Duplicate content comes up a lot when we talk about Digital Marketing, but what is it? What does it mean, and why is it important?
Let’s first define Duplicate content. Why does Duplicate content matter to SEO? What is considered Duplicate content? The technical definition of Duplicate content is best summed up by saying:
A substantial amount of identical content that features on more than one website or multiple places on the same website. – The Internet
Ok, that is a good place to start but if you really need to understand this term and use it to your advantage when you encounter it in the “wild” we are going to need to do a deeper dive. Digital Marketing has a lot of jargon to navigate and it can mean different things depending on where it is being used and what your goals are. For example Duplicate content may mean different things to an SEO (Search engine Optimizer) than it does to an SMM (Social Media Manager) and something else entirely to a website developer, app developer, or a traditional marketer. For our purposes in this article page, we are going to take the 10,000-foot view and focus on the general digital media perspective. If this leaves you with any questions please don’t hesitate to ask! We love to respond with more specific follow-up content that may be helpful to you.
Ok, so back to “Duplicate content” What is it? Why is it important and how can I use it to best serve my digital marketing or website management needs?
Why do we talk about Duplicate content and use it in Digital Marketing?
According to Google “Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.” When there are more than one pieces of content that are very similar, search engines have a difficult time trying to decipher the best version. A duplicate copy of text means creating a similar copy of that particular text but it needs to be more than just a quote or a product name. Seach engines are prepared and even expect some duplication of content but large blocks that are not marked with the rel=canonical tag could cause some problems much the way plagerism would cause issues with the quality of the content on your website to a real person. There are a handful of SEO tools that have features designed to spot duplicate content and can help you better structure your site pages and content to avoid duplicate content issues.
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