause for concern. If you make sure to post only content of a high standard and avoid practices such as overloading your writing with too many keywords, you won’t be punished for having identical material.

3. Scrapers Will Hurt Your Site

Some bloggers despise scrapers. I understand why. The concept of a robot removing or gathering information from your website seems rather disconcerting, initially.

It’s not worth fretting over that website with nothing new and no attendance. Google assesses the page and concludes that it is not relevant, so it will not have a negative impact on your rankings.

Nevertheless, if the reproduced version is higher in the ranking than the initial, then you should get in touch with the operator of the website and ask that the material be taken down. Submit a request to Google to remove the page in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by completing the Google Legal Issues Process.

Do you think it is necessary to cut ties with links from copies of your website that have been “scraped”? It’s risky, actually.

Google suggests that if your website has a considerable amount of “untrustworthy” links and you are dealing with a manual penalty against your webpage, you should disavow those links. Trust that Google will handle its tasks, and put your energy into creating content that is both original and captivating to improve your position in search engine results.

4. Reposting Your Guests Posts on Your Own Site Doesn’t Help

Using guest posts is a great strategy to drive more visitors to your website and demonstrate your value as an authority in the field. Take care when adding outbound links to your guest posts – a majority (52%) of them had more outbound than inbound links, which a recent study showed is detrimental to SEO.

If you guest post, it is probable that the individuals who generally read your work won’t be exposed to your guest posts, so it may be a good idea to post it yourself on your blog. Won’t republishing the guest post hurt the rankings, though?

Not really.

I have written articles for some fantastic websites, and some of them endorse the idea of authors reproducing their content on their own blogs after some time has passed. You could add an HTML tag to the post to differentiate between a unique and a republished article.

Here’s the tag: rel=“canonical”. If you republish a guest post from, say, “Main Blog,” your tag might look like this:

The tag aids Google in recognizing the initial post and gives it the appropriate rank.

5. Google Can Tell the Original Content Creator

Typically, search engines like Google do not know the first source of the content or the website address.

That’s one of the main problems with duplicate content. It is possible that somebody could take your work, post it on their blog, and present it as if they wrote it.

That’s plagiarism. If this occurs to you, fulfill the Legal problem solver mentioned above, or reach out to a lawyer for further guidance on dealing with copyright infringements.

5 Facts About Duplicate Content

We have just presented proof that long-held SEO beliefs about duplicate content are unfounded. What’s the truth, though? Let’s take a look.

1. Use 301 Redirects to Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties

SEMrush research has discovered that a small percentage of the total number of websites (8.58%) have redirect loops, making it important to proceed with caution when employing this technique.

Reduce the amount of similar content by pointing an old or outdated URL to the most current version. Here’s when this is helpful.

You recently moved your website to a new domain.
After merging two websites, you’re trying to redirect outdated URLs.
Your homepage has multiple URLs and you want to choose a “canonical” one.
After changing your website, you’ve deleted a page.

2. Duplicate Content Impacts Link Equity

The capacity for certain links to share power and importance from one page to the next is referred to as “link equity”. If you wish to establish a positive connection with search engines, duplicated content could be an issue.

Search engines dislike displaying multiple web pages with the same material, so they must choose which page is the most befitting. Your link exposure is diminished for each page that is duplicated, leading to a decrease in visibility.

Links matter. Backlinko discovered that the first ranking on Google has nearly four times more links than search positions two to ten combined.

It can even be even more concerning if other sites link to a duplicate page instead of linking to the page that is most desired. If different websites connect to various adaptations of the same page, the effectiveness of these external links is reduced.

Duplicate content damages your link-building campaigns. This issue can be circumvented by either putting in a canonical tag or sending copies of the page to the desired spot.

3. URL Variations Can Cause Duplicate Content Problems

Minor URL variations, although pretty harmless, cause duplicate content. URL variations stem from, for example:

analytics code
click tracking
print-friendly versions of pages
session IDs

For instance, “https://theurltag/green” could contain the same material as “https://theurltag/print/green”, though one is a more printer-friendly edition.

Discover solutions to URL discrepancies by consulting Google Search Console.

You can choose which domain you want and adjust settings so Google understands which URL variables to look through and which to overlook.

4. Google Recommends Minimizing Boilerplate Repetition

When we refer to “boilerplate” material, we are normally referring to monotonous declarations such as copyright notifications or legal declarations.

If the same blocks of text appear repeatedly within the main body of a webpage, Google might label it as a duplication.

Google has guidelines for dealing with boilerplate statements. You could include a link to a comprehensive legal policy while adding succinct legal disclaimers to every article.

5. One of the Best Ways to Avoid Duplicate Content Is Understanding Your CMS

It is possible that your content management system is producing multiple versions of the same content without you being aware.

For instance, an individual post could be seen on a website’s central page and inside a search group, for example, “https://pretendsite.com/article-a” and “https://pretendsite.com/article-category/article-a” are identical.

How do you fix this? By understanding the ins and outs of your CMS. Once you become familiar with recognizing duplicate content, you will have some possible courses of action.

You might include the canonical tag, where helpful.
Or, you might use the “Noindex” tag to stop Google from indexing the page (especially helpful for printer-friendly pages).

Conclusion

Despite there being potential issues with rankings on search engines if duplicate content is present, the consequences are not as severe as commonly thought. Unless your intention was to manipulate the results of a search engine query, they generally will not take any punitive steps. It is not to say that there are not any unfavorable impacts of having such material on your website. It is sensible to examine your website and fix any issues to avert unforeseen problems.