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Duplicate content, what is it & how can I avoid it?

by | May 4, 2017 | blog | 0 comments

duplicate content

Duplicate content falls into two main categories:

  1. Intentional
  2. Unintentional

Yup, either you meant to duplicate something or you didn’t. Shocker. There is a time and place for both, it’s not always a bad thing, but should be handled correctly. Duplicate content is content that appears in more than one place on the internet. At the surface, this seems pretty straightforward, but where it gets a little more nuanced is when you remember that “one place” means a URL (www.example.com) and that duplicate URL could unintentionally be on your own site at say example.com (we’re you have both the www and non-www versions).

Intentional Duplicate Content

Duplicate content in general is looked down on by search engines because it makes their job of finding the most relevant content more difficult. If you have a piece of content on your site that’s duplicate of something from another site, well, it’s still plagiarism if you copied it trying to pass it off as yours. And, beyond just being lazy it doesn’t help you in search results- why? Because it’s not unique, it doesn’t add any value (outside of the original one), and someone else did it first.

As an internet user, if you search for a topic would you want the original writer or someone who copied the original? Most of the time you want the original because they are the original thought-leader and may have more valuable content for you to read.

So, if you’re thinking about copying from another site… just don’t do it. Whew, done. On to the more nuanced stuff.

Unintentional Duplicate Content

If you have duplicate content within your own site, this can be a problem for a couple reasons. One, search engines don’t know which version to show searchers. Two, users don’t know which version to link to so you end up with links pointing to both versions, diluting them both instead of having one strong version.

The most common “duplicate content” issues we see are:
  • HTTP/HTTPS and www/non-www versions of your website
    • This is controlled at the host level and is an easy fix, but can create full duplicate websites if not done correctly
  • URL duplicate content

Don’t worry, easy fix!

Do you need both versions live?

Sometimes you actually need both versions to exist, maybe you have a print version for example.

If the answer is no, the easiest solution is to use a 301 redirect, aka a permanent redirect, on the duplicate and point it to the original. This means when someone reaches that duplicate URL they will seamlessly be redirected to the intended one (this includes search engines too!).

If the answer is yes, you need both versions to exist, you’d want to use a canonical tag, aka a canonical link element. This is a command put into the page code of the duplicate page that tells search engines, “hey, we know this is a duplicate, here is the original and one you should show in search results.” This tag looks something like this:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://example.com/yoga-for-beginners”/> and you’d put this code on the duplicate page (the one you do NOT want to show in search results) www.example.com/yoga-for-beginners?episode1

That’s it. Either you don’t need the duplicate and you can use a 301 redirect, or you do and you’ll use a canonical tag. But, you won’t ever duplicate content from another site… you’re more original than that.
You may be wondering if you have duplicate content at this point. Take a look, go to google.com and type in “site:yoursite.com”. This will return all pages of your site that search engines have indexed. Take a look through those to see if you’ve got any duplicates and get to work solving for them using the questions above.

Monika Choudhary

Web Developer

Monika is competent professional with 10+ Years of Experience in the Website Design and Development. She is having a great expertise in developing responsive e-commerce, real estate, social networking, jobs portals, classified, corporate based websites & her expertise includes WordPress, Woocommerce, Magento, Shopify, Codeigniter, CakePHP, Laravel. She is detail oriented, driven worker who enjoys fixing code and creating something beautiful websites from scratch. Quality Work & On time delivery is always her aim. Always trying to achieve client satisfaction level, she will not only work with you to develop an amazing website with high coding standards, she will also ensure it engages with your potentials to drive more conversions and leads.

"What does karma mean to you?"

"To me, Karma is the result of a person's actions and I believe that what happens to a person, happens because they caused it with their actions. Doing things with a good intention is what matters to me the most and that is what I always remember when working for my clients. I have realized that in this industry where there is a lot of competition around, I am working for my clients with a good heart and a positive vibe. That's what keeps me going."

"Who is your dream client and why?

"My dream client would be a company or an organization who passionately wants to build a strong online presence in the digital world. The one that’s easy to work with and that inspires you and makes work not feel like work is the dream client for me. I would love to guide them from the initial stage to build up their recognition through clean and advanced coding on the web."

Leighton Hendrick

Digital Marketing

+20 years of marketing, public relations, communications, advertising and internal and outside sales experience.

Extensive experience in developing and managing all levels of product and offering campaigns including marketing collateral, Web site content, SEO, paid media and social, inside sales call campaigns, sell sheets and management of campaign success metrics.

Demonstrated success in launching new products and corporate brands, developing demand generation programs, and creating internal and external communication pieces.

Exceptional collaborator with the ability to build relationships with trade media and manage large-scale corporate initiatives and events.

Proven ability to create and manage lead generation and call campaigns that result in the successful conversion of new and unique clients. Creator and Editor-In-Chief of IT Compliance Magazine, a quarterly publication with over 2,500 international C-Level readers.

Cassie Boca

Founder, CEO

Cassie taught herself SEO in 2006 when she was working at a small business that needed to increase visibility but didn’t have any budget. She understands the financial challenges startups and small business have in that they have to wear every hat and prioritize what they work on based on what will have the largest impact to the business. There are never enough hours in the day, but consistently Cassie found her time spent increasing rankings in organic search, ensuring locations and contact info was accurate online, building positive reviews, and spreading positive news about the companies she worked at.

In the last 10+ years, Cassie has seen it all, but always comes back to her passion for helping inspirational companies grow. As a consumer, she tries to limit her purchases to companies she believes in (ok, she still goes to Target… she’s a human) because as consumers we have the ability to help companies succeed. If we all purchased from companies that aligned with our personal beliefs, not only would companies step up but we’d see a shift in the brands that we interact with daily. She calls this being a “conscious consumer”… sometimes we think she made that phrase up, but the more time we spend with her the more we find ourselves buying only from companies we know the founders or love their mission.

Enough business talk, Cassie is passionate about connecting with like-minded people, traveling and is a pretty badass skier. She loves to chase winter seeking powder fields, and on a powder day you may even get a FaceTime call from a chairlift or the backcountry.

What does karma mean to you?

To me, karma is the intention behind our actions. Good karma, to me, means doing things with good intent, a pure heart, and positive energy. When starting a company, it was critical that I start it with good karma. In writing our mission statement you’ll see that our mission has the intent of helping consumers find companies they are proud to wear their logo or recommend to a friend…what I call being a conscious consumer. When I realized my intent behind starting this company was coming from a place of wanting to increase visibility of companies putting good into this world, I knew we had to include karma in the name.

Who is your dream client and why?

My dream client isn’t a company any of us have heard of. I’d love to hear from a young startup doing something inspirational, I mean, my passion is for increasing visibility so it’s not much of a challenge if a company comes to me and they are already hugely successful.

If I had to pick a company that already exists, it would be Charity Water. Their mission and vision inspire me so much, I had all of my wedding guests make a donation there instead of buying us gifts. But again, Charity Water has great visibility already so I’d love to find a company that isn’t there yet where I feel we can change the trajectory of their company through the work we do.