Does Duplicate Content Hurt SEO Of Your Website?

It is obviously not normal for content to appear on various websites. Though the website with the same content has the same products or services to display, the way of presentation and their thought process must be different.

Both the company owners have their point of view, so they need to have a specific way of writing and tone of voice to create brand awareness. And content plays a vital part that any business owner cannot avoid.

What is Duplicate Content?

Any content that is developed in more than one place on the internet is considered duplicate content. So if you observe the same content in two or more websites, count it as duplicate.

There are also situations where the same content might appear inside various pages within the same website. Such content also comes below duplicate content as Google gets doubtful about which page to rank on SERPs.

In other words, Duplicate content is content that is alike or precise copies of content on other websites or various pages on the same website. Having high amounts of duplicate content on a site can adversely influence Google rankings.

Duplicate Content and SEO

Google is obligated in fulfilling high-quality, unique, appropriate, and informative content in their search results. Over the years, the grade of search results has grown tremendously as Google's algorithm has become even more sophisticated. Google is well conscious of duplicated content and will often strive to filter pages to show the suitable content.

Content reiterated on numerous web pages can be difficult for Google, except there are signals to direct the search engine to the original page. They have a challenging time attempting to work out which one to rank. In terms of SEO, Google will not enforce a penalty for duplicate content SEO solely. However, Google will filter alike content, which can lead to a loss of rankings for web pages.

Why does duplicate content matter?

For search engines

Duplicate content can impersonate three main problems for search engines:

1. They do not know which account(s) to enter/eliminate from their database.
2. They don't know whether to address the link metrics (credence, authority, anchor text, link equity, etc.) to one page or keep it classified between various versions.
3. They don't know which account(s) to rank for search results.

For site owners

When You have duplicate content on your website, site owners can lose rankings and decline in traffic. These declines often originate from two main problems:

1. For the best search experience, search engines will seldom show various transcriptions of the same content and thus are required to pick which report is most likely to be the best result. It reduces the visibility of each of the duplicates.
2. Link equity can be further reduced because other websites have to prefer between duplicates as well. Rather than all inbound links leading to one piece of content, they link to various parts, increasing the link equity amongst the duplicates. As inbound links are a great ranking factor, this can then influence the search visibility of content.

How Does Duplicate Content Impact SEO?

As usual circumstances, Google doesn't want to rank pages with duplicate content. In fact, Google affirms that: "We try hard to index and display pages with different and unique information." So if you have web pages on your website without unique information, it can damage your search engine rankings. Specifically, here are the three main concerns that sites with lots of duplicate content should check for.

• Less Organic Traffic: This is rather honest. Google doesn't want to list pages that use content that is duplicated from different pages in Google's index. For example, let's suppose that you have three pages on your site with similar content. Google isn't sure which page is the "original." So all three pages will struggle to rank.
• Penalty: Google has said that duplicate content can head to a penalty or entire deindexing of a website. However, this is very rare. And it is only arranged in cases where a site is deliberately scouring or copying content from other websites. So if you have a group of duplicate pages on your website, you don't need to worry about a "duplicate content penalty."
• Fewer Indexed Pages: This is exceptionally essential for websites with many pages (like ecommerce sites). Sometimes Google does not just downrank duplicate content. It actually ignores to index it. So if you have pages on your site that aren't getting recorded, it could be because your crawl resources are consumed on duplicate content.

How to Find Duplicate Content on a Website?

There are various paid and free tools to check for plagiarism, if any, in the content published. We have mentioned some of the best tools that can aid you in checking for duplicate content.

1. DupliChecker: You can use the free version of the tool and check for 1000 words per search. You can upgrade it to the premium version to eliminate the word limit.
2. Grammarly: On the paid version, you can check for grammar, spelling mistakes, along plagiarism to improve your overall content.
3. CopyScape: Another popular plagiarism detecting tool. The free version will tell you the percentage of the copied content on your web page, and the premium version will show the exact lines you need to work on.
4. SmallSEOtools: A free tool to check for duplicate content that might help you improve your content.

Conclusion

Yes, duplicate content still hurts the SEO of a website in 2021. But if you have a couple of copied content on your website, you must not be tensed for Google Penalty as it won't solely judge your website on a single purpose.

We at DotCreative provide the best SEO content writing services in Kolkata that might help you improve your website content and boost Google Rankings. 

Before any further ado, if you search for an SEO content writing company in Kolkata, contact us on 7980358244 or email us at [email protected] to help us serve you and show us our skills to improve your overall website.