When you are creating content for your website, it is important to be mindful of not having duplicate content. Duplicate content is where the same or substantially similar content is found on two or more URL addresses. Having duplicate content on your website can negatively affect your site’s search engine optimisation (SEO). To find out more about duplicate content and how it can affect your website, continue reading the article below.
What is Search Engine Optimisation?
Search engine optimisation, better known as SEO, is the practice of optimising your website so that it will rank strongly on search engines. SEO differs from other marketing activities as it is an entirely organic method of generating brand awareness and traffic. Paid social media and search display ads can be very effective in boosting brand awareness but are costly for those businesses looking to achieve scale. Some SEO best practices involve tailoring content to a specific audience so that it can gain traction with that community and utilising keywords that see quality search volumes.
Optimising a website to perform well on search engines can be a time-consuming process, with businesses that undertake SEO activities typically seeing results after a few months. However, the benefits of undertaking quality SEO practices are huge, with good positioning on Google, in particular, being the end goal. If your business’ website is positioned at or near the top of the results page on a search engine it will mean that more people will be likely to check out your website.
How Duplicate Content Can Impact Your Website’s Performance
For many websites, duplicate content is accidental and not malicious. For example, travel websites may have similar URLs and website content due to the similarity of their businesses. There is conflicting evidence as to how detrimental duplicate content can be to your website. Some SEO specialists suggest that its presence on your website will impact your website’s ranking because Google will be unable to determine who originally published the content and therefore won’t promote your website. Whereas some other industry specialists indicate that incidental duplicate content will not be a major problem unless it was created with the purpose of drawing clicks away from another website.
Google’s guidelines on the subject suggest avoiding duplicate content where possible. They state that online stores with similar items can often find themselves with duplicate content, and this content is categorised as non-malicious. It is only likely that Google will penalise your website’s ranking if its content was copied for the sole purpose of manipulating search results.
If you see that another website has copied your website’s content without your permission, you should first contact the site’s host and request they remove it. Then the next step would be to make a request to Google that the duplicate page should be removed on copyright grounds.
Are you looking to improve your website’s search engine rankings? Contact the SEO specialists at Patch Agency. Our team is experienced in all things digital and is ready to help you take your business’ online presence to the next level.
