Question: What is duplicate content?
Answer: Duplicate Content is simply having the same content on multiple webpages.
So, what happens to sites that have duplicate content? The answer is that the pages typically end up in the Supplemental results, and don’t appear in the SERP’s where you’d like them. If at all.
Some common duplicate content mistakes:
1) Dynamic pages that serve a visitor a different URL with the same content. Hence Duplicate content. The best way to check to see if this is happening in the SERP’s is to click on the “repeat the search with omitted results included”. The Solution: use robtots.txt exclusion, or 301 redirects.
2) PDF’s can also present a duplicate content issue. The Search Engines can read, and index PDF files. So, be sure to use a robots.txt file to exclude either the webpage, or the PDF file to prevent duplicate content issues.
3) Circular navigation is a problem because of multiple URL’s with the same content that are used to arrive at a the same webpage. The solution is to define one way to arrive at that page, instead of multiple ways. Using a bread crumb is a good example: Brand–>Category–> Content.
4) Printer friendly pages are another cause of duplicate content. Once again, the fix is to use the robots.txt file to exclude them from the Search Engines.
5) Product pages that all have the same content. The solution is…you guessed it, write some new and different content for each page.
6) Poorly implemented rewrite code.
7) Poorly implemented cloaking scripts.
And, with the possibility of many websites stealing your content, it is a good idea to place a copyright notice on the footer of each webpage. The new BigDaddy update will look for clues that it is choosing the right website, so having a copyright notice will help BigDaddy figure things out.
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