Is Duplicate Content Bad for SEO?
Milwaukee Web Development Company on Duplicate Content on Websites
To get to the answer right away: Yes…mostly.
Duplicate content consists of body text, headings, titles, and any other type of content (the words on screen) that is replicated on more than one website URL. It can be repeated across several pages of the same website, or throughout entirely different websites.
Studies have shown as much as 29% of content on the web is duplicate content. In most cases, it happens inadvertently—such as when online retailers use the same product descriptions from a manufacturer’s site—but there are cases of outright plagiarism.
Why Duplicate Content Is Less Than Ideal
There’s a common belief in the world of SEO that Google punishes websites for duplicate content. This isn’t the case. However, both the original site and the one with duplicate content both end up having their search engine rankings compromised.
The problem is that duplicate content confuses search engines. When they detect the same pieces of writing on two (or more) websites, search bots don’t know how to evaluate the material for the purposes of ranking the website on how well it responds to a given query from a search engine user.
What About Product Information Pages on Ecommerce Sites?
Often, online retailers carrying the same products will use the same product description provided by the manufacturer. Having the same product description content on your site as 200 other online retailers is not doing your site any favors—but you will not be penalized for this. Search engines are sophisticated enough to determine such content is commonplace and was not done with any intent to manipulate the search engine into ranking the page higher.
However…
Google advises website owners to “minimize boilerplate repetition,” and by “boilerplate” content they mean any content that is reused without being meaningfully changed from the original. A good example is a product available in 30 different colors, but each description has the same specifications otherwise.
Another example might be a boilerplate disclaimer or the legalese a company may be required to have throughout their site. Instead of repeating the full text on every page, it is suggested to just have a two to three sentence summary and a link to a page with all the specifics.
What Every Business Owner Needs to Know About Plagiarized Online Content
We all like to think everyone plays fair, but when ecommerce is involved this is simply not the case. Unscrupulous web companies and businesses themselves will sometimes take a shortcut by copying and pasting content from another company’s website onto their own. This happened to an iNET client. A local competitor apparently liked the content we developed for our client so much, they just helped themselves to 20 pages of it—word for word!
Plagiarism of website content is defined by law as a form of theft. If your site is plagiarized, you need to consult with an attorney to send the offending company a cease and desist letter notifying them of their infringement--and demanding they remove it from their web pages. Keep it civil, because it’s always possible the company may not even be aware their web developer plagiarized someone else’s content.
Google Distinguishes Between Duplicate Content and Copied Content
In Google’s “Search Quality Raters Guidelines” from March 14, 2017, they provide this direction for their quality evaluators:
“Important: The Lowest rating is appropriate if all or almost all of the MC (main content) on the page is copied with little or no time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users. Such pages should be rated Lowest, even if the page assigns credit for the content to another source.“
iNET Web Recommendations on Duplicate Content
- Never copy content from another business’s website and try to pass if off as your own.
- Don’t put the same content in more than one place on your website unless there is some compelling reason to do so and you use redirects or mark them as duplicates so search engines recognize them as part of the same piece of content.
- To have your site rewarded by Google, keep your focus on original content—and don’t put it on more than one page of your site.
- Rework boilerplate product descriptions wherever possible so they are not exactly like everyone else’s.
- Create added value in product descriptions with additional content (original content) so it stands apart from other sites.
SEO for Small to Mid-Size Wisconsin Businesses: An iNET Web Specialty
If you run a business, chances are you don’t have a lot of time to invest in learning the intricacies of SEO. This is precisely why iNET offers monthly SEO services for our clients.
Through ongoing content development focused on what real people are actually looking for online, we take our clients’ websites to the top of search engine rankings for the high-profile search terms most commonly used by prospective customers.
Result: a profit-generating, creative genius-inspired website that never runs afoul of search engines.
