When building or updating your website, it is tremendously important to keep in mind the dangers of duplicate content. Duplicate content is any significant block of text or content which is noticeably similar or completely matches a block of text on another domain. In many instances, this occurs not as a result of any malicious intention. It can often happen when there are printer-only versions of a web page or sometimes in discussion forums with the capability of producing pages aimed for mobile devices.
There are some cases in which content may be duplicated in a deliberate manner across numerous websites. The most often reason behind this is an attempt to drive more traffic to a site or tweak search engine rankings. These types of deceptive methods can not only result in a user having a bad experience online but can also create problems with your website as well. For instance, if a search engine such as Google finds what appears to be duplicate content adjustments may be made in the ranking and indexing of those sites. This can result in a lower ranking of the site. In some cases the website may be completely removed from the Google Index. If that happens, the website will no longer show up in the search results.
There are some things that you can do to avoid becoming a victim of duplicate content. First, make sure that you always syndicate your content with extreme caution on other sites. Google will naturally show the version of your content that is deemed to be most appropriate for the given search. Therefore, make sure that every piece of content that is syndicated includes a link back to your original piece of content or article.
Reducing boilerplate repetition is also important to avoid duplicate content. For example, rather than just keeping a copyright notice on the bottom of each page of your website, use a brief summary of your copyright notice and then use a link that will take users to a page that contains more details.
Publishing stubs should also be avoided when possible. Most users prefer not to see any empty pages on a website, so try not to use placeholders. If you do not have any actual content for a page yet, simply do not publish it.
It is also critical to ensure you have a good understanding of the content management system you use. Take the time to become familiar with the way in which your content is displayed on your site, including the use of forums and blogs.
Also, try to reduce any similar content. If you have a number of web pages that are similar to one another, you might consider either consolidating those multiple pages into a single page or expanding one of the pages.
There are also some online tools that you can use to make sure that you do not have duplicate content and also that no one else is infringing upon your content. These sites include:
http://www.plagium.com/
http://copyscape.com/
Remember that usually having duplicate content on a website will not result in a negative action unless it seems as though the duplicate content was used deceptively and specifically for the purpose of manipulating search engine results.
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