Duplicate content is those pages of your site that completely or partially coincide with each other, even if they have their own URLs. For effective search engine optimization, it is necessary to monitor the uniqueness not only in the general Internet, but also within your web resource. This story is most often found in article announcements posted on other pages; identical product descriptions in catalog cards, reviews, etc. In this article, we will consider the negative consequences of duplicates, help you determine their presence on your site, and also give recommendations on how to avoid this.
Consequences of duplicate content:
- Deterioration of indexing - search robots spend their resources on indexing and, noticing duplicate content within one Internet resource, they are less likely to return to this site to repeat the indexing procedure. Thus, if this is repeated, the indexing process of a particular site may stop altogether. This situation can also affect the system's opinion of this web resource, which may well cause a decrease in positions.
- Hitting filters—even if only white SEO optimization is used for promotion, duplicate content increases the risks of search engine "filtering".
- Page irrelevance—duplicates can lead to a situation when the wrong page is included in the search results, which corresponds to the user's request. Thus, users can spoil behavioral factors, which can subsequently affect the rating of your resource.
One of the most common reasons for duplication is incorrect operation and technical imperfection of CMS systems that generate duplicates automatically. Duplicates are also caused by plugins of these systems, this is especially true for WordPress, Joomla, Bitrix. Webmaster errors and changes in the site structure can also affect the appearance of duplicates.
How to determine the presence of duplicate content on your resource?
There are several search options. If there are few pages on your site, you can search manually yourself. For example, use advanced search or programs for checking the uniqueness of texts. Pay attention to the webmaster panels from Yandex and Google - they will tell you if there are duplicates on the site.
If you have a large number of pages, it is best to use special services that automate the entire process, for example, the Netpeak Spider service, which will help you find duplicate titles, descriptions, text, and complete duplicate pages.
Recommendations for solving the problem
First of all, you need to eliminate repetitions where this is possible as quickly as possible: make images, texts, blocks with reviews unique. Next, you should work according to the following scheme:
- 301 redirect
- Canonical tags
- 302 redirect
- Google Search Console
- 404 error
- Noindex meta tag
- Disallow directive for Robots.txt
We recommend starting with a 301 redirect, as it is considered the most reliable in getting rid of duplicates, but you can start your fight against duplication with any of the above methods. Remember the features that can save your time: Yandex automatically removes duplicates from the index if robots.txt is configured correctly, in Google you need to specify the rules through Webmaster.