Duplicate content poses a problem for just about anyone who wants their websites and web documents to appear in the top of the search engines. While confusion abounds, this also weakens the results of any crucial SEO work you are doing, thus affecting the rank and traffic. For the competitiveness of your website in search results, it is critical to conduct regular SEO audits to remove and correct duplicate content.
As the subject matter deals with SEO, particularly on pages, descriptions, and other rather complex details, in this extensive guide we will illustrate how the duplicate content issues can be determined and eliminated by performing meticulous SEO audit services. Further, we will explain why it is necessary to employ an SEO audit service, particularly with respect to these matters, and how such services may create extra value such as local SEO audit, on-page SEO audit, and keyword research service.
Duplicate content can best be described as blocks of content that are hosted on more than one page or URL within the same domain or linked web domains. Since several websites may post the same information, it makes it difficult and almost impossible for search engines to prioritize where that content appeared first making one of the pages less authoritative and others vulnerable to being deindexed by the search engine.
Some of the major reasons why duplicate content occurs are:
Duplicate content is something that will not only get in the way of your SEO efforts but may also have some adverse effects in the following ways:
Duplication of content must be tackled if maximum returns from your SEO campaigns are to be realized considering how emphatic you are in using services such as SEO audit services or SEO audit agencies.
When you are looking for matching text, it is impossible to use without such important instruments. Luckily, there are some very effective instruments that can quickly identify and resolve this problem:
By utilizing the tools outlined above, you can promptly notice areas that require fixes on your website. In instances where you are working on an SEO audit, a company or an agency will most likely use similar tools to allow for thorough coverage of your website.
Even though the tools may be efficient, it is apparent that they may through automation fail to catch some effective methodology which may be manual. You can do a manual check of contents to rule out duplication using Google search operators. This is how:
For example, if you are not certain and suspect that a product description has been repeated on different pages, type in one distinct phrase from the description in “ ”. This approach will help you pinpoint instances of duplicated contents that automatic tools will miss.
So you have figured out which content is duplicated. Now it is time for action. There are various methods to rectify this problem depending on what may be causing or where the duplicate content is.
Make use of canonical tags where possible as these have proven effective in solving duplicate content issues. The rel canonical tag informs the search engines which variant of a web page is to be considered the original page. It is possible through the implementation of the due canonical tag that several pages that would have stood independently can be combine their ranking benefit into a single page.
For instance, if there are multiple blogs posts that are the same but can be accessed through various web addresses, google will only be told to index the primary post and all link equity will be transferred to this post only.
Another option is to use 301 redirects whenever you have multiple URLs with contents of the same nature. A 301 redirect is a situation where one URL forwards to another for good, such that even if it is a user or search engines, they are redirected to the appropriate web page.
Thanks to the 301 redirects, you are able to merge the content and enhance the site’s usability while cherishing your SEO gains, especially for those of you who have carried out local SEO audits or on-page SEO audits.
The benefits of these tags come in when a user has duplicate content that they don’t want to eliminate or redirect within the nofollow or noindex content management policy.
Noindex Tag: It is a command that an index is not to be made of a certain page by search engines. Such content is generally regarded as unpleasant although it tends to be beneficial to users.
Nofollow Tag: It is a command given to the search engines that they should not track those links in that particular web page. This concept is helpful in limiting the distribution of link juice from the duplicate content page.
The use of these tags can be very helpful especially if you are dealing with any of the agencies which offer SEO audit services to help you improve the overall performance of your website by optimally indexing ensuring that only the most pertinent pages are crawled.
Another option available in correcting the duplication of content within a website is its estimation. It involves combining two or more similar pages into one page that is more informational to users.
Merging Pages: Pages with duplicate content are merged into one page. 301 Redirects are put in place for the pages that are no longer in use.
Rewriting content: If merging doesn’t work, consider rewriting one version of the content to make it new and different.
When companies merge; it is important that internal hyperlinks and sitemaps are revised in order to accommodate the changes. For a well-structured site, it enables search engines and visitors to effectively browse through the site and take advantage of the condensed information.
The most effective strategy towards preventing duplicate content issues is discouraging the willful creation of content that imitates another as opposed to dealing with the effects. Below are a few best practices counsel on preventing content duplication:
By undertaking these measures, you will be able to keep a content bank that is profitable in terms of how it impacts on the SEO status of the site.
There are risks which come with neglecting regular SEO audits and one of them is dying companies. Looking ahead to when these audits are done helps to eliminate challenges such as duplicates early enough to avoid them accruing into the bigger challenge.
Outsourcing SEO audit services or engaging an SEO audit agency would be ideal for anyone who plans to do SEO audits expertly in a quick and systematic manner. Examples of such service providers are full service agencies that provide on-site SEO audits services , locally targeted SEO audits, and even conceptual development.
Addressing duplicate content problems is a significant bounding task without forgetting that keyword research is a key component of SEO strategy-in-success. Keywords, which are the building blocks of your content, point your pages to search engines on the internet and to users using the internet. This is yet another parameter that needs examination during the known as SEO audit and it is the keywords requisite.
It’s always important to weave all these together in your content strategy regardless of whether you are using SEO keyword research services or B2B keyword research. In addition, KGR keyword research would give you that advantage over competition as it will teach you how to gain access to low-competition keywords.
Content duplication is one of the most frequently occurring problems in search engine optimization. Thanks to SEO audit services, tool usage and processes, canonicalization, 301 redirects, and content consolidation, among other things, content duplication can be successfully avoided and controlled.
To add more, there are business benefits that are gained by engaging with SEO audit service companies or SEO audit service firms that include, local SEO audits, on page SEO audits, SEO keyword research services and more. These strategies do not only help you locate and correct incidences of repeated content on the website, they help to optimize the whole site towards search engines that results into more quality traffic towards the site, thus improving site rankings.
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